Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)

I thank Senators Rónán Mullen and Feargal Quinn for bringing this important matter before the House and affording it the opportunity to debate it. There is no doubt there is broad agreement across the House on the motion, the amendment and the central substantial issue under discussion.

I wish to respond to Senator Cait Keane's point on gendercide. The term has not been fully defined at international level and it is not in use in mainstream human rights and development discourse. Therefore, I am hesitant to use it. However, irrespective of the label we apply to the issues involved, these are serious problems that give rise to genuine concern and I commend Senator Rónán Mullen for raising them.

We are discussing the practice of female infanticide, what some refer to as sex-selective abortion and other forms of mistreatment directed at women and girls. I wish to make the Government's position clear. We condemn in the strongest terms all violations of the rights of women and girls, including female infanticide and other harmful practices, and firmly support the efforts being made at international level to combat these and all other forms of gender-based violence.

While agreeing with parts of the motion brought forward by Senator Rónán Mullen, the Government has reservations about certain elements. Therefore, an amendment has been tabled for consideration. The Senator has singled out two countries in the motion, suggesting the Governments of China and India either promote gendercide or tolerate it within their borders. While the harmful practices under discussion are followed in these countries, it is wrong to imply that the problem is confined to these countries. We should acknowledge that the Governments of China and India are taking various steps to deal in their societies with these practices which they recognise as harmful and unjust. We should acknowledge the progress made.

We do not believe it is helpful or effective to highlight individual countries. If the international community is to address the serious issues involved, it will only do so effectively by focusing on the need to combat all forms of discrimination and human rights violations against women and girls, wherever they occur. The motion tabled by Senator Rónán Mullen invites the Government to raise this issue at UN and EU level. I am proud to highlight that Ireland already has a strong record of advocacy and action in the EU and UN frameworks on issues relating to the rights of women and children. We will continue our consistent support for international resolutions focused on strengthening the rights of women and female children, as well as combating gender-based violence.

The European Union's commitment to protecting children is underlined in the EU guidelines on the rights of the child document. The rights of children are systematically raised during dialogues with non-EU countries and the European Union calls on partner countries to ratify relevant international conventions and lift reservations, to adopt or revise national legislation, to identify areas in which technical assistance could be helpful, and to promote good practices. The EU has agreed guidelines on violence against women and girls that address discrimination as well as violence against women. The guidelines prioritise women's rights within the EU human rights policy towards third countries. Ireland has been an active member of the EU task force on women, peace and security. Ireland has been a strong advocate of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security and has taken a leadership role in the international arena in consistently calling on other states to commit to implementation of this resolution. The resolution calls for an increase in the participation of women in peace making and peace building processes, the protection to women and girls in armed conflict, and the incorporation of a gender perspective into peacekeeping and peace building processes. We have taken an innovative approach to drafting a national action plan on the implementation of Resolution 1325 by combining interdepartmental and civil society consultation with an international cross-learning initiative. The national action plan will be launched this year.

Senator Mullen also asked the Government to ensure that recipients of Ireland's foreign aid do not promote gendercide. Ireland's official development programme has a strong emphasis on gender equality and on the empowerment of women and girls and all recipients of Irish Aid funding are required to demonstrate their commitment to these goals. In addition to a focus on access to health care and education, combating all forms of violence against women and girls is a strong theme of Irish Aid's work and of our dialogue with our development partners, both Governments and NGOs.

Gender equality and women's empowerment are priorities that cut across all of Irish Aid's work. Bilaterally in our engagement with partner countries, and at the UN and in other multilateral bodies, we consistently emphasise the importance of gender mainstreaming as a key aspect of ending poverty, hunger, discrimination and vulnerability across the globe. Gender equality is not only an important aim in and of itself but is an essential component of sustainable human development.

To respond to Senator Quinn's point about whether we can highlight gendercide during the OSCE presidency in 2012, Ireland will focus on that area and it will be a priority during a chairmanship in 2012. It is an important part of the human dimension of the work of the OSCE.

The implications of policies that do not take gender equality and the rights of women and girls seriously are far reaching. To take just one example, in sub-Saharan Africa, girls are still less likely to complete primary and secondary education than boys and face multiple barriers to accessing education. Girls who do not have access to education are significantly more likely to be subjected to child or forced marriage, which in turn leaves them far more vulnerable to dying in pregnancy or childbirth. They are much less likely to use family planning services which allow them to time and space their children at healthy intervals. Girls aged between ten and 14 are five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than women aged between 20 and 24. This morning, I had the opportunity to launch the United Nations population fund's 2011 State of World Population report, which focuses on the fact that the world population is due to reach the 7 billion mark in six days' time. That report underlines in stark detail the massive challenges adolescent girls and women still face in accessing family planning services and antenatal care. A massive 215 million women across the developing world still do not have access to safe, effective and affordable contraception and almost half a million die each year as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.

Uneducated girls are three times more likely to contract HIV. Their children are significantly more likely to suffer from malnutrition, to lack immunisation against preventable diseases, to be subjected to harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and to die before the age of five. The results of ignoring or under-investing in girls are devastating, not just for the girl herself, but for her own future children and for society as a whole.

Discrimination against girls and women is also evident in the prevalence of gender-based violence. Such violence takes many forms, from violence against women in the home to the horrifyingly high levels of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict environments, child and forced marriage, female genital mutilation, sex-selective abortion and other harmful practices.

The root causes of all manifestations of gender-based violence are the same root causes underlying economic and political discrimination against women and the low status that women and girls still have in so many societies across the globe. It is this fundamental issue that Ireland consistently seeks to address, both through our engagement at the UN on gender issues and though policy dialogue with, and practical assistance to, Governments and civil society across the developing world. Senators Hayden and Noone referred to this.

To provide just some examples, for many years Irish Aid has supported the extension of basic primary education to all children in Zambia. In addition to our overall support to the education sector there, we have also provided funding to civil society groups who campaign for better access by the poorest and most vulnerable girls to primary education and work with poor communities to overcome the specific barriers that girls face in getting an education. The results have been remarkable. Just over ten years ago, only 60% of Zambian girls completed primary school education. Today, more than 90% of girls in rural Zambia are in school.

In Uganda and in Sierra Leone, Irish Aid has supported programmes to combat gender-based violence, including through providing support to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and through funding research into how to combat gender-based violence at a community level and identify strategies that work. Eliminating female genital mutilation, a practice that affects an estimated 100 million girls throughout the world, is another important element of our work. I commend Senator Bacik for her Private Members' motion on that topic. We have provided more than €1 million in funding to a joint UN programme that works in 12 countries where this practice is particularly prevalent. Since the programme started in 2007, 11 out of the 12 countries have passed national laws banning female genital mutilation, large numbers of community leaders across west and central Africa have made formal public declarations supporting the abandonment of the practice, and almost 42,000 girls have been treated for medical complications resulting from female genital mutilation.

Regarding Irish Aid's response to humanitarian crises, we ensure that all emergency programmes we support take into account the specific needs of women and girls, particularly in respect of gender-based violence. In the Daadab refugee camp for instance, which currently houses almost half a million refugees who have fled from the famine in Somalia, we are supporting programmes that provide survivors of gender-based violence with quality and comprehensive health, psycho-social and case management services. Reporting mechanisms and referral networks are also being strengthened, as well as ensuring that the protection concerns of women and girls are taken into account in the design of the water, sanitation, shelter and health programmes in the camp. In addition, the Irish Aid rapid response register provides experts in the areas of gender, gender-based violence and child protection to UN agencies and NGOs in order to strengthen their emergency response. In 2010-11, eight protection officers from the register were appointed to UN missions in Haiti, Kyrgyzstan, the Balkans, Sudan, Kenya, Ivory Coast and Somalia.

Complementing our work on gender empowerment through our bilateral aid programme, Ireland also co-operates closely with key UN partners such as UNICEF, UN Women and UNFPA in their work on combating all forms of violence against girls. We work closely with Governments across the developing world to combat the root causes of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide.

In 2010 alone, Irish Aid provided more than €12 million in core funding for these agencies. Key elements of the work of these agencies include supporting Governments to put in place legal and policy frameworks that address female inequality in areas such as inheritance laws, land ownership and social protection systems; providing incentives to families with girls to send them to school and ensure equal access within the family to nutrition and health care; and developing ethical guidelines for health professionals for the use of technologies such as ultrasound. This point was raised by a number of Senators. We condemn the use of ultrasound for this purpose but it also has positive uses.

On this last point, it is important to note that, although the relatively recent availability of technologies that can be used for sex selection has compounded the problem of sex selection in some societies, it has not caused it. The rise in sex-ratio imbalances and normalisation of the use of sex selection in certain societies is caused by deeply embedded discrimination against women within institutions such as marriage systems, family formation and property inheritance laws. It is this discrimination that Ireland, as well as our UN partners, is working so hard to combat.

The Government amendment to the motion proposed by Senator Mullen envisages that this House, condemning in the strongest terms female infanticide and all other violations of the rights of women and girls, would commend the Government's firm opposition to such practices and its efforts to combat all forms of gender-based violence. It would also endorse the Government's strong support for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls through its official development assistance programme. I thank the Senators for the very good debate. I commend the Government's amendment to the House.