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Results: 1 - 15 of 24
Allison Pytlak
View Allison Pytlak Profile
Allison Pytlak
2021-04-27 16:51
Thank you for inviting me to speak today.
We were also pleased to hear that the Government of Canada has cancelled permits to Turkey for the L3Harris Wescam surveillance and targeting sensors. Given the volume of information indicating the diversion of this equipment to other end-users, this is a positive step that is in keeping with Canada's domestic and international obligations. It also sets a precedent that can be applied elsewhere, and we welcome the interest of this committee in the matter.
Yet while this was the right decision to make, there are concerns that need to be registered and lessons learned along the lines of points made by the representatives of Project Ploughshares. I want to focus my statement, however, on a particular aspect of the final report of the review, and that is the gender-based violence or GBV risk assessment, under criterion 6. I have to say that for a government that considers itself to be feminist, that acts as a gender champion within multilateral disarmament fora and that will soon formally release its feminist foreign policy, the quality of the GBV risk assessment is lacking.
The findings in this section of the report overlook vital information and do not demonstrate an understanding of core legal concepts. For example, the Turkish military has become increasingly involved in armed conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya since 2016. This is where the technology in question is being used, technology that has been described as “essential” to Turkey's deployment of its uncrewed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, and for launching air strikes.
Yet within the paragraph titled “Gender-based violence in the context of the conflicts in which Turkey is involved”, there is not actually any mention of GBV in those contexts, even though its prevalence is well documented by credible and easy-to-locate sources. Instead, the report states simply that Turkey has not “deliberately targeted children, women, or civilians”, comments on its membership within the Convention on the Rights of the Child and states that Turkey takes in refugees.
This is concerning. It is concerning first because the report fails to include any reference to or findings for the risk of gender-based violence in the context of the conflicts where Turkey is involved and where it is using the equipment in question.
Second, the use of the words “deliberately targeted” indicates that the concepts of “commit” and “facilitate” are possibly being taken to mean the same thing. In legal usage, the word “commit” implies directly carrying out an action, whereas “facilitate” is understood to mean “make something possible or easier”. “Facilitate”, in other words, encompasses a broader range of conduct and arms usage.
A risk assessment is meant to assess for just that—the risk of GBV being committed or facilitated by the items in question, and not deliberate targeting. It bears repeating that GBV is wider than violence against women alone and can also include socio-economic and psychological or emotional violence alongside physical and sexual violence.
Multiple credible sources have documented GBV in Syria, Libya and Iraq and affirm that its prevalence has been greatly exacerbated by protracted armed conflict and violence in all those locations. For instance, in 2018, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria confirmed that sexual and gender-based violence against women, girls, men and boys was a “devastating and pervasive feature of the conflict”. GBV is also pervasive within Turkey's refugee camps and in occupied Afrin. It is therefore difficult to understand how this information could have been omitted from the report and from a GBV risk analysis.
Men and boys also experience GBV and are sometimes uniquely at risk in relation to UAVs and signature strikes. Some militaries use sex—and in particular maleness—as a characteristic by which to determine a target. As a result, military-age males are more at risk of becoming victims of inaccurate targeting. This is problematic because it erodes civilian rights to protection in conflict and has human rights implications and further suggests that sex can be a key signifier of identity, which itself constitutes a form of GBV.
Finally, it's worth noting that in March 2021 Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul convention on preventing and combatting violence against women, a convention referenced in the report. This move has prompted a strong reaction from many high-level officials within the UN human rights community and Turkish feminists, some of whom have also registered concern over increasing levels of femicide and anti-LGBTIQ activities of people within Turkey.
The reason why I am making these very specific points is partly in response to the quality of this particular assessment, but more broadly to offer insights that can hopefully improve the quality of future, or in-progress, GBV risk assessments, such as in relation to Saudi Arabia, as one example.
To close, I would just point out that it is anticipated that our foreign minister will formally launch Canada's feminist foreign policy in the coming weeks.
In order for us to have credibility as a feminist country, we need to, at a minimum, do more to prevent GBV at home and abroad. We also recommend bolder action in the context of Canadian arms transfers and military relationships writ large, because equipping and emboldening aggressive militarism is fundamentally incompatible with a feminist approach.
Thank you for your time and attention, and I look forward to your questions.
View Jack Harris Profile
NDP (NL)
Thank you.
I have one question in relation to the issue of gender-based obligations.
Do you share Global Affairs Canada's assessment that there's no substantial risk of gender-based violence in the context of arms export to Turkey? You did mentioned something about that, Ms. Pytlak. Could you elaborate on that slightly?
Allison Pytlak
View Allison Pytlak Profile
Allison Pytlak
2021-04-27 17:36
No, I don't share their analysis. I think that there is a lot of very credible evidence that has highlighted gender-based violence pervasive in many of the contacts where Turkey is involved militarily. I think that their further aggression in those areas will only exacerbate and increase gender-based violence.
Experts agree that protracted conflict only makes gender-based violence worse, deeper and more protracted. That's why I think it would have been hard for them to not come across this information had they done a very thorough GBV risk assessment. I wanted to speak to that today to offer where they can do better in future GBV risk assessments.
Alex Kamarotos
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Alex Kamarotos
2021-03-11 15:44
Good afternoon.
Let me first of all thank you warmly for the invitation to Defence for Children International. I'll start with a few words about the organization. I think we are the only non-Canadians here.
Defence for Children International is a leading child rights-focused and membership-based grassroots movement and is currently composed of 35 national sections across five continents. It was created in 1979, the International Year of the Child, in Geneva, Switzerland.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, reported the following at the current session of the UN Human Rights Council here in Geneva:
Much of the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been exacerbated by a failure to address previously existing structural causes of inequality, social exclusion and deprivation, and the inability of many countries, rich and poor alike, to meet the basic needs of a sizeable proportion of their populations.
This is equally applicable to children and the rights of the child, in particular during this pandemic. DCI has had the chance to count on some very relevant experience from such other health emergencies as the 2015 Ebola emergency in west Africa, where DCI-Sierra Leone and DCI-Liberia were particularly involved. In February 2020, the international secretariat and the entire movement mobilized in front of this pandemic. We very quickly gave alerts regarding the risk of violations exacerbated by the pandemic or even created by mitigation measures taken by states.
In my intervention, in complementarity with your earlier hearings, I want to touch upon two issues related to children. The first one concerns the impact of the pandemic on violence against children, including gender-based violence. The second is the impact on access to justice, in particular for children deprived of liberty. That touches upon the issue we just heard.
UNICEF reports that violence prevention and response services have been disrupted in 104 countries during the COVID pandemic. I believe we still only see the top of the iceberg regarding the impact of the COVID pandemic on violence against children, but it seems to be already well documented that COVID-19 and some of the mitigation measures taken by the governments have increased the exposure of children to different forms of violence, exacerbating such human rights violations as stigmatization, discrimination and xenophobia; child labour and unpaid work; child pregnancy; and harmful acts that include child marriage and female genital mutilation, as well as online abuse, bullying and exploitation. As the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children emphasized in her report to the UN Human Rights Council earlier this week, “What began as a health crisis risks evolving into a broader child-rights crisis.”
I also want to share our experience and results in the area of justice for children, in particular children deprived of liberty. DCI has been part of the origin—we are currently the co-chair together with Human Rights Watch—of a wide civil society coalition on children deprived of liberty. The NGO Panel for the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty is composed of 170 civil society organizations worldwide. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, has urged authorities since the beginning of the pandemic to look at releasing detainees and in particular low-risk child offenders. UNICEF data indicate that at least 31 countries have released children from detention because of concerns about the spread of COVID-19. This is certainly insufficient, and even lower than the number of adult detainees released.
Honourable members, I cannot finish this very short and certainly incomplete presentation without speaking about the impact of COVID-19 measures on the mental health of children and the importance of ensuring the meaningful participation of children on mitigation measures that concern them. Last year DCI organized child- and youth-led online debates on the impacts of COVID-19. We had very, very concrete results.
We also participated, together with a great number of other civil society organizations, in #CovidUnder19, an initiative to meaningfully involve children in responses to the pandemic, with participation from more than 26,000 children from 137 countries.
I want to quote from two of the children who participated in the initiative. The first one comes from a Bolivian girl: “I think the government should understand that children are not dumb and easily manipulated. Children should feel that trust and not feel like they have to remain silent. This would increase their confidence and [motivate them] to report injustice.”
Last but not least, a 16-year-old Canadian girl said, “Even though there is a pandemic going on, there are people out there who experience abuse daily. The awareness, even in Canada, on how to access the resources is not explained in the best way. Finding that information should be basic knowledge for any human being.”
I thank you.
Taryn Russell
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Taryn Russell
2021-02-02 15:41
Sorry, interpretation.
I feel that her comments really highlight the complexities of implementing distance-based learning measures, particularly for families living in poverty and in crisis situations.
Save the Children has worked to employ innovative solutions to address many of these learning barriers, but it is vital that we get all children back into school as soon as it is safe to do so. We know the interventions that will be needed. These include things like financial support for the world's poorest families, catch-up classes for children who re-enter the formal education system, water sanitation and hygiene facilities in schools to make them COVID-19 safe, and national back-to-school communications campaigns to inform communities that it is safe to return to school, and especially those targeted at vulnerable groups, which I mentioned earlier, including girls, refugees and internally displaced children. Finally, it includes effective training for teachers to keep everyone safe during the pandemic.
The closure of schools and the increase in global poverty rates has also exacerbated another critical issue affecting children, that of gender-based violence. To give an example, in Uganda, despite some schools having reopened, more than 13 million children have remained out of school since the end of March last year, including 600,000 refugee children. In Nwoya District in northern Uganda, figures show that cases of both teenage pregnancies and child marriage doubled, and rates of child labour tripled between April and June last year while children were out of school. With reporting difficulties, the numbers are likely much higher.
Without urgent action, it's projected that over the next 10 years as many as 13 million additional girls may marry as a result of the pandemic, and we know that this will have immediate as well as lifelong impacts on them, including higher risks to disruptions of their education, life-threatening adolescent pregnancy and childbirth, malnutrition, mental health issues, and the inability to control their own future.
Arsema, a young Ethiopian girl, whose own child marriage was averted, thankfully, with support from a community safeguarding program, told us “I couldn’t be happier. Now I can study hard and become a doctor”. Every child has a right to plan for their own future in this way. What's so concerning is that the pandemic is already causing critical interruptions to GBV preventative interventions. This includes child protection and referral services for girls at risk of GBV, which is how girls like Arsema would have been identified and supported in their communities.
It's clearly a time when governments should be investing in children, their education and their safety, yet budgets are being hollowed out by a recession, and the diversion of public spending to health care and economic recovery, which are important. Most of the world's poorest countries, especially in Africa, entered the economic downturn with limited financial space. The international community will be needed to step up and take action to help fill this gap through international aid, but also debt relief measures and providing technical assistance and political support for issues like GBV and education.
In our prior testimony, we provided recommendations that Canada should scale up its humanitarian assistance, that Canada should prioritize urgently needed attention to these neglected areas like education and gender-based violence, and that Canada should support calls for a global ceasefire. These recommendations still stand, and I would just echo my colleague on the need for Canada to be championing an agenda for children reflecting their needs as well as their voices into fora both domestic and global when discussing COVID-19 response measures. Children may not be the most directly affected by the virus itself, but as our testimony shows, they're bearing a heavy load of the indirect impacts and need our support.
Thank you.
View Kerry Diotte Profile
CPC (AB)
Dr. Mirza, you talked about gender-based violence and gender-based issues. I'm wondering what the special challenges are in dealing with this when you have many societies that might not see genders as equal. For instance, some societies would ask why you should send a girl to school. What are the special challenges there, and what can be done about that?
Tanjina Mirza
View Tanjina Mirza Profile
Tanjina Mirza
2021-02-02 17:24
That's a great question. Interestingly, I think people everywhere do want to send their children to school. There are barriers that remain for all children, but more so for girls.
Just raising awareness about the importance of education has been tremendous work. This whole gender integration is not just about targeting girls. We have focused heavily at Plan International on male engagement and raising awareness with traditional elders. They often tend to be men. Father figures, spouses, grandfathers—they have tremendous power in decision-making at home. When we want to talk about raising awareness on this, it's not just at the household level but also at the community level with religious leaders and traditional elders.
At the policy level, oftentimes the education policies are not very supportive. For instance, in some countries, when unmarried girls get pregnant, they are not allowed back in school. It's important to make sure that those barriers are removed at the policy level. We almost need a multi-layered, multipronged approach to keeping all children in school, but especially girls.
View Peter Fonseca Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses who are joining us.
My first couple of questions are for Islamic Relief Canada.
Plan International and some United Nations agencies have informed their members that the pandemic is correlated with an increase in gender-based violence, early marriage and genital mutilation. Care Canada has said that these increases are particularly significant in fragile or conflict-affected countries.
My question is for Mr. Al-Rawni. Has Islamic Relief Canada collected similar evidence in the countries where it's working?
Zaid Al-Rawni
View Zaid Al-Rawni Profile
Zaid Al-Rawni
2020-12-08 15:55
Yes. We're in the process of actually collecting data from various projects in fragile states in places where the incidences of GBV, forced marriage and FGM are an issue. We published a report a few years ago about FGM and the effect of FGM and how faith-based organizations can actually play a pivotal role in ending FGM.
Unfortunately, there is a correlation between an increase in poverty and an increase in vulnerability and the price that women and girls are paying. In every single context we've been to to date, in the most vulnerable communities, women and girls are paying the highest price for the family trying to grapple with the challenges, and that often means fathers and mothers are forcing their children into marriages at a very early age.
We have anecdotal evidence currently from Yemen, where early child marriages are on the rise, unfortunately, in a context where the only difference between now and previously is that the pandemic has exacerbated the situation.
We are still collecting data from most places, but unfortunately, the data that you represented resonates quite heavily and unfortunately stands true. We suspect—not to pre-empt the data we find—that it will be the case, and the research that we produce will say as much.
View Peter Fonseca Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you.
I know that this November you came forward with your Islamic gender justice declaration. I want to ask you about that declaration. Did it take into account the vulnerabilities created and exacerbated by this pandemic?
Zaid Al-Rawni
View Zaid Al-Rawni Profile
Zaid Al-Rawni
2020-12-08 15:57
Unfortunately, the declaration was produced and worked on before the pandemic. The idea was that it would encourage faith healers to play a pivotal leading role in ending GBV—gender-based violence—in their local communities. They can be some of the strongest actors in local communities in some of the most vulnerable and fragile states where we work.
It didn't take into account COVID specifically, but unfortunately, we suspect that, again, COVID will make things a lot harder for the poor generally, but specifically a lot harder for women and girls.
Taryn Russell
View Taryn Russell Profile
Taryn Russell
2020-12-03 17:24
I can start, and then I'll let UNICEF jump in as well.
That's been one of the most concerning things we've seen. There's a real threat of rolling back some really good progress that we've made globally on gender equality. The combination of increasing rates of poverty and the closures of schools has put girls in a really vulnerable position.
We've seen rates of gender-based violence or domestic violence increasing. We've seen girls at increased risk of early and child marriage in many contexts. For example, in Cox's Bazar, we've had reports coming in that child marriage rates are increasing. That also leads to early pregnancy. It's all connected. We know that when girls are too young to get pregnant, they are at really high risk of death as well as health complications.
This is one area where we're really stressing that we need to be scaling up our efforts to ensure that we don't roll back on the progress made. That means getting girls back into school and it means our health programming and stand-alone gender equality programs not falling off because of COVID measures.
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much to both of our witnesses. This has been very interesting. I have the pleasure of going fourth, so many of my questions have already been addressed.
I'm going to focus a little on what my colleague from the Bloc Québécois has brought forward in terms of the impacts that COVID-19 has had on women.
Ms. Hicks, you were very eloquent when you spoke about those impacts, about the violence, the failure of women to be able to go back to work, the burden of house care and child care. What I'm interested in is how you would predict or how you would see Canada doing a better job, improving our role in addressing this, both domestically and internationally, because as my colleague Mr. Bergeron mentioned, this is not something that happens elsewhere; this is something that also happens in Canada. Could you comment on that?
Ms. Triggs, if you wouldn't mind, I might get you to comment on that as well.
Peggy Hicks
View Peggy Hicks Profile
Peggy Hicks
2020-11-26 16:07
Thank you for the opportunity.
I do think this is an area where more attention has been paid, but there's never enough engagement on these issues. Therefore, it is really important that we look at what's happening and try to outline clearly what types of responses are effective.
One of the things we've emphasized is that when there is a crisis such as this, we know there is a need immediately for more referral services and more access for people for shelter. People need other options even in the midst of a pandemic, and I think we were somewhat slow to roll those out and to recognize that need. Both in Canada and through Canada's support elsewhere, those types of solutions are very important.
As we've also seen, and this has been well documented, women's access to health care during the pandemic has been greatly diminished. For example, women have not been able to easily access sexual and reproductive health and care, which has an enormous impact on their lives as well. Emphasis in that area is a second piece that I would urge Canada and other governments to look at.
Gillian Triggs
View Gillian Triggs Profile
Gillian Triggs
2020-11-26 16:08
Thank you very much.
I think the question of gender-based violence in the context of COVID has really been one of the most disturbing impacts of COVID, because it has existed, of course, as we all know, in all our societies, but COVID has shone a light on this and expanded our understanding. However, also, the lockdowns have increased family tensions and we've seen an exacerbation of an existing situation.
What do we do about it? Perhaps before I mention what one might do, one thing that has been so interesting is that within weeks of COVID we were getting reports from our call centres in many parts of the world, but particularly Africa and Latin America, where in one instance we were getting 10 times the number of calls on gender-based violence in these countries. It has been true all over the world. It's not particular.
It's a very worrying phenomenon. What do we do? At UNHCR, one of the things we're doing is developing call centres. We're massively or very significantly increasing call centres to give greater access to women to call in. We can then provide mechanisms for getting out to legal advice, to health centres, to psychosocial support where necessary and to other social services. We think that's one way of achieving it in the context of a COVID that continues.
As Peggy said, people need options, shelters, but perhaps what it comes down to ultimately is greater funding and stronger advocacy to ensure that this funding is in place, not just as a temporary measure but something that becomes a significant feature of the social safety net of all systems and includes women in the environment of a pandemic. This won't be the last pandemic. There will be others, and this is a continuing and societal problem.
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