FAIT Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES ET DU COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, April 2, 1998

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham (Toronto Centre—Rosedale, Lib.)): I'm going to call this meeting of the committee to order, because Mr. Otunnu, who has kindly agreed to appear before the committee today, has a meeting, as I understand it, with the foreign minister very shortly. I would suggest that we begin.

I explained to our guest that there was a highly significant and rather emotional moment in the House just now when Mr. Charest was giving his parting speech. The Prime Minister and other leaders of the parties are speaking to that.

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I hope you'll forgive us, sir, for the fact that some of our members have yet to get here. But why don't we begin with your statement, and then we'll have an opportunity for some questions.

Before the meeting began I had an opportunity to give our guest a copy of our child labour report and the government's response to that, which was tabled in the House and in which there is some reference to the issue of children in armed conflicts.

Dr. Olara Otunnu (United Nations Special Representative and Under-Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am delighted to be here this afternoon.

I have been the special representative of the United Nations Secretary General for children and armed conflict since September of last year, and it has been my very strong wish to make a visit to Canada one of my very first ports of call. The reasons for this wish are the fact that Canada is a country that enjoys particular credibility on the international scene, it is a country that travels many constituencies, and it is a country that has been very active on the issues of peacekeeping and human rights and child's rights and humanitarian concern. But it is also a country that has initiated and shepherded many significant initiatives on the international scene, including most recently of course the very important initiative on landmines. I appreciate very much this role that Canada has been playing, and it is my hope that Canada will become part of the core group of countries working to shape this agenda.

Very briefly, let me state what is the core of this agenda. The experience of war is nothing new to us, and the fact that civilians are caught in the midst of war is nothing new. Yet I believe what we're facing in the world today is something that is qualitatively new in the modern era. I'm referring to the fact that on a systematic scale in a widespread fashion in many parts of the world we are witnessing warfares that are being conducted for the purpose of targeting children, women, and other members of civilian populations. So women and children are no longer incidental victims of armed conflict; they are the very target of it.

To give you some sense of this, Mr. Chairman, it is estimated that at the end of World War I, 5% of all casualties suffered during that conflict were civilians. At the end of World War II, I believe the figure went up to about 48%. But today, as we meet here this afternoon, in the ongoing conflicts in the world something close to 90% of casualties that have been occasioned are civilians, which is exactly a direct result of the phenomenon I am describing.

This is the reason why we cannot treat the wars going on today as we did the wars of the past. We can't treat them as business as usual. We have to adopt a different attitude to respond to the radical shift in the nature, the mode, and conduct of warfare.

It is in this context then that children and women have been suffering disproportionately. This is the reason why the General Assembly many years ago asked Madame Graça Machel to do a special study that would give a comprehensive description of this problem. This she did. Many of you will be very familiar with the Graça Machel report. It was following the adoption of that report by the General Assembly that it was felt important to have a special representative make it his business not just to describe the problems but to mobilize international action on the issues described by Graça Machel. So that really is the charge I have been given by the General Assembly and by the Secretary General.

Now, what does this translate into in terms of activities? It translates into three major activities. The first, and perhaps the most important, is public advocacy, getting the word out in official and public circles, describing what this abomination is and describing the radical shift we are seeing in the conduct of warfare, and then using that awareness so created to mobilize for action, political action above all.

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Why political action? We don't lack juridical instruments that regulate the conduct of parties in war. Over 50 years there's been the most impressive development of bodies of instruments at the international level. At the local level, in many of these societies there existed, if they doesn't exist any more, local value systems that spoke to exactly the same concerns about protecting civilians, about sparing children, about applying rules and values even in times of war. But the tragedy of the situation we are facing is that neither international instruments nor the local value systems hold sway any more. They are all being routinely ignored, creating a situation that is a free-for-all, in which anything goes, in which women, children, the old, crops, livestock are all fair game in the struggle for power.

That is the situation we are facing today, and that is why the most important single action is political action, concerted political action, a message that can go from concerned countries that it matters what you do to children and women even in situations of conflict, that there is a political price to be paid, that your interaction with the outside world—aid, money, arms, political and diplomatic recognition—will be judged depending on what you do to women and children in your theatre of conflict.

So that really is the most important single action, and for that I will need very strong and enthusiastic support of many constituencies, including especially members of Parliament—that you make this an issue in debating policy, in putting questions to your ministers, in urging government to make it a central concern in your foreign policy and your other activities, in your interaction with other parliamentarians from different parts of the world. So your role in this is a critical one.

The second activity has to do with what can be done concretely in the middle of ongoing conflict to spare children the worst experience. And this will obviously vary from one theatre to another. It may mean trying to gain access to populations in distress. It may mean evacuating children. It may mean protecting schools and hospitals. Whatever it is that a given situation requires, we must do everything to explore and do what we can to protect children.

Thirdly, and lastly, I would urge the importance of responding more effectively in a more concerted way to post-conflict needs of children and women and placing this as a central item on the agenda of those who are designing peace-building programs and post-conflict programs.

Mrs. Graça Machel outlined a number of issues in our report. Let me just say that among the thematic issues I would be pressing very hard in the immediate period ahead, one certainly is the issue of child soldiers; two is the sexual abuse of children, especially young women; three is the impact of landmines on children, and especially how to take advantage of the movement that you have set in motion to ensure that mine awareness and mine rehabilitation will seek to benefit children especially; and finally the issue of sanctions, which increasingly has become a major and rather explosive issue, the way in which sanctioned regimes in different theatres around the world are beginning to have very deleterious effects on children. Can we find ways, can we find humanitarian mechanisms without interfering with the political objectives of the sanctioned regime that can nevertheless spare children the worst impact of sanctioned regimes?

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These are some of the issues on which I will be working. I also very much hope that Canada will be working very closely with me and others to promote such projects as the lifting of the age limit for the recruitment and participation of people in conflict from 15 to 18 and that Canada will work with me and others to promote energetically the establishment of an international criminal court. I've been discussing these matters with your ministers today. I need your support for this as well.

In conclusion, let me say, Mr. Chairman, that even though this task may look especially onerous, I believe that the worst thing we can do is to accept as normal the phenomenon I've been describing—to accept that on the eve of the new millennium, when we've registered such breathtaking advances in the human experience, we can accept such brutalization of children and women as a normal aspect of life. We must mobilize to say this is unacceptable. We must work to provide ways by which hopefully in the new millennium we will make our world safer for all our children, regardless of where they may be.

Thank you, sir.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Otunnu. We certainly wish you well on this extraordinarily important mission.

Some of the committee members have just come back from New York, where we were yesterday. We met with various representatives of the UN and we did spend the afternoon talking about the international criminal court. Clearly, if we could get political will around giving it jurisdiction and also getting states to adhere to it, that might well be one area where we can address the issues you've raised with us today. I quite agree with you.

Am I correct that you must leave at quarter to? Is that correct in terms of— We can go on for a few more minutes, then. When you have to go off to the minister, just make a sign. Thank you.

Mr. Martin.

Mr. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, Ref.): Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. I'll be very brief.

Thanks very much, Dr. Otunnu, for coming here. I want to thank you and Mr. Khan and your office for treating me so well three weeks ago when I was visiting you.

I have a couple of things. All of this boils down to conflict prevention, does it not? There are rules and regulations protecting children now in wars, and as you eloquently mentioned, they're being completely ignored. What are you doing and what can we do to influence the international organizations—be it the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF—to change their policies with respect to conflict from management to prevention, from post-conflict reconstruction...not to ignore post-conflict reconstruction, but to try to focus our resources more on the preventative aspects?

As you mentioned about what is going on in Rwanda and what is happening this morning in 30 countries in the world, the writing is on the wall for a number of conflicts: You can pay me now or pay me later. What are you doing and what can we do to try to influence these international organizations to make it very clear to them that it is in their self-interest to get involved in preventing these conflicts early on and to use the tools that in fact we already have and implement them to prevent conflict rather than wait until the blood starts to be shed?

Dr. Olara Otunnu: It's a very important point, Dr. Martin. All I can say is that until recently it was a very difficult message to get across. Most international actors were used to responding after the fact but not before. However, I believe that the horrendous experience of the recent years, from the former Yugoslavia to Rwanda to Somalia, may have brought about a new sobering and the realization that we should be doing more preventively.

In this context, I suggest two things. We now have a pretty good idea in any given situation of the factors and the tell-tale signs that lead to bloody conflict, whether they are the gross disparities in the way resources are distributed, or the ways in which one particular group may establish political hegemony over others, or it may be the way in which demagogues play on diversity and exploit that. We have some reasonably good idea. The challenge is for us to try to address those factors at root, at early stages, in order to roll back an evolution that can lead to bloody conflict.

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The good news is that I think most organizations now, including the United Nations, UNDP, the World Bank, the European Union, have begun to recognize this and are beginning to equip themselves to act more proactively and more preventively.

Secondly, in the specific contexts of children and women who are brutalized in war situations, I believe that if we were able to create the beginning of a political atmosphere that sends a clear message that this is unacceptable and that there may be a political price to pay for his, that will serve in itself as a preventive action, because the belligerents, the armed groups, whether they are state or non-state actors, will be a good deal more careful, because they need the goodwill and approval of the international community.

Mr. Keith Martin: What's becoming increasingly disturbing is in spite of our era of globalization that's taking place now, and despite the fact that the United States is becoming more affluent, they are becoming increasingly inward-looking as time passes. That's become very significant in looking at Congress. So anything that can be done to educate members of Congress and the Senate as to the importance of the role the United States can play in the international sphere—and their security, whether they like it or not, is intimately entwined with that of the other countries—would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Dr. Olara Otunnu: I take your point. Thank you.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Ms. Debien.

Ms. Maud Debien (Laval East, BQ): Welcome to our committee, Dr. Otunnu. I was briefly examining the interim report you presented following your mandate in relation to resolution 52107. It says that you are pursuing seven main objectives.

I agree totally with the statements that are made as well as with the four areas of intervention you have described earlier, i.e. soldiering children, the sexual exploitation of young girls, mines as well as sanctions and impunity.

There is however one area which particularly concerns me, that is the whole issue of small weapons disarmament. You know better than me, as you mentioned earlier, that since the end of the Cold War, the number of internal conflicts which generally cause a rise in the number of casualties among women and children has increased. Does this issue of small weapons disarmament concern you? Is it one of the objectives on which you intend to work? It is somewhat absurd to see countries helping...

The Chairman: I am advised that there is a problem and that our witness must leave very soon. Could you ask your question quickly?

Ms. Maud Debien: Countries where there are conflicts ask for international assistance, which is generally provided and to which Canada participates, while we export arms to the same countries. I see a horrible contradiction here, and Canada is not without blame in this respect. Do you intend to make the issue of small weapons disarmament one of your priorities?

[English]

Dr. Olara Otunnu: Thank you very much for the question. The answer is unequivocally yes. As you know, indeed, the fact of having very small, almost miniature, arms makes it easier for children to be used in conflict. They are cheaper, and it is very easy to smuggle them in and out of conflict situations. So there is a very direct link between the availability of small arms and the brutalization of children and women in situations of conflict. We've got to work on that. I'm working with various actors to make our effort more concerted in that direction.

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I'm grateful that you've underscored that point. I share your preoccupation.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. I understand, Mr. Otunnu, from the rather worried look of the people who are accompanying you at the moment that we've overstayed your ability to stay. On behalf of the committee, please again excuse us for starting late because of the events in the House. That wasn't meant in any way as disrespect for you. We respect you very much and we certainly respect the work you do. I think the members of this committee will stand behind you and help in any way we possibly can. We wish you well, sir.

Dr. Olara Otunnu: Thank you, sir.

The Chairman: Members, we're adjourned until 4.30. I remind you that we will be having a joint meeting with the defence committee to consider the issue of troop disposition in the Central African Republic.