Closing remarks - Commonwealth Lecture 2011

Friends of the Commonwealth, tonight’s lecture has addressed one of the most sombre of the themes for our human condition, and the oldest prejudice of mankind – and I say mankind advisedly.

Within the Commonwealth, we are clear on this point: that where women will prosper, societies will prosper; that the state of women is the true barometer of the internal health of societies; and that advancement has many strands, but if you were to pick just one as the litmus test of true progress, it would be the place and prospects of women and the girl child.

Mrs Gandhi, you have come a very long way – and invested a lot of your precious time – to inspire us and to strengthen our resolve to see women as ‘Agents of Change’, and of transformation in our global society.

Nobody could embody this more than yourself.

We are immensely grateful to you, and we thank you for your solidarity with the Commonwealth, to which India has contributed so much.

We thank you, too, for contributing to the awakening that we are now happily witnessing in the face of this pivotal challenge.

And we hear you, that the ‘gender dividend’, coupled with the ‘democratic dividend’, will see us to the promised land.

Inside this room, we are not short of examples of the leadership we seek.

But tonight is all about the billions of women outside this ballroom and across the Commonwealth: and all their potential, realised and unrealised.

It is about giving girls and women the equal chance.

We know the saying ‘Women hold up half the sky’ – well, it would also be nice if they held up half of the earth as well.

It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that Danny Sriskandarajah and I are just the ‘bookends’ on this stage tonight ...

The substance has come from three women: three ‘agents of change’.

In your lecture, Mrs Gandhi, you set down three specific challenges to the Commonwealth.

First, can we do more to encourage financial investment in women?

Second, can we do more to bring women into the climate change debate?

Third, if urbanisation is the world’s future, can we do more to make sure that new urban environments give women greater security?

Now is not the time for detail, but I am pleased to say that the Commonwealth is, in fact, already engaged in all three issues.

* Our Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting in Barbados last year asked us to take action on investing in women – and the principal focus of the Meeting was women’s economic empowerment.

* An element of the 2007 Commonwealth Lake Victoria Climate Change Action Plan is specifically focussed on the gender angle of the climate change debate.

Our analysis shows that women bear the brunt of the social and economic impacts of climate change; and that women will be central to successful adaptation and mitigation.

It also shows the need for the active integration of women in all aspects of decision-making at local and national levels, in planning and managing responses to climate change.

We are active in that spirit.

* And a specific element of the work of our ‘ComHabitat’ – which has just produced a report on the phenomenon of urbanisation and the state of Commonwealth cities – is women’s concerns.

We will publish more information on our website – but let me stress that that the call is heard, and that yes, we can and will do more.

First, we are ‘advocates’.

Last year, in the G20, many of you will have heard our call for another half a million midwives worldwide to combat the utterly shameful statistic that half a million women die every year in childbirth.

And then, as Mrs Gandhi alluded and as I have said, we are also ‘doers’.

The Commonwealth can be proud of its gender work these last 30 years – and it can build on it.

None of our work is more significant than what we do for women and young people.

So now I warmly thank all of those who have had a hand in tonight’s success.

I thank our hosts here at 8 Northumberland, and I thank you – our many guests – for coming.

I thank the Commonwealth Lecture Committee, including the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Royal Overseas League, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, and the Royal Commonwealth Society, who are also showing a live webstream of this event tonight.

I thank the Indian High Commission and the UK Foreign Office, and those that they, in turn, have tasked with running a smooth evening.

And I thank the Commonwealth Foundation: Simone de Comarmond, Danny Sriskandarajah, Paul Easton – and especially Emma D’Costa and Marcie Shaoul – for their great contribution.

Everyone in this room, and in the wider Commonwealth, wishes the Commonwealth Foundation well in its vital task of giving strength and voice to Commonwealth civil society.

But my and our deepest thanks are of course reserved for Mrs Sonia Gandhi herself.

Thank you, Mrs Gandhi – not just for your presence and your lecture tonight – but for your passionate call.

We recognise that our task is to act on it.

Just as Mrs Gandhi ended with those beautiful, haunting, piercing words of the Mahatma, about women’s ‘moral power’ ... ‘intuition’ ... ‘self-sacrifice’ ... and ‘courage’, I too end by quoting him.

‘Let us become the change that we wish to see’ ...

... and remember that he also said: ‘An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching’.