Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 9 - Evidence - March 5, 2012
OTTAWA, Monday, March 5, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 4 p.m. to examine issues relating to human rights and, inter alia, to review the machinery of government dealing with Canada's international and national human rights obligations. (topic: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.)
Senator Mobina S. B. Jaffer (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I call to order this 10th meeting of the Standing Senate Committee On Human Rights of the 41st Parliament.
The committee has been mandated by the Senate to conduct reviews of issues relating to human rights, both in Canada and abroad. My name is Mobina Jaffer and as chair of this committee, I am pleased to welcome you to this meeting.
[English]
I would like to welcome the newest member of our committee, Senator Vernon White. Senator White was previously the Chief of the Ottawa Police Service and rendered 24 years of service with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Senator White, it is also my understanding that you hold a master's degree in conflict analysis and management, and I am confident our committee will greatly benefit from your experience. We welcome you to this committee.
Before I continue with my remarks, I will go to the deputy chair to introduce himself, and then the other senators.
[Translation]
Senator Brazeau: Good day. Patrick Brazeau from Quebec.
[English]
Senator White: Vernon White, Ottawa, Ontario.
Senator Zimmer: Rod Zimmer, Manitoba.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, today we begin a review that was proposed by our colleague, Senator Nancy Ruth, who expressed the wish that our committee follow up on her report from November 2010.
In preparation for the first annual report by states on the implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, our committee will take a closer look at the implementation of that resolution, both here and abroad.
[English]
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 was unanimously adopted by the United Nations Security Council on October 31, 2000.
This resolution focuses on the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, paying special attention to repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation, reintegration and post-conflict reconstruction. In September 2009, our committee commenced its study on the implementation of the resolution, which led to the tabling of a report in November 2010 entitled Women, Peace and Security: Canada Moves Forward to Increase Women's Engagement.
This report makes 26 recommendations, highlighting areas where Canada and the other UN member states can provide concrete resources, specialized personnel and programming that make a difference on the ground for women in conflict and post-conflict states in three areas: supporting women's participation in all levels of decision making in all parties pertaining to peace and security, building gender-sensitive peace and security institutions, and strengthening justice systems to ensure fair results.
This report was supported by a subsequent report tabled by our committee in December 2010 entitled Training in Afghanistan: Include Women.
This report included 14 recommendations that urged the Government of Canada to support women's rights in Afghanistan post-2011. This report also urged our government to design and implement gender-sensitive training in light of its new role in Afghanistan, which had shifted from combat to training.
Honourable senators, we have the pleasure of having Jacqueline O'Neill with us today by video conference. She is the executive director for the Institute for Inclusive Security.
I have specific pleasure in welcoming Ms. O'Neill. Although she now lives in Washington, she has worked on the Hill and is a Canadian. We take great pride in the work you do, Ms. O'Neill, and we know you have travelled to conflict areas. You work with women in conflict areas. We talk theoretically about Resolution 1325; you implement it. You use it as a tool to empower women, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Jacqueline O'Neill, Director, The Institute for Inclusive Security: Thank you chair, honourable senators and your wonderful committee staff. As the senator noted, I direct the Institute for Inclusive Security. We are a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., and our goal is to increase the inclusion of women in peace processes around the world. We do so with the conviction that when women are meaningfully involved in negotiations themselves and in the many processes that flow from them — the reform of police and militaries, the reintegration of fighters into communities, the drafting of new constitutions and much more — peace will ultimately be more durable.
We support the Women Waging Peace Network, which is a global network of more than 1,000 women peace builders in 40 countries. We produce research that answers this question: What difference does it make when women are included? We advocate to governments and multilateral organizations like the United Nations, NATO, the African Union and others. We support broad coalitions of women leaders who cross tribal, religious, ethnic and other divides to advocate together for women's inclusion. Specifically, we work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Sudan and South Sudan.
We deliver training to women peace builders and increasingly to civil servants, police, military in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Our organization has had the pleasure of interacting with the committee and its members over the past several years. My predecessor, Carla Koppell, testified twice before the committee. We have worked with your chair for many years, documenting the impact of her work to get women's voices included in the Darfur peace negotiations. Last year I travelled with her to Sudan and South Sudan. I personally have had the great honour of working with Senator Dallaire on issues relating to child soldiers, and in a past life even worked with Senator Harb. I should say welcome to Senator White. It is probably a good thing that in the three years I lived in Ottawa I did not have any interactions with you, but very much welcome you to the committee now.
Finally, as the chair said, as an Albertan myself whose father is from Montreal and mother is from Toronto, I have spent the last six years living and working in Washington, D.C., and it is a real honour to address the committee today and hopefully provide some insight into your deliberations.
Let me first congratulate the committee on your work and the various reports that you have issued related to UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and women's inclusion in Afghanistan, in particular. I reread them to prepare for my testimony today, and on several occasions I thought, "These reports are quite comprehensive. It is all here, what more can I add? "
Then I reflected on the realities of what is happening on the ground, and I am deeply aware that we are still not seeing the meaningful, significant and systematic change that we are seeking, particularly in situations of crisis and transition, including what we saw in many of the predominantly Arab countries that have had revolutions in the past year. In my testimony today I would like to share some thoughts on why we are not seeing some of the change we are seeking and offer some recommendations on the most critical things that I think Canada could do to narrow the global gap between rhetoric and reality. I firmly believe there is no doubt that we are seeing progress, including since you issued your last report in late 2010. I want to share some examples with you.
Broadly speaking, 1325 was the only Security Council resolution on women, peace and security for close to a decade. In the past few years there have been about four more. The UN Secretary-General took a major step toward making the resolutions meaningful by adopting 26 indicators to track performance and progress towards the goals outlined in 1325.
Currently 34 countries have national action plans, including the United States, which released its plan just over two months ago. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially released it and President Obama issued an executive order to institute it. My organization worked very closely with the U.S. government to urge the creation of a national action plan and over the past year or so on a weekly basis to help shape it.
As a brief aside, I am not sure many people know the role that Canada played in the creation of the U.S. national action plan, but I would argue that Canada was instrumental. Canada was an active member of the Friends of 1325 group at the United Nations, and as the tenth anniversary of 1325 approached in the fall of 2010, the chair of my organization, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and others urged the UN to hold a commitments conference, at which countries would be asked to speak about the new and meaningful steps they planned to take to implement Resolution 1325.
Chantale Walker and Deputy Head of Mission Henri-Paul Normandin were very supportive of civil society's advocacy and were instrumental in ensuring that conference happened and had high-level representation. I believe it was in part through the process of coming up with commitments for that conference that the U.S. government realized it needed to document its own targets and that it needed much better coordination across the departments of state, USAID and defence.
To finish describing some of the progress that has been made, the new UN entity, UN Women, has now been established and has as its head a former head of state and notably a former minister of defence. There are a few more women at the most senior levels of the United Nations. In December, women made a big impact at international conferences, including on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany, and on South Sudan in Washington, D.C.
Finally, not insignificantly, these issues began to enter the mainstream when the Nobel Peace Prize committee gave its award in 2011 to three women peace builders and specifically recognized the contributions of women to preventing and ending war. For those of us who have worked on these issues for years, and in this case who have worked closely with two of the three women who received the Nobel Peace Prize, it was an amazing moment, to be able to speak about something that our friends and family had actually heard of for a change, which was the Nobel Peace Prize.
We know, however, that none of this means anything if realities do not bear out on the ground, and in particular in crisis situations and transitional governments when international frameworks and optimal policy guidance can be most easily disregarded or de-prioritized in favour of supposedly more urgent imperatives such as making the place more secure.
For example, in Sudan and South Sudan, places close to my heart and Senator Jaffer's, there have been negotiations for the past year and a half to determine the terms of separation between the two countries. Both sides had a six- member team of lead negotiators and neither side included a single woman. The high-level panel of African Union facilitators of the talks does not include a single woman. What we are seeing is that though women are playing major roles in the governance of both new countries, where women make up at least 25 per cent of national parliaments in both countries, they are still not reaching the very highest levels of negotiation. As you are surely following, there have been tremendously negative consequences from key elements of those negotiations remaining unresolved, especially decisions related to the transfer of oil revenues.
In Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria and beyond, women not just joined but actually helped lead, and in some cases even initiated, revolutions. They organized movements, protested in the street, demonstrated enormous courage along with men and faced very real threats of physical and sexual violence. Now they are being systematically excluded from participating in the very new democratic institutions they risked their lives to create.
Last week here in Washington my organization hosted a delegation of Libyan women leaders. These are women who, during the revolution, risked their lives and who continue to live in Libya today. They talked about Libya's national transition council, or the NTC, which despite having issued several statements about the importance of women's rights is overwhelmingly male-dominated. There are 40 members. Two are women and both are from the same city. They described the overwhelming lack of transparency across the board. They spoke of how the national transition council creates very few opportunities to get input from the public and from women in particular. They explained that the public often has less than two weeks to comment on proposed legislation and that information is often shared only over the Internet, where women have significantly less access than men.
The delegation also talked about the commission that will draft Libya's new constitution. There will be 200 members and no set target for women.
I do not want to get overly caught up in numbers or to imply that there even need be equal representation between men and women. My key message is this: When a nation sets out to lay its foundation, to create the constitution, the frameworks, the processes and the precedents that will shape its fabric as a country, it ignores the voices of half of its population at its own peril. How democratic and ultimately how sustainable can these foundational outcomes be when they are not genuinely representative of the priorities of all people?
What can Canada do? I have here seven recommendations. First and always key is to maintain a focus on peace negotiations themselves. They are components of a peace process that have the greatest potential to create the foundation for inclusion and sustainable peace and yet most consistently exclude women. As with many actions related to this agenda, the most meaningful things Canada can do do not cost a penny.
Canada can use its voice to tell partner governments that it cares about women's inclusion in peace talks and insist women be meaningfully included. Canada can advocate within the United Nations to the Department of Political Affairs to name for the first time ever a woman to be lead mediator of peace talks. Canada can also consistently find ways to create links between civil society and formal processes.
Structured mechanisms help, but even a single meeting can be useful. In December in Bonn, Germany, for example, the Institute for Inclusive Security worked with UN Women and CARE International to bring a delegation of Afghan women to a major conference on the future of Afghanistan. Though the women themselves were not official participants of the conference, Minister Baird met with the delegation outside of the official meeting space and referenced the women's priorities in his remarks to the plenary. Canada in that case found a way to help Afghan women elevate their voices.
Canada can also create a fund to support the participation of women at talks. This fund could cover things like child care for women who need to leave families behind or protection for those who face ongoing security threats. The deputy administrator for USAID, Don Steinberg, said that being a woman peace negotiator is one of the most dangerous jobs on earth.
Second, when Canada funds peace negotiations and development, it can tie money for recovery to commitments and progress in meaningfully including women. Imagine if Canada said to the Libyan government that money to build roads, health and education systems will be tied to the greater representation of women in the national transitional council. There will be times where our action alone will prompt change and there will be times when speaking out will empower other donor countries to do the same and collectively to make a difference.
Third, the Canadian government can focus on shifts in policy and practice that will create behavioural change. There is global momentum right now in the field of women, peace and security, and it is our challenge to seize it by creating practices that are not subject to shifting political winds.
For example, last Thursday USAID revised its gender policy for the first time in 30 years. They did two things that I think are particularly meaningful. First, USAID now requires a gender assessment for every project it funds. The only other assessment of its type is an environmental one.
Second, the plan makes responsibility very clear. Expectations are to be listed clearly in job descriptions and assessed in performance evaluations.
Already at USAID an individual cannot be named a mission director, which is their equivalent of an ambassador, without demonstrated commitment to men and women's inclusion. As I think you know, when both money and career advancement depend on something, that thing tends to get a lot more attention.
Fourth, Canada can focus on documenting — collect evidence, analyze it honestly and track outcomes. The world still needs evidence and it is starving for good practices.
Canadian troops at the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, for example, created an innovative approach to engaging local women and learning their priorities that resulted in very specific benefits to the NATO and the Canadian mission. We at the Institute for Inclusive Security documented it. We wrote the case study.
The North-South Institute recently released a study called African Women on the Thin Blue Line, about gender- sensitive police reform in Liberia and South Sudan. It is an excellent example of the analysis and documentation that is needed.
The Canadian national action plan calls for more documentation, and the Senate can ask to see it consistently.
Fifth, on a related note, in Afghanistan specifically, Canada could advocate within the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, to start tracking indicators that will allow the world to better monitor the impact of the withdrawal of troops on Afghan women in particular.
ISAF's data cell, the Afghan assessment group, is not currently tracking an indicator specific to women's security in districts where troops are transitioning out. Canada could advocate to ISAF that they start now to track an indicator such as women's freedom of movement or political participation, and then continue to monitor even just that one indicator for several more years.
Sixth, this Senate committee and the Canadian government broadly should keep a close eye on training. The Canadian national action plan, much like the American one, calls for significant training of civilians and military as a way of advancing 1325. We all need to be cautious of simply checking a box on training and assuming it equates to progress. For training to be any good, it has to lead to behavioural change, not just increased knowledge. I personally have seen far too much training delivered under the heading of 1325 that does not have an impact. Training that educates troops about policies on sexual exploitation, for example, are not the same as training that shows why it makes a difference to speak with local women in a theatre of operations and, more important, how to safely and respectfully do so. Both types of training are important and both are needed to see genuine progress on 1325.
Finally, if this committee were to do nothing else, make a point of asking every witness on every topic this question: How does this issue affect men, women, boys and girls, and how are you planning to include both men's and women's voices in designing and implementing whatever it is that you are talking about, and who is responsible if that does not happen? It is remarkable what behavioural shifts occur when enough people have been caught off guard by a question and when those who write talking points and briefing materials start seeking information.
I would be happy to elaborate on any of these or other points and take your questions. Again, thanks for this opportunity and thanks for your good work.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. O'Neill. We appreciate your remarks. We will go to questions.
Senator Meredith: Thank you for your presentation.
Clearly one of the things that jumped out at me — you talked about documentation and good practices, and those were one of your recommendations. In your opinion, right now are we not documenting and not documenting enough to showcase our position on the world stage? Can you elaborate on that point for me?
Ms. O'Neill: Happily. Yes, "we are not documenting enough " would be my position. Across the board, a lot of good practices are taking place. They are relatively ad hoc, even though the national action plan is trying to systematize them, but there is not a consistent hunger, I would say, for documentation about them. For example, regarding after- action reports on military and police actions by both the Canadian military and police services, as well as those we train. There is not currently a consistent call for after-action reports that assess whether women were meaningfully included, if they were consulted, calls for collection of gender-segregated data, et cetera.
Therefore, yes, I very much think we could do a lot more to collect relevant information and then, as I said, to start learning from it and generally start learning from it — assessing information honestly and not simply using it to fulfill our advocacy purposes.
Senator Meredith: I will also follow up on training, which is your sixth point or recommendation. With respect to what we could do in terms of the military and the sensitivity that the military needs to have regarding the impact they will have when they move into these war-torn countries, how could we improve upon that, and what has your agency recommended to the various military detachments for improvements to the training that needs to take place?
For someone who is engaged with youth and police in communities, sometimes they lack sensitivity with respect to moving into these areas. Can you elaborate on that for me, as well?
Ms. O'Neill: Sure. Of course, that is an excellent point. That is one of the most important things that we think about anywhere we do anything. The most important answer to that question is to have women and men in the local community design and implement the training themselves.
There is a good deal of international precedent and international curricula that are being designed related to training for police and military that can be used and can be adapted. However, this should always be done in collaboration with women in the local community. In Liberia, for example, we work with groups of women who are in civil society and who are advocating for more democratic police reform. One of the things they do is work with people in the Ministry of the Interior to ask, "What are the materials and curricula you are using to train new recruits, " for example, "and to train people seeking advancement within their forces, and how can we provide input to them? "
We work with an amazing woman named Precious Mitchell, and she does a number of these trainings at police training academies. First and foremost, the training has to come from and be designed by people within the community itself. There is an ample amount of precedent, actually, around the world where women civil society groups have been able to do so and to meaningfully influence the curricula and the way the training is developed and delivered.
We as an organization advocate for training that is both pre-deployment and in-theatre. In our case with the U.S. military, we work with police, military, and civilian personnel who are headed to Afghanistan, for example, to talk about basically how and why to engage with Afghan women.
It is important to do that pre-deployment — to start people thinking about dispelling some of the myths, first and foremost, that they might have; to think about some of the value and practices that have been established, for example, in other provincial reconstruction teams, at ISAF headquarter, et cetera; and then coupling that with in-theatre training. That means, whenever possible, working with Afghan women to ensure that they are able to come and deliver some of that training themselves or, at least, to provide input into the curriculum, to ensure it is always as relevant and meaningful to them as possible.
Senator Meredith: I have a last question, chair. How receptive is the leadership to this kind of recommendation? It is always challenging when you try to sort of shake up the way they do things. How receptive are they to this grassroots approach?
Ms. O'Neill: I would say it varies widely. In many countries, leadership is aware that there is global attention on issues of women's inclusion, and they want to look good. Therefore, they will pay attention in that respect and make a point of being seen to be doing something. Therefore, in some cases, it is very much pushing on an open door.
In other places, as you would expect, people perceive the shifting of power as threatening in any way, and so we are always very careful, as I said, to first of all take our time; doing so meaningfully really takes a lot of time and you cannot rush something like this. You need to have a long and sustained commitment to working with both men and women in a country.
Then it is also very much about engaging men in the process. I mean, men are some of the most powerful allies and potential supporters of an agenda related to 1325 and have been some of the greatest champions on these issues in countries all around the world. In Afghanistan, for example, there are a number of men that we work with in the Afghan Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Defence who are very much champions for these issues and who advocate internally. It is about engaging men and thinking through important strategies for ensuring that, first of all, men and women, both in power and out, are aware of what we were doing and aware of the motivations for doing so, and then strategically choosing champions, I would say.
Senator Meredith: Thank you so much.
Senator Zimmer: Thank you, Ms. O'Neill, for your presentation. Have sanctions or other targeted and graduated measures outlined in Article 5 of Resolution 1820 been considered and been applied by Canada or other states in relation to any parties to conflict for committing rape or other forms of sexual violence against women and girls?
Ms. O'Neill: I wish I had an answer for you, but unfortunately I do not know. I am sorry.
Senator Zimmer: Given that in many conflict situations women are not necessarily high-ranking members of the armed forces, political parties, or national governments, what are the challenges associated with ensuring that women are integrated in the formal decision-making process, peace building, and post-conflict public life?
Ms. O'Neill: Thank you for asking. Let me list a few of them for you. First of all, I want to start by reflecting a bit on your question, as you are saying that women are not necessarily high-ranking members of many of those organizations.
We start with the approach that women, while they may not be in high-ranking positions of formal authority, have informal authority in almost every community around the world, or they have authority in a private sphere, not necessarily a public sphere. Therefore, first of all, we reflect very much on areas of influence where women do have either moral authority or suasion over family members, relatives, et cetera, and to think about ways to build upon that.
There are some challenges for getting women involved in these processes. First and foremost I would say is women's confidence. Above and beyond almost anything else, women with whom we work, especially in places that are recently coming out of conflict, and I am thinking of Sudan and South Sudan in particular, despite having led armed movements during the conflict, despite having delivered services like health care and education — for example, in Afghanistan during the Taliban period — despite having led community committees and all sorts of other ways they had kept their community together during conflict, when it comes time for a position of formal authority, women will often be the first to tell you, "No, no, no. I am not qualified; I do not have the necessary experience. "
I remember sitting with groups of women in South Sudan, in particular, when we were talking about the importance of running for office. Elections were coming up and women were saying, "We want to see this happen and this happen, " and women were saying, "We are not educated. We have very low levels of literacy in south Sudan. " Only 2 per cent of women can read and write. Women were first and foremost taking themselves out of the role. What we say to them in that case is very much, "Do you have strong connections to your community? " "Yes. " "Do you feel like you have a sense of what is best for the community and how you can go about getting it done? " "Yes. " "Do you feel committed to working hard and doing so? " "Yes. " "Then you have what you need to be putting forward your name for a position. "
First and foremost, I think encouraging women to step up and to assume these roles is where we start this process.
Second, there are a number of institutional biases, for example, against the recruitment of women. One of the best stories I recall is from a man in the U.S. military who had been working with the Liberian armed forces to recruit women following the conflicts there. He said the U.S. military through a contractor was working to recruit both men and women to the new Liberian army. They had a recruitment day, they put up a number of posters and they advertised all around the community. They had very few women showing up, and the women who were showing were getting consistently pushed out of line by the men to get up front. They said that instead of issuing a formal report, going back to the headquarters, et cetera, he said the next day he just decided to create two lines, one for men and one for women. He said they were not getting many women who were applying. The issue was that advertising campaigns targeted for recruitment to the military in that case consistently were showing pictures of men in army uniforms. They were not specifically requesting women or women's participation.
Another example of that is in Afghanistan. We work with a number of men and women's groups that said one of the biggest impediments to women's recruitment into the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army was that training centres were located only in Kabul, so women would have to leave their families even to experiment with whether they wanted to join the national police or military. Something that has happened in the past year or so is that a number of these training centres have been established in the provinces. Some of the training centres have child care facilities so women, even on recruitment days, can bring their families there and not have to worry about child care, and they are able to bring their families there because it makes an enormous difference if women are able to say to their husbands, brothers, fathers, et cetera, "This is what I am involved in and this is the situation I am walking into. "
Some of the other barriers that occur are from having a system of creating negotiations that have, I would say, a fundamentally skewed incentive system. Those who end up earning a spot at most negotiation tables are those who bore arms during a conflict. They are members of a government who were on one side of a conflict and various rebel movements who fought actively during the war. There has not consistently been a decision by the international community to prioritize having voices at the table of those, particularly in civil society, who played very instrumental roles both in sustaining communities during the conflict and often in ending the war itself. The composition of the peace table from the outset is often designed only to include those who are leaders of rebel, militia or other movements and not, from the outset, created wide enough to include members, in particular, of civil society where women are most often found.
Senator Zimmer: My next question ties in to part of your answer. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 urges the UN Secretary-General to appoint more women special representatives and envoys to pursue good office on his behalf and calls on member states to provide candidates to the Secretary-General. Do you know of any avenues through which Canadians can lobby for the appointment of women as special representatives to the UN Secretary- General?
Ms. O'Neill: It would be through the mission in New York. The mission in New York has enormous access to the Secretary-General, other members of the Security Council and other member states of the United Nations. This push has been ongoing for some time. As I mentioned in my remarks, we are seeing some more women named as heads of United Nations peacekeeping missions. For example, the head of the peacekeeping mission that was newly formed in South Sudan is a woman.
We still have not had a lead mediator of a UN-mediated conflict who is a woman. The Department of Political Affairs is in charge of that position. As you can imagine, it is often a political process where, first of all, countries need to be putting forward serious and credible candidates, so Canada can identify many of the women — Canadian women, for example — who would be serious contenders to be lead mediators and encourage other countries to do the same. First, there needs to be that candidate pool from which we can draw because, as you can imagine, one of the worst things is to name a woman for the sake of naming a woman and have her not be able to do the job effectively. The other thing is also to advocate directly to the Department of Political Affairs and to others on the Security Council and beyond who have an influence in the naming of individuals.
Thank you for asking. I hope it happens more frequently.
Senator Zimmer: Thank you for your presentation.
Senator White: I notice in Haiti, at least, more Canadian women seem to be participating in that mission than other missions. It might be because there is a requirement for bilingualism and maybe not as large a pool.
Have you considered having a discussion around the two-line system for Afghanistan and other missions? I would suggest South Sudan would be a great mission, from a policing perspective, for us to participate in with more women.
Ms. O'Neill: There are a number of excellent Canadians, in particular in the RCMP, who are advising police forces abroad and would be happy to share some of those ideas. I know that many of them are actually working on issues like that.
There is a Canadian woman who is advising a woman named General Shafiqa who is an Afghan woman head of the gender unit in the Ministry of the Interior of Afghanistan. My colleagues have reported that this Canadian woman has been doing amazing work to address things like the recruitment of women into the ANA and the ANP.
I cannot speak much to Haiti. I know that since it was a more recently created mission there has been greater focus by the United Nations and others on increasing their recruitment of women police officers. I know that Canada has been very much in the lead in the past in that deployment.
Senator Hubley: Again, with respect to Resolution 1325, are you able to identify gaps in the training provided to the Canadian Forces personnel, to civilian police officers, to UN security personnel and to human rights monitors?
Ms. O'Neill: I can speak a little bit to that. I know you are also hearing from Ms. Livingstone from the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre who can definitely elaborate more on that.
Regarding the gaps in training we have seen in the United Nations and in various member countries that focus on pre-deployment training of their troops prior to going on UN missions, they primarily focus on sexual exploitation. I will give you an example.
I worked at the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Khartoum, Sudan, for a period, and I sat in for what was the hour-long induction training on Resolution 1325. This was a few years ago, but I remember sitting in the room. It was peacekeepers from various other countries, police, military and civilians and I. We talked for about 45 minutes about the definition of the word "gender, " which left everyone completely confused because no one at the end understood what the word meant any longer, and there was about 15 minutes on the UN zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation.
The key message most of the people in that training session went away with was do not go near local women, essentially. There is a risk to you going near local women or engaging them in any way.
That was six or seven years ago. I think training has evolved, but not nearly to the point that training emphasizes why it matters to have women included in peace operations. There is very little focus in any of the training we have seen that talks about the impacts on the mission objectives, when either you have more women in your police or military personnel or troops or when you engage meaningfully with women in your theatre of operations. What are the benefits to the mission itself of considering how something might affect men and women differently or how men's and women's priorities might differ? This is the component of getting people to understand why it matters in the first place.
Secondly, a lot of the training that currently goes on is very theoretical about UN Security Council Resolution 1325. You can imagine — I am thinking, perhaps, of Senator White here — a group of police officers going through Security Council Resolution 1325 line by line, learning exactly what the UN intended when it drafted this, and walking away not having any idea how to operationalize that, how to translate that into tactics at an operational level.
We consistently advocate for specific and targeted training on women's inclusion. If you are a police officer working on a provincial reconstruction team, how do you go about doing so in a meaningful way, one that actually relates to your objectives and role? We are advocating for a shift away from general education about 1325 to the sharing of good practices on how it can be implemented at a tactical level.
Senator Hubley: Thank you very much. One of your recommendations singled out the United States as one country that includes gender sensitivity and inconclusiveness in their aid packages. Was I correct in hearing that?
Ms. O'Neill: USAID just announced a policy that will see that done consistently.
Senator Hubley: Are there any other countries following suit?
Ms. O'Neill: There certainly are. Scandinavian countries are very much ahead of the world, I would say, on this agenda. We work closely with the Norwegian government, and it is very much built into performance measures and evaluations. People, at an individual level, have to be able to describe how they incorporated 1325 into their project planning, their early-warning assessments, their after-action reports, et cetera.
We also work a lot with the government of the Netherlands, and they have just — in the last few months, I believe — issued a revised version of their national action plan. They created a national action plan several years ago. Upon reflection and learning, they realized that the plan was too many things to too many people. They decided to focus it on five or six countries and describe, in much more detail, what they are doing in those countries. They also sought very specific commitments from various agencies within the Dutch national government and from civil society. The financial and human resources that the ministries of defence, foreign affairs, et cetera, will contribute are very clearly described, as is what civil society organizations will contribute. Very serious outcomes and metrics are built into the plan. They are very much one of the leaders.
There are also a number of conflict-affected countries that have developed significant and meaningful national action plans and are working to make them more meaningful across a number of agencies. Nepal, for example, has a strong national action plan.
Senator Harb: Thank you very much, Ms. O'Neill, for your excellent presentation.
You work with many countries that are coming out of conflict. The United Nations in many of those countries, such as Sudan, was instrumental in the drafting of their constitution. The constitution of Sudan clearly states that they want to work to ensure that there is equality between the sexes. They want to ensure that they have women representation in their parliament. In fact, Sudan's parliament has better representation than many of the developed countries, to the tune of 30 per cent. Is that correct?
Ms. O'Neill: Yes.
Senator Harb: The Constitution and Parliament are two very important instruments. The Constitution is where we set out what we want for our nation, and Parliament is where we make policies.
Why do you think we are not seeing that kind of gender equality translating into specific measures throughout the system in places like Sudan?
Ms. O'Neill: There are a few responses I would give to that question. Starting with quotas in Parliament, I believe very much in quotas. I think they take a good amount of time to actually be meaningful. I think they are an important transitional step.
In Sudan, for example, the interim draft constitution, as you rightly noted, calls for 25 per cent women in the National Assembly. From the outset, those 25 per cent were chosen by those who drafted the peace agreement who, as we discussed earlier, were those who earned a seat at the table as it was constructed at the time. You ended up with women with widely varying ranges of expertise, commitment, experience, exposure and skill sets.
First and foremost, one of the things we do is work with women in Parliament in countries that are emerging from conflict to build the capacity of those women parliamentarians. As you know, it is defeating for the entire cause when there is a significant number of women, and those women are not contributing meaningfully. We focused on caucus strengthening and various other initiatives to increase the effectiveness of those women in Parliament.
In some cases, such as Sudan, a little more time is needed. They recently had one set of elections, and I think their next will be even more significant. Over time, you will see more and more women fulfilling those quotas who have the skills, capacity, commitment, et cetera, needed. You will also see an electorate that learns to identify those qualities in their elected officials.
In Sudan again, voting was a new concept for most people in an entire generation. The concept of identifying what you are seeking in your elected representatives and then choosing political party representatives based on that is relatively new and takes time.
To answer your question about constitutions, constitutions are only as good as the process through which they were created. Often, we see constitutional processes that are not inclusive and not consultative of populations. As I mentioned, the delegation of Libyan women that we hosted last week was talking about the closed nature of the drafting of the new Libyan constitution and how perilous that is to the idea of creating a constitution, which is an incredibly important foundational document for this new state. If you do not commit the time and the resources to doing civic education, to sharing options, and to discussing with a population — men and women — about the options available to them within a constitution, you will have a document that might be fine on paper but is not at all meaningful to that population.
I hate to say it, but it is really not rocket science to understand that many women in places like South Sudan are not literate. They listen to the radios. They do not have control of their radios, so they need radios provided to them. Women visit markets and wells and places where they gather firewood. If you want to target women with civic education messages, it is not impossible to do so. We would argue that the constitution and all resulting processes are much better and much stronger when women's voices are reflected at an earlier stage. Not rushing those processes and ensuring that people actually have a reasonable base of information on which to make decisions are essential.
Senator Harb: How important is the need to develop a strategic plan for the stakeholders that are involved in these countries? In some of those countries, we have to the tune of 10 to 15 different agencies involved in some capacity building or another or some reform or another. In some cases, they trip over each other, although all of them have good intentions because, generally, they want to help.
To what extent would you see organizations such as yours or others ensuring that a strategic plan is put in place that can incorporate the kinds of thing that we all want to see, including gender equality? When the players show up on the scene, someone can say, "Listen, this needs to be plugged here; we have a hole. This needs to be taken care of because no one is doing so. " I would appreciate your comments on that.
Ms. O'Neill: Thank you. It is great that you asked that question because it is something that our organization wrestles with on a daily basis. I will answer it in a few parts.
First, I think national action plans are a helpful organizing tool. I will give you the example of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is currently developing a national action plan. Our organization is being funded by the Finnish government to work with Afghan civil servants to help develop this national action plan. It is not uncommon for our counterparts in Afghanistan to get calls five to seven times a week from different donor governments who say, "We want to support your national action plan. We believe in the principals of 1325 and we really think this is important. " Right now, it is effectively within the hands of the Afghan government to sort out some of the donor coordination. That is not to say that it is not happening at all. There is some coordination by UN women, by the Finnish government and by others. On an international level, however, there is still a void and a need for the creation — and I guess you were talking about this; you called it a strategic plan or a set of clear steps that everyone agrees we need to take in a country emerging from transition. I think the place where that is most absent is in these situations of transitional government.
We knew a year ago that things were happening in Libya and that we might conceivably be in the situation we are in, but there has not been a consistent global effort to say, "Who is raising this with Libyan national authorities? Are we all doing it? Are others doing it? Who is funding it, and how are we coordinating our funding? "
One of the things our organization is looking at is pulling together a group that might help play some role in doing so, alongside UN women and others who would do that as well.
Senator Andreychuk: I apologize for being late and for missing some of your presentation. There are two areas that I wanted to canvass. One is the whole issue of 1325 being a document that national action plans have to be put forward on, reporting to the UN, and then the opposite — that is, getting results from what the intention of 1325 was.
While we talk about it here in Canada and about the importance of all the reporting, certainly the women in Sudan have said that is not a priority to them in a sense that we have to get an effective police going there. When you talk about communicating with radio, they do not have communications within the police. You are retraining militants, who for many years were combatants, to be civilian peace officers. I visited their centre. Canada is supporting it and I am grateful that it is, but they are at an embryonic stage. Women are saying, "Get those police trained to some standard. " You have gone a long way to understanding what 1325 is.
There is a debate going on about where 1325 is most needed. We are getting preoccupied with the bureaucracy of 1325 rather than the results. One suggestion to me was that we should be putting thumbs down on the governments to say comply with 1325, but no talk about 1325 in the field. Make it more culturally appropriate to talk about women, their place and their importance, strategically and historically in their societies, and effect the change that women want.
That is a wordy way of asking you, are we approaching 1325 in the correct way in other parts of the world? Are we more sensitive to how they could ingest the intention of 1325?
Ms. O'Neill: I could not agree with you more that talking about 1325 in itself is meaningless to 99.99 per cent of the population. I could not even tell you that 1 per cent of the civil servants in the United States know that they have a national action plan. I do not know, in Canada, if it would be the same.
One of the things we talk about when we do training, in particular of military and police personnel, is the term "operational effectiveness. " We almost never go in and start talking about training or advocacy about 1325 and the fact that there is this international resolution that did not come from the global north, et cetera, that the United Nations passed it through the Security Council, and it is applicable to all you member states. No one cares. That is the reality of the situation, as you rightly pointed out.
For progress on this issue to be made at all anywhere in the world, the specific contributions that women make, for example, when they are recruited to police forces in a local area must be broadly understood. When we are talking about security-sector reform that is going on around the world, and if I am talking to people who are considering whether or not they need to include more women or how they will deal with this whole gender topic that someone has told them they need to pay attention to, we break down the goals of security-sector reform. That is, what is it? It is to increase the population's trust and confidence in security forces. In many conflict situations, women have often not been associated with fighting forces during the war, so they are perceived to have "cleaner hands " when they come to security force. Women, rightly or wrongly, are often perceived to be less corrupt than men in police and military forces. If one of your objectives in security-sector reform is to improve the perception of corruption, increasingly the recruitment of women is one approach to do so. That is a long-winded way of saying that I very much agree with you that the emphasis on 1325 in itself is meaningless to the vast majority of people who have in their hands the capacity to implement it.
That being said, I think national action plans are an important organizing principle. I was sitting a bit on the fence about them for a few years. Then I saw within the U.S. government the power that the national action plan had, first, to inspire coordination among the departments of state, USAID and defence to say who is doing what, do we have shared objectives and do we have shared components of this mandate; and, second, to actually say, what are we tracking and what does it matter?
National action plans that have, in particular, outcome indicators — not just ones that say how many people were trained but what did people do with that training and did that make people secure and make women have greater access to security forces — is what we care about, not whether or not people were trained and understood what 1325 means.
A plan that is properly written and appropriately implemented is essential. One of the biggest challenges we have is that those who work on national action plans are not necessarily skilled at linking them to national budget processes or at getting resources for them from the outset so they are resourced adequately. They are not necessarily implemented at the highest levels or bought into at the highest levels of political significance so that many things that I listed, which do not cost anything, are implemented in a systemic manner. Those are some of the reasons we do not have the national action plans that we could have.
Senator Andreychuk: On South Sudan, I have been impressed by the fact that there were women in the combatant forces who were part of the fighting force, if I may say that. I am not sure that, on a gender basis, anyone has made a full transition into peacetime. That is the real issue, namely, having many women within the ranks of the structures that were in the military, which is now being transferred into a peacetime process, and whether there has been a proper understanding. It does not seem to follow on a gender basis on the ground to make a democracy and good governance.
You say that you have been working on the ground. I would be interested in how you are addressing this issue because I think it is a fundamental one for South Sudan, whether it can implement structures in peacetime reflective of democracy and good governance, which they aspire to, as so much of the mentality of thinking of how you handle issues is from a military perspective, including what you might do in a dispute resolution in the military, both male and female, and what you should do in peacetime. Some women are having problems transitioning into it as well as others.
Ms. O'Neill: You are right. I think the single biggest challenge facing South Sudan at the moment is this transformation into a democratic and functioning government.
I want to pick up briefly on your note that women were combatants in that conflict. One of the things I think a lot of people do not know is that around the world, women tend to make up about 10 to 30 per cent of fighting forces. They are active combatants within fighting forces. When we look at disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes, the estimates of women who served in that capacity are often dramatically underestimated. Women are often not eligible to participate in the reforms that are targeted for people who were fighting for a long time.
Regarding your question about transition into peace time, I spoke a couple of weeks ago with an amazing woman, and you may have met her during your trip. Her name is Rebecca Okwaci, the Deputy Minister for General Education and Instruction in the government of South Sudan. She fought in the South Sudan People's Liberation Army for many years in the bush. She talked about how when she was in the army they used to go from village to village. She worked on the radio services, so she operated the radio for the SPLM at the time. She said they had nothing to eat, rarely had shelter, et cetera. They would go to villages and people would give them an egg from their chicken or some of their vegetables. She says those people gave eggs and chicken, and it is now our challenge to give those people democracy and a government that is accountable to them.
She understands it very much, but that does not necessarily mean it is translated throughout the entire government.
One of the first things I think is essential in a newly formed government, like the one in South Sudan, is a little bit of civic education about the responsibility of Parliament, civil society, the executive, and of the Supreme Court. One of the things I have found very much over the past several years working in Sudan, and South Sudan in particular, is that it is hard to understand what you should expect from your elected official. It is hard to understand the division of power between them, and hard to ensure that people have the information they need to hold their government accountable to the commitments that they made to a democratic transition. I do not know where to start on that. It is not an easy question. I think it is very much the biggest challenge facing those governments, but definitely important places to start thinking about it. Thank you.
Senator Andreychuk: Just a comment back, I think freedom of the press is a great debate, as whether they are self- centering, whether they have a proper law to protect them and whether they have the room to inform the citizens. I think is a great debate and has a lot to say about how South Sudan will develop. Thank you.
Ms. O'Neill: Absolutely. Thank you.
The Chair: Ms. O'Neill, I have some questions as well.
There is maybe an impression left here that you do a lot of work in South Sudan. I want to clarify that you work in many countries, and maybe you want to name some countries you work in.
Ms. O'Neill: Sure. We focus a great deal in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan we work with a very interesting group, and I know you know their founder, Senator Jaffer. The women in this group work to moderate extremism. They recognize that young men in their communities are particularly vulnerable to recruitment and suasion by, in many cases, Taliban or al Qaeda forces. These women work with mothers to persuade them to convince their sons not to join insurgent movements, for example.
Again it is going back to the point of women's formal and informal authority, recognizing the informal authority in their families and communities to influence whether or not men are joining insurgent movements.
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Sudan, South Sudan — we have a global network called the Women Waging Peace Network of women leaders in about 40 countries, with about a thousand women currently, who are doing work from Liberia and elsewhere. I actually saw the Minister of Gender for Liberia, a newly elected Julia Duncan-Cassell a week ago. I mentioned I would be speaking with you, and that the committee would be travelling to West Africa. She looks forward to welcoming you and asks that you come and visit her and the peace huts that her ministry is creating and has worked to establish in various communities throughout Liberia. Women and men come together under what they call peace huts to discuss community issues and talk about ways that both men and women will resolve conflict that emerges. She very much looks forward to taking you to visit these peace huts.
The Chair: The founder that you spoke about in Pakistan is Mossarat, and her group have, with us, formed a group called Women In Peace Across Pakistan to deal with the extremism. Women have got to gather around 1325 to deal with extremism.
You know, the person who had the idea of inclusive security was Ambassador Hunt. She has brought together a thousand women. From my way of looking at it, she has empowered women all over — and with Institute for Inclusive Security, women all over the world — to work on peace processes.
I know you gave us seven recommendations on what Canada could be doing when you presented earlier on.
I would like you to add an eighth recommendation, if I may ask you to, if we could adopt your model, to expand on what you do and how you bring women together and what role Canada could play in bringing women from conflict zones to empower them to go back and work on peace processes.
Ms. O'Neill: I would love if we could discuss an eighth recommendation along those lines.
I will tell you a little bit about our model and highlight some of the ways Canada could support something like it.
Wherever we work, we insist on working with a broad selection of women. Wherever there is a conflict, we look at identifying women from various political parties, ethnicities, religious backgrounds and tribal backgrounds, and we essentially bring them together and create space for them to decide whether they have shared priorities. Do they care a lot about whether or not there will be women on all sides of the negotiating table who are represented? Do they care a lot about whether or not there will be a quota in a transitional constitution for women in Parliament? Do they care a lot about getting more women in police and military structures? Do they care a lot about disarming both men and women effectively when a conflict is over and there are thousands of militia who need to be reintegrated back into society?
We create a facilitated space for women to come together and identify their shared and common priorities. The training that we provide is twofold. One is to discuss the various roles that the international community plays in conflict resolution. Often we say this is what the World Bank will be doing, what the United Nations will be doing, and what your own government is doing. Once you have decided what is important to you, these are the people who are responsible for them.
Then, we focus very much on advocacy — preparing women to be advocates for themselves.
We talk about how to create a message such that when you have meetings you are not spending 95 per cent of your time discussing the problems and 5 per cent on the solution, but the reverse.
We talk about ways that women can advocate both to their national policy-makers and to international ones about the importance of women being included and about very specific ways that that can happen.
One of the things that Canada could do in this situation is to provide funding for these types of coalitions. They are not necessarily a project that creates a specific infrastructure or a specific delivery of services, but the coming together of diverse groups of women to create a common platform around which they advocate and around which they advocate over a sustained period. We have seen in countries around the world that women can be very effective when they come together around times of crisis or very pivotal moments in peace processes. They need to continue and sustain their relationships throughout the ebbs and flows of a peace process, such that when crises do emerge — which they inevitably do — women are positioned to be effective and vocal in weighing in on it.
The Chair: We have been listening to you for over an hour and appreciate your presentation. However, before we end this part of our hearings, I would like for you to give us one or two examples. We talk about bringing women to the peace process. We ask that there be women's representation. What difference does it make? Can you give some examples?
Ms. O'Neill: Sure. Let me give an example of Uganda. In talks several years ago between the Government of Uganda and the Lord'sResistance Army, the Institute for Inclusive Security worked with women on all sides, including in civil society and in Parliament, to come together in advance of the negotiations and define the various specific issues that they wanted to raise. Women identified very concrete suggestions, such as the prohibition on sexual violence among both the LRA and government forces. Many of the observers to those talks talked about how women played a very important role in, I think they called it greasing the wheels of the talks, ensuring that when there were stalemates in the talks women were often the ones going between the parties and saying, "I think we can agree on this, " and then going forward from there.
Our organization has documented a number of other examples. I will share with you another one. You know well the case of Darfur, but I can speak to the fact that women were very much instrumental in raising topics that were not otherwise raised. Actually, I will highlight instead the case of Angola. In Angola, when the peace agreement was signed, there were a number of provisions that the drafters were very proud to say were gender-blind. They were gender-neutral. They did not discriminate against men or women. For example, they talked about the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of soldiers. They talked about where they would rebuild roads and infrastructure following the conflict. They talked about prioritization for a national government afterwards. In that case, there were no women involved in the talks. As I said, the organizers were very proud of the fact that the agreement was, as they called it, gender-blind.
What happened was that ultimately women were affected negatively by not having had their voices included in those talks. For example, when they decided how they would approach disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, they decided at those talks that they would have the commanders of various units submit the names in those units and those would be the people eligible for demobilization and for packages that accompanied them.
What happened was that the male commanders submitted only the names of male combatants and left out women's names disproportionately. There were thousands of women who had fought in the conflict and were not eligible for disarmament. It ultimately cost the government hundreds of thousands of dollars later to reintegrate them.
They also decided, for example, to demine areas that were on major routes of transportation. Those were routes between major cities and between cities and ports. They did not count or they did not think about the number of families in particular who would be returning from displaced persons camps or refugees who would be returning, and predominantly women who would be going out and getting water from wells, collecting firewood, et cetera, and starting to harvest the land again. There was an entire rash of land mine injuries and deaths that could have been prevented if more people had the perspective of women in particular going out, cultivating land and using these paths. These are just some examples of the difference that it does make.
As I said, our organization has documented a number of instances in Guatemala, for example, where women raised issues like workers' rights and union rights and all sorts of other things related to social justice issues; in northern Ireland when women helped actually bring parties to the table to have talks in the first place; and in Indonesia and elsewhere where women are very much instrumental in not just ensuring that the talks represent and include a broader set of priorities but also ensuring that they even happen in the first place by getting parties to the table for negotiations.
The Chair: Resolution 1325 consists of many parts. One is of strengthening justice systems to ensure fair results. One of the big challenges women have is with regard to impunity, and I know that the Institute for Inclusive Security has worked quite hard, especially around rape issues and women being sexually assaulted, of making sure that there is not the impunity. Can you expand on that?
Ms. O'Neill: Sure. I can cite back to the example of Angola. One of the things that happened in these negotiations was that there were 16 different amnesties for sexual violence that was committed against women. One of the lead mediators said it was effectively men with guns forgiving other men with guns for crimes they committed against women. They had not just 16 amnesties for sexual violence committed during the conflict, they also had some that gave them amnesty for any crimes to be committed six months into the future from the time of the signing of that peace agreement.
Yes, very much our institute is concerned. We have seen in the past several years much greater recognition of rape as a weapon and a tactic of war and awareness of the global impact and use of sexual violence in conflict.
One thing that I am very encouraged by is on Friday of this week the Department of Political Affairs at the United Nations is going to release what they are calling guidelines on addressing sexual violence for mediators of conflict. The Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations is producing guidelines that will say to mediators that these are ways that you can start talking about sexual violence in negotiations that are happening. How can you raise this with some of the parties to the talks? What are precedents that have happened elsewhere around the world about ways issues of amnesty and issues of impunity have been addressed in negotiations? What are some of the ways that in a sensitive and reasonable way you can do those so that they become incorporated into the talks regardless of whether you have women in civil society present?
I think those are steps in the right direction in that regard.
The Chair: Ms. O'Neill, I have so many questions of you, but we have the next presenter here. I want to thank you and the Institute for Inclusive Security for always making time to bring us up to date on what you are doing and also how we can push the rights of women, especially in a conflict zone. We thank you for once again participating.
The next presenter is Ann Livingstone, Vice-President of Research and Learning Design from the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre.
Ms. Livingstone, thank you very much for joining us today. I want to thank you for always being available to us, sometimes on very short notice, to help us with our work. We appreciate your being here with us today.
As I said to you earlier, we will go on as long as we do to ensure all of our questions are answered. We appreciate your being here. I know you have a written presentation.
Ann Livingstone, Vice-President, Research and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre: Thank you very much. It is always an honour and a privilege to be of service to the Senate of Canada.
I would like to call attention to the support I receive from Kristine St-Pierre, who is our gender adviser. She is to my left, and if I misspeak, I am sure she will come and guide me back to the straight and narrow.
The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre was one of the very first organizations to begin to assess and analyze the role of women in peace operations. Following the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre hosted a round table in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, that helped frame the subsequent thinking and capacity-building models that have resulted in 1325 and subsequent resolutions.
Gender equality and women's empowerment continue to be a fundamental part of our mission, and they are central to our work. While our work is now more global than local, as an organization based in Canada and receiving government funding, we have taken a great deal of interest in the development of Canada's national action plan, providing comments as part of civil society consultations and, more recently, supporting DFAIT in the development and delivery of gender training for its personnel.
My comments and responses today are based on the Pearson Centre's thinking and work in the area of women, peace and security. I have also read with a great deal of interest the evidence from your previous sessions, as well as the committee's recommendation from its two reports.
I have three principal foci for today's meeting.
One is recent developments with regards to women, peace and security, focusing on progress on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 with a particular emphasis on UN Women, national action plans, and progress in addressing sexual and gender-based violence, particularly with the new training standards coming out of the UN.
The second focus will be future challenges, looking at women in today's world and the continuing practices of sexual and gender-based violence, culture and attitudes.
The final focus will be on Canada's role.
The committee has asked to receive information about the progress on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 internationally since the tabling of the committee's two reports in 2010. Allow me to highlight a number of the issues that I think are particularly important.
First is the creation of UN Women. In July 2010, the General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations entity for gender equality and empowerment of women. It is part of the reform agenda, as you know, and is meant to bring together the resources and mandates of four previously distinct parts of the UN system, which focused eventually on gender equality and women's empowerment. It became operational in January 2011, and its budget indicates seriousness about the issues they will be addressing. UN Women's priority for 2012, as outlined by its executive director, Michelle Bachelet, will be "to make a renewed push for women's economic empowerment and political participation. "
The increasing focus, universally, is on linking economic empowerment and political participation as critical for women to be heard as a substantive player in the reconstruction of their societies, as well as being engaged in conflict prevention as economic stakeholders.
A second recent development of note is the development of national action plans. Jacqueline O'Neill referred to this, and I will not elaborate too much. However, there are 34 countries that have now adopted national action plans. While they are not the only way to develop policy on women, peace and security, they do provide a means for member states to focus their efforts and to take responsibility for the successful implementation of 1325 as part of national policies and programs. As we will remember, member states retain the responsibility for ensuring that UN standards vis-à-vis gender are mainstreamed in their training programs, particularly if they are deploying troops, police, and now civilians into peace operations of any sort.
In addition to the UN's take on national action plans, numerous organizations, including the African Union, the European Union and NATO, have taken steps to implement these resolutions. I have provided to you for your reading pleasure a copy of the paper written by the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre outlining recent policy initiatives by these organizations.
A third development is the adoption of Resolution 1960 in December 2010, which is the fifth and latest resolution on women, peace and security. It defines the institutional tools for combating impunity, such as the naming and shaming list, the referrals to the UN Sanctions Committee, and to the International Criminal Court. It also outlines specific steps to ensure prevention of and protection from sexual violence in conflict, including a more robust monitoring and data collection arrangement.
The new resolutions adopted in the past three years, including 1960, provide strategic entry points for reaching non- traditional actors in the realm of women's security. I would submit to you an example that security forces are increasingly a primary actor in the protection of civilian populations, especially as they are increasingly the first responders for sexual and gender-based violence actions. For a security force, they must now be prepared to manage the scene and to gather data, and this is not what a security force is trained to do.
This resolution therefore encourages the importance of their role, and they need training for when they are first on the scene. I have provided for you a paper I gave in Norway at a conference for NATO on sexual violence, the armed forces and military operations.
A fourth development is new training materials. UN Women and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations have developed new scenario-based, pre-deployment training modules on preventing and addressing conflict-related sexual violence. These scenarios are being piloted in a number of troop- and police-contributing countries, as well as in peacekeeping training centres.
Additionally, a UN standardized police training curriculum, to which the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre contributed its expertise, focusing on investigation and preventing sexual and gender-based violence in conflict environments was also developed in 2011 and is currently being piloted with police-contributing countries.
Finally, a new development is a return to emphasizing early warning and early warning modalities.
I would call your attention to the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, which is discussing the use of satellites to warn when rebel forces are moving in order to protect women, children and civilians.
The second focus is future challenges. While it is important to note that progress has been made, much more needs to be done. Policies alone do not change attitudes, traditions and cultures.
If we look at the status of women in the world, women remain scarce among high-level decision makers and opinion leaders, especially in the security field. Data from current missions does indicate an increase in the number of women in leadership positions, but monitoring will be critical to ensure continuation of women's involvement at the strategic, political and policy levels.
Women continue to be under-represented in parliaments, congresses and governments, they earn less than 10 per cent of the world's income, and they own less than 1 per cent of the world's property. These data are illustrative of how much work remains to be done to link economic empowerment and policies to preventive strategies for conflict and to rebuilding in the post-conflict environment. There is the objective of having women at the peace and negotiation tables, but overall, their experience and leadership limitations make the distance far to bridge.
Next are the future challenge and the status report on sexual violence. The latest report of the UN Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence on January 13, 2012, paints a bleak picture. Sexual violence is widespread and systemic, and we have an unending list of countries where this is a problem. General Patrick Cammaert has noted that it is "now more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier " in armed conflict.
The report also highlights the use of sexual violence, including sexual assault, rape and torture, as a means for political repression during last year's popular uprising in Egypt and as part of what is going on in Syria this night.
While it is recognized that sexual violence disproportionately affects women and girls, information from the field increasingly points to the increase of rape in males, an area that warrants deeper examination. The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative has done substantive research on male rape and the increased incidence, and they have also begun to draw conclusions as to the impact on the social fabric and peace building of conflict societies.
The third future challenge is about changing attitudes. The "blame the victim " mentality is seen in many parts of the world. The stigma attached to victims of sexual violence continues to force many to remain silent, and I would suggest we still have to deal with traditions, culture, religion and history. While we cannot let these trump the internationally agreed-to instruments, we still must be aware of the power they have on the decisions about women's involvement.
The third focus is Canada's role in promoting gender equality and moving 1325 forward. The C-NAP is extremely important, not just because it represents what Canada stands for and believes in but also because of Canada's active role in peace and security. The implementation of UNSCRs on women becomes relevant, particularly when considering how to increase the effectiveness of the Canadian Armed Forces which work to protect civilians and train national security forces in leadership, health care, other professional skills and the rule of law.
Canada continues to lead the international Friends of Women, Peace and Security, a group of country missions, UN agencies and NGOs advocating for the implementation of SCRs on women, peace and security, and it speaks with authority when it chairs the C-34 as the vice-chair.
Canada's role is very important as it creates a joint government, perhaps a civil society task force, that would ensure that civil society continues to be involved and have input. Perhaps naming a senior champion with responsibility for women, peace and security could provide leadership and direction to Canada's efforts.
In conclusion, gender equality is about recognizing the needs and experiences of men and women and promoting their equal participation in all aspects of society. If Canada is to move forward on the implementation of women, peace and security resolutions, clear policy direction, accountability structures, dedicated funding and increased personnel focusing on this issue will be required. As noted in a recent report by DARA, "if we get it right for women, we'd be getting it right for everybody. "
Thank you, and I look forward to our discussion.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Livingstone. I will ask you a few questions to start with.
You mentioned other resolutions since Resolution 1325 that have empowered it. For the audience watching, I will just state that there are a number of resolutions after Resolution 1325, and one is UN Security Council Resolution 1820, which uses more forceful language in the condemnation of sexual violence committed against civilians in post- conflict situations. Then there is Resolution 1889, which includes more robust and specific monitoring, reporting and accountability measures where sexual violence is involved. UN Security Council Resolution 1889 states that there should be further measures to improve women's participation in post-conflict planning. Then there is a new resolution, UN Security Council Resolution 1960, which calls for the UN Secretary-General to list annual reports regarding Resolutions 1820 and 1888.
The idea of Resolution 1325 is that there have been a number of other resolutions to make Resolution 1325 more forceful, and there may be more implementation on the ground. I appreciate your mentioning that.
We were going to be going to Ghana to visit the peacekeeping force in Accra. I know you work with that peacekeeping centre. Maybe you can tell us what work you do around the world in helping other peacekeeping centres.
Ms. Livingstone: We have been working at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre for about 10 years. It started out quite small, doing training for military and police who were going to be deployed. As happens quite normally in our work, once we get involved with an organization and they become very interested in preparing their people for deployment, it becomes evident to them that their infrastructure in terms of their national organizations for police or military might not be robust enough to have continued deployment ability.
One of the tasks we undertook was a capacity-building model where it really was not about us; it was about them. We did actions like structural visits. We built action plans with them. We listened and really helped Ghana begin to define what Ghana wanted to look like for its police and its military to deploy. In order to do that, the Kofi Annan centre needed to have a research team, good human resources management skills, financial management skills and knowledge.
Working together as a team and funded by the Government of Canada, we were very much involved in helping from the back seat with them driving what they wanted their organization to look like, keeping in mind all the time that when you train an individual, you change an individual forever. When you train an institution, you change the institution forever.
The work we did in preparing police to be deployed had a residual benefit on the police forces of Ghana. When we talk about human rights policing and Resolution 1325 for the Ghanaian police that were to be deployed, it has an impact back in the Ghanaian police force for how they treated their own people in their arrest and corrections mechanisms. That is an indication of how the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre has gone to about 30 countries in Africa working on capacity-building models. I am happy to say the time came when we were not needed, and they are doing very, very well.
The Chair: I had a question for you on Resolution 1325 and the other resolutions. Are you aware whether our police forces get any training around this resolution?
Ms. Livingstone: Do you mean the Canadian Forces?
The Chair: I mean the RCMP.
Ms. Livingstone: I believe they do. We have worked with the RCMP on 1325 and other gender-related resolutions. I am quite confident that the RCMP and the Canadian Forces are all very well "spooled up. "
The Chair: How many hours of training do they get?
Ms. Livingstone: I do not know that for sure. We do a five-day pre-deployment package with the RCMP. During those five days, we gender mainstream. It is not a 45-minute module. Every scenario, case study and issue always has gender, ethics and culture woven into the problems they have to solve. We use a scenario-based training model.
Senator Zimmer: Thank you, Dr. Livingstone, for your presence and your presentation. I smiled when you made that last comment that if you do your job properly, you actually do work yourself out of a job.
Anyway, I have one question. In our November 2010 report, Women, Peace and Security: Canada Moves Forward to Increase Women's Engagement, this committee called for an increase, by 2015, of the number of Canadian female military and civilian police personnel deployed in field missions, particularly in positions of leadership. We also urged the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to seriously address the deployment of a majority female police unit to United Nations peacekeeping missions. I have one question that has four parts.
First, are there more women involved in Canadian peace and security operations at all levels and in all service-type positions? If so, where have they been deployed, and are sufficient efforts being made to appoint Canadian female military and civilian police personnel to leadership positions? Finally, has Canada provided funding to other countries with police capacity to enable them to deploy more female police personnel in field missions? It is loaded, I know.
Ms. Livingstone: That is all right. If I forget things, just remind me.
When we look at the numbers of women who are deployed universally, 3.8 per cent of UN missions are female. Canada has 199 uniformed personnel in the field military — of which one is a female. We have 160 police, of which 19 are female. Canada ranks fifty-fourth in the deployment of personnel to peace operations, as of January 2012.
Are there sufficient numbers? I think one would have to look at the numbers of women who become part of a volunteer military, and we have to extrapolate from that that it is a relatively small percentage. This is also the case in police forces. My colleagues at the RCMP tell me that it is very difficult to deploy women and men because there is such a demand for their services in their local communities, so that also becomes a factor.
Are there sufficient numbers? No, especially when we look at the issue of sexual and gender-based violence. In many countries where that is pronounced, women cannot talk to men. A woman police officer or a woman military person is the only access a woman may have to evidence gathering, investigation, or any kind of treatment. We might say that we have insufficient numbers in that case.
In terms of funding, the Government of Canada has very generously funded the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, and many of our projects have resulted in what I call "same-sex training " so that we have all-women training opportunities, especially in the police. We have been known to have 70 policewomen in a course. My gentlemen colleagues sometimes get frustrated with me, and I say that women's ability to be trained is somewhat limited. Often, in their countries, they are never allowed to go to training. If we have a same-sex class and it is all women, they have a chance to stand up, shout, make their voices heard, do their debating, their arguing, and learn to have that voice so that when they go into the field, they are a more credible force. According to the feedback we get, women who have been trained that way are very appreciative of the fact that they had a chance to test their mettle in a safe place before they went into the field and really tested their mettle. I hope I answered your questions, sir.
Senator Zimmer: You did. Thank you, Dr. Livingstone.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Thank you for coming, and I look forward to reading your papers. I am glad you brought them.
My mind is all over the place, but following on from your last comments to Senator Zimmer, your colleagues at the PPC fuss about same-sex things. Is there any understanding of women's pedagogy, how women learn? Do your colleagues at the PPC understand that when they are designing, writing, presenting, and doing other things here or other places in the world?
Ms. Livingstone: Yes because I am the Vice-President for Research and Learning Design.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Why are they still fussing, then?
Ms. Livingstone: I think mainly because it sounds exclusive and as if we are not being charitable to our male colleagues.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Are they familiar with the fact that there is an affirmative action program guaranteed in the Constitution of Canada?
Ms. Livingstone: Sure they are. The fussing is because it is change. Actually, it is a little bit of envy because we have so much fun, and they feel like they are being left out of something. In the sexual and gender-based violence courses that we have been running for women, we discovered that well over half of the women participants had themselves been the victims of rape and had had no outlet — and these are policewomen — for managing that event in their lives. It was pencils down for a while, and it was healing and drumming in order for them to then move forward with their trauma.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I understand. I am just concerned about the context in which you made that comment.
Ms. Livingstone: My colleagues are fine with it.
Senator Nancy Ruth: The thing I am really interested in is Canada's performance, whether it is in Haiti, Afghanistan or wherever. Have I understood from your comments that the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre does not track the training that is being done with our police and military personnel, so you do not know what impact it has? There is no measurement of that. Is that correct?
Ms. Livingstone: We do not track what the PSTC or the RCMP do because it is outside of our remit.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Do you know if they track?
Ms. Livingstone: I think they do, but I cannot speak for them. I know we track what we do.
Senator Nancy Ruth: They have not shared any results with you?
Ms. Livingstone: No.
Senator Nancy Ruth: My understanding is that DND and the RCMP are responsible for this training and that Canada and the United Kingdom developed the Gender Training Initiative. Are familiar with it, or shall I read on?
Ms. Livingstone: I am familiar with it.
Senator Nancy Ruth: For the rest of us, it provides material for a three-day course on gender-sensitive approaches to peace support operations and includes overviews of various thematic issues, such as violence against women, international humanitarian law, and so on. This was made in 2002, which was prior to many of the resolutions. Do you know if they have updated it and included the other Security Council resolutions? Do you have any idea how many people use it or whether it is used at all? Is it just done online, individually?
Ms. Livingstone: I do not know. I know that when we worked with the RCMP, we were all on the same page vis-à- vis all the resolutions. There was not a gap there. When we have conducted training on behalf of the Military Training Assistance Program, now called DMTC, we put together a United Nations integrated mission staff officers' course and a senior management course that included a very sharp session on gender issues and was again woven through all the scenarios. All of the resolutions were discussed there.
Senator Nancy Ruth: There is still no measurement of the impact of the course that you are familiar with?
Ms. Livingstone: I am not familiar with how DND or the RCMP measure. I am only familiar with how we measure.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Would having that information be useful in the design of your programs?
Ms. Livingstone: Probably. Again, as a non-governmental organization, we have a very strict remit, and I cannot speak to what they do.
Senator Nancy Ruth: You have talked about work with NATO in designing various things, and so on. When you are working with other countries like this, do they help support you internationally?
Ms. Livingstone: We had funding from the Government of Germany until the economic crisis resulted in Germany not funding outside of Germany. Right now our principal funder is the Government of Canada.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Can you tell us how much that is and how much Germany gives you for a project?
Ms. Livingstone: We are receiving $4 million of core funding until March 31, 2012. We are diversifying our funding base and preparing to be self-sufficient, and we are very grateful for the support that we have had. We continue to be project-funded by the Government of Canada.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I have to confess that I am using you. There is a debate in the Senate right now about foreign monies. I am just making this point to my fellow senators, namely, that there are many agencies in Canada who do excellent work, who receive help from here, there and a number of places around the world. Excuse me for that question, but I could not resist because I knew you had funding from outside of Canada.
At the moment, I think I am done. However, can you help us? We want to know how it is the police and the military are trained when they go forward to Afghanistan, or Haiti, or wherever they are going next. This committee has made suggestions on how they might do it so as to know Canada's law, to know Afghanistan's law around violence against women and to understand all the international covenants. We cannot get a measurement on whether this is happening and, if so, how effective it is, what kind of impact it has, and so forth. Can you help us think of creative ways in which we could find that out?
Ms. Livingstone: As the Senate of Canada, you would have the right to simply ask.
Senator Nancy Ruth: We do ask, but we do not get clear answers, which leads me to believe it is fudged everywhere.
Ms. Livingstone: Pre-deployment training is the responsibility of a national government, and in-mission training supplements the pre-deployment training. Pre-deployment training should cover all national and international standards. We encourage the laws to become part and parcel of training.
Senator Nancy Ruth: That would be the national law of Canada or of the place they are going?
Ms. Livingstone: Where they are going because a national law is what you will be mentoring and guiding a host government to build upon in peacekeeping. I would suspect that you have a lot of power to ask the question.
Senator Meredith: Thank you, Dr. Livingstone, for your wonderful presentation.
You mentioned DFAIT in your presentation and support and that you are working alongside with the Department of Foreign Affairs. They released a report on October 5, 2010 entitled, Building Peace and Security for All: Canada's Action Plan. First, do you know when DFAIT will release their report with respect to this action plan? If not, are they compiling data for this particular report?
Ms. Livingstone: I believe a civil society report was recently released, and I believe there is to be a report issued in 2012 on the C-NAP and its progress. We have been involved only tangentially as an NGO civil society organization on the C-NAP, but I believe that 2012 will be a marker point for some reviews.
Senator Meredith: We create reports and we always have great intentions, but the implementation is what I am curious about. We want to look at Canada's position on the world stage with respect to 1325 in terms of a national action plan. The United Nations, in their report of September 2011 from the Secretary-General on women, peace and security looked at this national action plan over the next 10 years.
In light of that fact, Dr. Livingstone — as a member state and with the direction that it was given — do you believe that Canada is living up to its obligation? It is sort of a loaded question.
Ms. Livingstone: It is, because I do not do political statements. I think Canada has a unique role because of its geography, because of its history and because of its place. I think these issues are complex beyond belief and I think we, the world, are easily distracted by economic realities and by saber rattling in many places. I think sometimes it is hard to keep our eye collectively on that.
When I look at what Canada does with Bill C-34, at its leadership on women, peace and security quietly behind the scenes, at how it funds us as a small NGO to go into places and do pretty elaborate courses on sexual and gender-based violence, when it looks honestly in the mirror and says we have a ways to go, I think it is doing the very best it can. Is there room for improvement? There is room for improvement in all of us to say that we expect certain kinds of behaviours, support and consistency. However, I would never be so bold as to say a country is not doing its best. I think Canada is leading quite ardently on this in small, consistent ways.
If you read the reports of the C-34 and the statements from the permanent mission, and if you see how Canada is asked to participate to help build capacity, to help make police forces more robust and to speak to the issue of gender- based violence, it is in those small, consistent ways that I think that most change happens.
Senator Meredith: You say there is room for improvement. Ms. O'Neill gave us approximately seven recommendations in Canada with speaking out, shifting policy, documentation, tracking indicators and training. Talk to me about the voice that Canada has. You talked about us doing incremental things and the support of NGOs like yourself. Talk about the voice in terms of the champion — that is, who is leading on our behalf at these councils with respect to the implementation and the follow-up that needs to take place. Who is leading for us?
Ms. Livingstone: Again, I think it is your membership in the C34. It is your membership in the supporting of the Friends of Women, Peace and Security. It is in supporting the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, going to the Challenges project and helping write a document called "The Considerations for Senior Mission Leaders. " How do you senior mission leaders need to mentor and to advise? How do you need to help establish rule of law? How do you work with women and men? Again, that is the voice; that is who implements. Then, your military is trained; your police are trained —small deployments maybe by numbers, but big deployment in terms of impact from a country like Canada.
Senator Meredith: Thank you.
Senator Andreychuk: I am aware of your work and I thank you for it and for your presentation today, particularly in highlighting the fact that the Ghana Kofi Annan Centre is taking on its own responsibility. Many women who have been traumatized by war are there and giving advice. I think that supports your optimism about the centre.
My question is to an issue of protocols: peacekeeping. We and other countries, more particularly now Africa, send peacekeepers. They have been in the past sometimes individuals who were part of the problem, part of the difficulty for women. There were initiations to start protocols for the behaviour of peacekeepers and Canada was involved. Can you update us on whether those protocols have been finished and whether they are more standard through, say, NATO, the African Union, et cetera? Are they a key to setting an example for other national forces?
Ms. Livingstone: They are absolutely a key. The sexual exploitation abuse zero-tolerance protocol is well in hand. Prince Zayed has been an ardent champion for that. In my last meeting with him, he was ever more passionate about this.
I think the fact we now have the office of internal oversight at the UN that is now starting to get the reports — you have the Secretary-General being very firm about reporting sexual violence perpetrated by peacekeepers — member states are now being challenged. If we see the same name and the same roster again in the field, member states are being increasingly challenged, again, gently, politically, aware that member states are sovereign. There is every attempt to say if you are going to go in as a peacekeeper here is your code of conduct, here is the expected behaviour, and we are going to train you in mission. We expect pre-deployment training from your government to also include these, and if you misbehave, we will send you home. We are starting to see increasing numbers of repatriation.
The problem is that what the member state does with that repatriated individual is not the responsibility of the peacekeepers or DPKO. It is the member state's responsibility. However, there is that ever-increasing moral pulpit of "you may not behave this way " when you are representing the blue helmet, the blue beret, and now the blue briefcase.
Yes, the protocols are in play. Yes, they are important, and this is where a country like Canada has a tremendous voice for holding to accountability.
Senator Hubley: Thank you for your presentation.
You briefly mentioned UN Women, and I understand it was a combination of four offices that were dealing with women's issues. Could you tell me if in fact the role that UN Women is playing is having a positive effect? Are they able to effect positive change? Also, are we able to evaluate the work that is being done and whether they are ensuring that coherent UN response is what we are looking for?
Ms. Livingstone: I think it would be difficult for me to judge them after one year. I think that what they have as their objective and their plan in terms of a coherent response is extremely important, so that we do not keep getting the scattered decentralized response of the issues.
Michelle Bachelet is quite a strong personality, a driving force. When you look at her plan — and she just had a report that was issued not long ago about what she hopes to achieve in the next year — it is very much focused on the linkages of economic empowerment to security and peace building and women's role in that.
The money they need is not staggering by conventional standards. I think the report is they need $700 million next year, 2012-13, to do their work. I think they were pledged $500 million to start. I am not sure they got the full $500 million. She is well aware that economic realities of the world are going to impact on whether member states will be able to meet their obligations.
The motto we heard recently is do more with less and do it better. I think that is a worldwide theme that we all are hearing. Bachelet has been very clear that they will do the very best they can with the resources they have. They have a very focused approach on dealing with economic empowerment and political linkages in a coherent surge forward.
Senator Harb: Thank you very much for your presentation. Although your speech was very diplomatic, your paper is very blunt. I have a couple of questions to ask you. If you want to bring in your resource person, please feel free. I think the proof is in the pudding. I take it this really reflects more how you feel than the presentation that you gave us, or maybe a combination of the two.
In section four you talk about the key consideration for moving forward, which I suspect are the things that you want the committee to look at. The key considerations are divided in two sections, first the strategic institutional level and then the operational level. Then you move to the conclusions.
On the strategic institutional level, you talk about the importance of the top level being involved, and you made the point very correctly that from the bottom up, they will not work unless you have the support from the top. You give a quote here that says "a military unit with gender quality training and a desire to implement Resolution 1325 in its daily routine will not succeed unless the highest command for the operation has the same ambition at the political level. "
Ms. Livingstone: That is true.
Senator Harb: You support that.
Ms. Livingstone: Absolutely.
Senator Harb: You go on to say that there is a need for organizations to develop a comprehensive strategy with clear objectives that identify gender as cross-cutting and non-negotiable, which is very important.
You mention that such a strategy must be a priority for the organization, have the support and commitment of the leadership, and be backed by institutional resources. I guess the point here is the institutional resources. Do you feel and believe that there are enough institutional resources — in your experience in the field — to support all these wonderful initiatives and statements that were put forward by the United Nations and adopted by the number of countries that you mentioned?
Ms. Livingstone: The simple answer is no. That is the reality. However, if we stop with the no, then we never get to the operational, which is how do we help member states, how do we help police organizations and how do we help militaries develop that capacity in their institutional frameworks.
Senator Harb: I will take you to the second question and then move on to the real question that I want your honest answer on. You have been very forceful so far.
In the operational level, I suspect that now we move from the idea that everybody seems to be on side and all the countries have adopted these wonderful resolutions to what happened on the ground.
The first part on the operational level you say that while there seemed to be a general understanding of the operational advantage of having more women in peace operations — this is important — little steps are being taken to move forward on this issue. It is very damning. In essence you really are justifying what you said in the strategic point: that although the leadership is there, the institutional resources are not in place. You prove it here, indicating that when we go on the ground it seems very little has taken place.
Do you agree with that?
Ms. Livingstone: Yes.
Senator Harb: With your permission, chair, this is my final point. I think the conclusion has the punch line in it where you speak about the fact that gender mainstreaming at the institutional level and mission level is still ad hoc, fragmented, and often driven by day-to-day operational requirements instead of being part of a system-wide organizational strategy.
What you are telling us here — correct me if I am wrong — is the fact that in some cases maybe the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, and if the right hand knows what the left is doing, it is not capable of responding.
Ms. Livingstone: To some degree you are right, and that is why you have the reform agenda at the UN. That is why you have UN Women being one voice. That is why you have DPKO leaning into UN Women to help with that strategy. That is why you have the Secretary-General being unambiguously clear, top level, about how important it is that this issue of women, peace and security not be ignored, and filtering down as far as he can as an intra-national, supra-national body to member states, trying to impose upon the member states the importance of operational planning, operational training, relying on institutions like the Pearson Centre, ZIF in Germany and PSTC in Kingston to really take that information down to its lowest level training, the tactical level of the operational level, and to think strategically about what it is we are doing, then to take that modality and put it into the capacity building that all of us are doing overseas. At every step of the way we have cultural realities, traditional values and economic realities that are part and parcel of our daily work.
Yes, it is ad hoc and fragmentary, and yet there is an attempt to reform. Yes, there is not enough top saying to the bottom "you will "; but sooner or later, if the top does not do "this is important, " the "you will " gets caught in the ground and there is embarrassment at this level.
Yes, it is very challenging. I probably will never be out of a job working in this field, but the small victories, the small seeds that get planted are what allow us to continue to work.
Yes, this may be damning, but it is also the fertilizer that makes my seeds grow.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Livingstone. I have a few questions. What is the current level of awareness in Canada about the principles and objectives of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and I mean from the top down?
Ms. Livingstone: Madam Chair, I would not be able to speak to that. I do not know.
The Chair: You were speaking earlier about the Arab Spring. We see and hear about the changes. We do not hear a lot about the terrible things that are happening to women. I work with a number of women, especially at university, who have been brutalized and sexually assaulted. Can you comment on that? Do you know anything further about that?
Ms. Livingstone: I was just in Sharm El-Sheikh three weeks ago for a Challenges meeting. We had to hold it in Sharm El-Sheikh because Cairo is viewed as too dangerous. The Challenges is a group of 16 organizations, countries that have been involved in peace operations, concept and doctrine development for a long time. When we were in Sharm El-Sheikh, several of our Egyptian colleagues were discussing very much this issue, that there were women martyrs in Tahrir Square. There was a great deal of abuse sexually. Their concern is that the attention of the world is now moving in other directions, and the fear is that not much will change in the short run. They believe things will change in the long run.
The phrase they used all the time with me was "Democracy is not that far away. " They are very mindful of the repression that occurred in Tahrir Square with the women. They are very mindful that the world's eyes were on it. The world's eyes may come back to it. They count on that, because it is that bully pulpit of the media that becomes important to them. Again, this will be what I call a long-haul event. This will take a long time.
The Chair: Can you expand, please, on what you mean by the repression of women? I am not asking you to be graphic or anything like that, but what do you mean by repression of women in Tahrir Square?
Ms. Livingstone: In Tahrir Square there was manhandling, pulling, throwing down, incidents of violent abuse of the martyred women in Tahrir Square. They have a Culturama presentation where they do the January 25 revolution, and they show things in the media there that we did not see in this media, and part of what they showed was the women who were killed, or martyred, as they call it. They also highlight the physical violence that was done to women as a means of silencing them.
What is evident is that they were much stronger than the silencers thought they were. Their concern is that we have an attention span that is quite short, and we get easily seized by other matters. For them, this is their heart; this is their country. For us, it is another event and another day, and that is what their concern is for us. I hope I answered your question.
The Chair: Thank you; you did. Ms. Livingstone, you always educate us and bring us things we were not aware of. We very much appreciate, once again, your presentation at our committee meeting. We look forward to working with you in the future. Thank you very much for your presence.
Ms. Livingstone: It is my pleasure.
The Chair: We will now go in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)