Dr Halima Begum is the Chief Executive of The Runnymede Trust. Her experience spans education, equality, human rights, public health, the environment and post-conflict reconstruction. She has held senior leadership positions across policy, programmes and research with a range of organisations including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the British Council and LEGO Foundation. Her portfolio of responsibilities has included leading the Sino-British Action Plan on food insecurity, the UK effort to promote girls’ education in Pakistan, and research collaborations between higher education institutions in Britain and Asia.
She began her career as a policy analyst on the Commission for a Multi-Ethnic Britain, before joining ActionAid and the LSE Centre for Civil Society. As a disabled Muslim woman raised in London, Dr Halima Begum is a lifelong campaigner for equality and civil rights. Today, she chairs the UK Women’s Environmental Network and sits on the board of various organisations including Toynbee Hall, the Ella Baker School of Organising and the Labour Campaign for Human Rights. She spoke to Asian Voice in an exclusive interview about women and human rights, including Shamima Begum’s case. Here are few excerpts:
How has your journey been so far in running the trust as a woman in a leadership role?
These days, there are so many inspiring women leading organisations with compassion and dignity. And I’m fortunate to be supported by wonderful colleagues and partners at the Runnymede Trust for whom leadership is not defined by gender, and without whom I simply could not function. While there’s still work to be done nationally in terms of representation, this isn’t 1970. I’m not trying to break through the glass ceiling in an organisation that functions like an old-boys’ club. That’s not to say we don’t have our own “era-specific” challenges. With MeToo, BLM and Covid, this feels like a defining and too-often polarising period in history. Having a national platform as a BME woman, and a voice to speak out publicly is a great privilege and a duty I take very seriously. Sadly, it also means I receive quite horrendous abuse and threats, whether by telephone, email or on social media. The very worst focus on my gender, race and disability. That says a lot about the progress we still need to make as a society.
What is your perspective on disabled people being neglected during the vaccination drive?
We should be utterly ashamed and incredibly disturbed by the Covid mortality figures among the disabled, as with our ethnic minorities. I remember early on in the pandemic, an exhausted nurse telling me she was feeling emotionally shattered because of guidelines around access to intensive care and Do Not Resuscitate orders, which she described as entirely discriminatory against disabled patients. To me, that smacks of eugenics. I simply do not see any way in which such a scandalous and backdoor policy, where proven, can be anything other than a matter of urgent investigation for the national inquiry that must surely occur once we exit the pandemic. A society can only be judged by the extent to which we care for the most at risk among us. And here, we have failed abysmally.
Please share your view on Shamima Begum's case.
First, ISIS has committed untold atrocities, often directed at women. No one condones such evil. Though Shamima Begum is guilty of huge errors of judgment, she was a child when she left the UK, and the victim of grooming. As a society we have to add our own mea culpa, not least by allowing a child to leave these shores to join a terrorist group. While the Supreme Court decision effectively renders Begum stateless in breach of international law and prevents her return home, on principle she should have been brought back to answer for her actions, for the sake of the victims of ISIS if nobody else. Are men treated differently? Of course. And UN data back that up. Thousands of FTFs (foreign terrorist fighters) have returned from Syria to their homes. Disproportionately, they’re men. To make a political point, governments can still find it expedient to publicly condemn a woman.
What is your assessment of the global approach towards women?
In a career already spanning 20 years with government and multinationals, I’ve experienced my fair share of sexism. I won’t mention which prime minister of which nation, but I recall meeting one head of government at an embassy garden party who clearly thought I was a waitress or an interloper rather than Her Majesty’s First Secretary. That’s an example of sexism that, looking back now, I can almost laugh about. But like every other woman, even in the recent past I’ve experienced those moments where gender-based discrimination exceeded any boundaries of law, and felt constant and oppressive. In some overseas deployments, the extent of the failings around gender equality can be particularly breathtaking. But one thing you realise working outside the UK is just how much progress our country has made in terms of gender equality, even since 2010. Our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers did us proud. Our job is to protect those hard-won rights.
As someone who has led dialogue on global education policies, why do you think women still suffer the most when it comes to the right to education?
In terms of the SDGs, and speaking globally, poverty remains a fundamental barrier to women and girls accessing education. Even where free at the point of delivery, the hidden and sundry costs of education – like school uniforms, books and even feeding a child at school – can be prohibitively high. In the cold light of day, some parents will consider a girl in school to represent a lost economic opportunity where the alternative is the girl in question providing support to younger children in the home, or producing food in the fields. So, where quality of learning outcomes are limited, and formal education is not leading to future jobs or livelihood opportunities, then parents don’t see the point in keeping their children in school and will often make a cost of living decision that favours boys over girls. Clearly this is the wrong thing to do. But it’s an issue many governments still need to address.
During the pandemic and in the post-Covid world, what do you think we urgently need to address about women and their rights to protect them from further atrocities and unemployment?
From the earliest days, we have known that women face particular risks as a result of conditions associated with the pandemic. The incidence of domestic violence has gone up alarmingly, at least 20 percent by some assessments. This can only be tackled by long-term public funding aimed at supporting and protecting women and girls, whether through strategies including prevention, shelter provision or counselling. The extra £40m the government has put into the pot as a Covid stopgap is welcome, but really just a short-term fix. The backlog in our courts now stretches years into the future, and is placing an intolerable emotional burden on those women who do seek justice against their abusers. Combine this with the precarious nature of frontline and key worker jobs occupied by many women, especially from BME communities, not to mention the increased risk of exposure to Covid, and I think it’s clear – there is no one silver bullet. Women and girls simply need more support across the board.
