Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 19 - Evidence - June 11, 2015
OTTAWA, Thursday, June 11, 2015
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 8:01 a.m. to monitor 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.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights and its thirty-fifth meeting of the Second Session of the Forty-first Parliament. The Senate mandated this committee to examine United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security.
[Translation]
My name is Mobina Jaffer. I represent British Columbia in the Senate and I chair this committee.
[English]
Before I proceed, I will have all the members introduce themselves, and I will start with the deputy chair.
Senator Ataullahjan: Salma Ataullahjan from Toronto, Ontario.
Senator Eaton: Nicky Eaton from Ontario.
Senator Hubley: Senator Elizabeth Hubley, Prince Edward Island.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Nancy Ruth from Toronto.
Senator Eggleton: Art Eggleton, a senator from Toronto.
The Chair: In 2000, the United Nations acknowledged a major reality: that war and conflict is experienced differently by women. By passing UN Resolution 1325, the Security Council made it undeniable that there is a disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women.
This resolution stressed the importance of women's equal and full participation in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace building and peacekeeping. It calls on member states to ensure women's equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. It urges all actors to increase the participation of women and incorporate gender perspectives in all areas of peace building.
I believe a key part of fulfilling this commitment is by every country mandating national action plans. The importance of national action plans cannot be overstressed. It holds countries accountable not to other countries, but to their own country and citizens.
National action plans ensure that each nation is accountable in its commitment to UN Resolution 1325 and all other resolutions supporting women, peace and security relative to its own inherent abilities. This sets the bar at the highest possible point for each country, making excuses based on their relative position to another country obsolete.
[Translation]
It is only when countries commit to a comprehensive and fair peace process, that one can ensue, and it is precisely through that comprehensive and fair process that stable and, above all, lasting peace can be achieved.
[English]
So this is not only a worthwhile commitment, but in fact a necessary one.
I'm really looking forward to hearing from our witnesses today. These witnesses, I believe, are the most knowledgeable on the subject of UN Resolution 1325.
I would like to welcome Jacqueline O'Neill, Director of the Institute for Inclusive Security; and Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, Co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network. Both of these women know more about 1325 than anyone I know.
It's an absolute privilege to have you both, once again, presenting to our committee. At this time, I would also like to recognize and thank you for always making yourselves available to our committee with your expertise.
Both women work in Washington D.C., so we will be hearing from them by video conference. Welcome.
Jacqueline O'Neill, Director, Institute for Inclusive Security: Good morning to the committee and thank you, madam chair. It's a pleasure to appear before this committee again. I want to thank you for your continued attention to this issue. As a Canadian myself, it's always a pleasure to see the interest of the Canadian Parliament in this issue. Working for an organization that focuses on national action plans around the world, we can't overestimate the importance of parliamentary oversight on these plans. I appreciate your taking that leadership step.
Last year, our organization was contracted by the Government of Canada to do an assessment, an independent evaluation of Canada's national action plan. What I thought I could do this morning is share with you the six top-level recommendations that we made as a result of that process, keep it to that, and then take your questions on anything else. Again, the government has given us permission to speak about these findings and share these recommendations. I'm very happy to do so with you this morning.
The first thing that we recommended the government do with respect to its national action plan is to strengthen monitoring and evaluation practices. Canada started off in a relatively a good position in this area, given that it's one of the few national action plans in the world that actually had a monitoring and evaluation framework when it was released. Not only did it have indicators, but it also designated which institutions are responsible for collecting information on those indicators.
There is still progress to be made on that front. A few areas that we recommended was first to establish both baseline measures as well as to set clear targets for the different indicators, so to give a betters sense of not just where we are but where we want to go, specifically, against a different set of measures.
Another thing that the plan doesn't currently have right now is what we would call "outcome indicators.'' This is a sense of what difference it made to do some of the activities that were noted, not just the activity that's designated but why and what was the result of that activity.
Third, and very related, is to introduce what we call "qualitative indicators.'' Like most plans around the world, Canada's national action plan is very heavy on counting the number of people trained, number of hours of workshops, et cetera, but not as much on the difference that those activities made. Sometimes those are best tracked not just through counting, but through a series of other different types of measures.
The second recommendation that we made was to release regular simplified reports that address challenges as well as successes. I know the committee also feels strongly about the government releasing annual reports in a timely manner. We also made the recommendation to simplify and, in fact, shorten the report. As you've digested, it's very long. The updates that we receive, they have a lot of tracking activity. But it's very difficult to understand progress and to learn from that report, as opposed to just getting a sense of the entire range of activity being undertaken.
Our perspective was that if we want to really learn from our implementation of the national action plan, we have to recognize that sometimes less is more; less reporting on some specific indicators and then ideally showing some clear visual year-by-year comparisons against some of the different indicators.
The third recommendation we made was to consult more regularly and more predictably with civil society. As you know, the Canadian national action plan doesn't specify a role for civil society. It's not written into the plan itself. DFATD has initialed various consultations. What we heard from civil society, specifically, would be that it would be important to set up a regular schedule of meetings and to give significant notice, in advance, to civil society for those conversations.
I'm pleased to say that we hosted what we call the National Action Plan Academy here in D.C., last December, and we had a delegation from Canada joining eight other countries. We had government and civil society from Canada. At the academy in D.C., the Canadian delegation committed to having twice-annual meetings with government and civil society at fixed dates and fixed times.
The fourth recommendation that we made was to create space and encourage the sharing of good practices between organizations. There's an opportunity for much more learning from each other within departments and across organizations such as RCMP, DND, DFATD, et cetera. That could be as simple as a monthly brown bag lunch within a department or it could be something more formal like an annual recognition, an award for individuals or key units.
The fifth recommendation we made was to create and profile high-level champions of the agenda. We heard repeatedly that people really need to see that this issue of women's inclusion is firmly within the role and responsibility of senior leadership. For example, updates on Canada's national action plan implementation could be featured regularly in interdepartmental meetings between deputy ministers, or heads of missions could be required to report on NAP implementation in annual meetings in Ottawa.
The sixth recommendation that we made was to reaffirm Canada's commitment to the national action plan being a policy directive. We heard from many people that they took it primarily as guidance rather than as a mandate or as an imperative, so it would be important to have regular reminders coming from the highest levels. This could look like a regular broadcast communication from various ministers to all staff, perhaps annually. It's important it be from that level. There hasn't been a broadcast communication about the national action plan since it was released. To do that annually would be important, and perhaps ideally at the start of a strategic planning or budgeting process.
I'll leave it there, and I will be happy to take any or all of your questions related to this.
The Chair: Thank you.
Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, Co-founder, International Civil Society Action Network: Thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with you again. Thank you, madam chair.
I wanted to take this issue back down to its fundamentals. I was in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan about 10 days ago, and the importance of the agenda and where we see the gap between the policy rhetoric, the planning that's being done, the national action plans that exist and the reality on the ground was very stark. I'll give you a few examples of what I saw.
I was at a regional meeting organized by one of our partners in Iraq. They had brought together women from across the Arab world, predominantly from Iraq and Syria, Lebanon, Libya and elsewhere. The first thing that was very evident was that, as usual, we're seeing that women are very active on the ground, that even the UN agencies and the international agencies these days say they cannot do their work without civil society partners on the ground, and yet these civil society organizations are incredibly under-resourced. In Iraq itself, after 20 years of crisis after crisis, the local organizations that are at the front lines of providing relief, providing care to IDPs and others are not sustained. Still much of the resources are not really reaching them, and yet they are the ones being asked to implement the programs.
I met two young girls my daughter's age who had been abducted by ISIS, sold, multiple cases of rape, and they had then fled. What is disheartening is that here we are speaking a lot about or there has been so much discussion about sexual violence in conflict, and yet in this particular context, with all the evidence that we have, very little care is provided to these victims and others that will eventually emerge from under ISIS's control. They are deeply, deeply traumatized. There is no psychosocial support or very little psychosocial support, and it's absolutely critical if we believe in this agenda that that support is provided on the ground and that it's prioritized.
I went to a displacement camp for the IDPs, internally displaced people. We heard the same stories that we've heard in the last 20 years — that levels of gender-based violence are incredibly high, that the women are taking on all the burden of work in the camps, and that young girls are not going to school because there's a fear that they'll be harassed walking to school. Even the simplest solutions — why don't their fathers walk with them to school or why isn't there a bus — have not been implemented, in part because the resources available to the local organizations being asked to run this are limited and the international community just isn't there to provide the assistance.
There are other things, simple things, like the absence of sanitary pads for women in these camps. This is 20 years of these kinds of conversations, 15 years of this agenda, and still we see the same story emerging over and over again.
I also met women who have been at the front lines of fighting back the spread of extremism. I met two widows. They were Sunni themselves, although they really recoiled from claiming what their sect was. They had helped six soldiers hide from ISIS, had used their own resources to provide them with fake ID and to drive them through checkpoints and finally get them to safety. These two women are now active in going to checkpoints and teaching the soldiers and the government-supported militias that are there how to treat civilians. We talk about security sector reform and how important it is to have a perspective, and yet on the ground we're seeing local people doing this, and we're not really paying attention or providing them with the resources they need.
At this juncture, 15 years on, we know the technical approaches. We have the contacts between international and local activists. We know a lot about what should and could be done, but it's time for us to put the focus back on the ground where the outcomes really matter.
I'll end with one recommendation. Through ICAN, we have been developing something called the Better Peace Tool. It's really a very practical guide for governments and for the UN system and others who are supportive of the idea of having women involved in peace processes and having gender perspectives in peace processes. We've broken it down into practical steps in terms of what could be done "pre-talks,'' what could be done if talks are already in process and especially what can be done at the time of implementation.
For us, this tool is something that we are consulting on widely with governments and civil society and international agencies. The idea for us is that we need to move beyond the rhetoric of this agenda to actually setting a standard of practice. It should no longer be sufficient for us to say, "Oh, country X has a national action plan,'' or "We know that in the work plan of agency Y, they support the involvement of women.'' We need to be measuring them against particular actions and standards of practice. This tool is one very simple product, based on multiple consultations, that actually provides that guidance. This is the direction we think we should be moving in, looking at each sector.
We have a colleague working through NATO who has developed something called Gender Force. They're looking at the issues of prevention of sexual violence in conflict areas. We have the initiatives existing through international organizations at the local level, and we need to marry those with international governmental processes and really bring back the essence of 1325, which was essentially a partnership between civil society governments and the UN. I think, more than ever, that that tripartite partnership is going to be important if we're serious about this.
I'll stop there. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
I'm going to start off. Both of you have spent a lot of time in conflict areas and know how important it is to have both women and men in any armed forces. I, of course, being from Canada, will focus on my own country. I myself am deeply troubled that Minister Kenney and the chief of the armed forces want to reduce the targets for women from 25.1 per cent to 17.6 per cent representation in the military. At our last session last year, when the Assistant Deputy Minister of Policy, National Defence, Ms. Sinclair, was here, she stated that in relation to the percentage of women being deployed to peace operations:
With regard to targets, I must say that we don't set targets. We don't set targets for the very best of reasons, and that is that the CAF is completely integrated and people are deployed based on their merit, qualification and experience, and frankly, their gender has nothing to do with it.
I was very troubled by this. I later did speak to her, to be fair to her, and we have asked her to come in and explain that again.
To both of you, who are very experienced in this issue, what is your opinion of having both genders represented in a substantial way in our military forces to deal with issues of women, peace and security?
Ms. O'Neill: I believe completely in targets, and I think they're essential in correcting an imbalance.
To pick up on your last point, we need both men and women in our security forces not to deal just with issues of women, peace and security but with issues of security generally. Too many people think we need women in forces to deal with so-called women's issues. I have no idea what "women's issues'' actually are. A beef that Sanam and I are often raising is that there is no such thing as women's issues. There are community issues, security issues, economic issues, stability issues, insurgency issues and countering violent extremism. So the idea of women and men in security forces as being essential for the stability and security of communities writ large, not just for women, is the first step in recognizing.
Second, we have an imbalance currently. We have a significant over-proportion of men in our security forces. Unless we state explicitly that we want to correct that imbalance, we can't allow organizational inertia to proceed and allow that imbalance to sustain. I think setting targets is an essential way of saying that this matters to us. It's not something that we're doing for women. It's not something by which we need to lower standards or decrease the amount or the level of merit that these individual candidates have in order to achieve this position. We're saying that we recognize the different value and benefit of having both men and women in security forces. It's important to us, and we're going to take proactive steps to get there. I couldn't feel more strongly about targets.
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: I want to echo what Ms. O'Neill was saying. In addition, I think we need to be looking at it in terms of specifically when we're talking about deployment into conflict areas or as peacekeepers. If we have men only going in as peacekeeping forces, their interactions with the community will be incredibly limited. As you know, we've also had multiple incidents of sexual exploitation by peacekeepers against communities that have already been traumatized. We know that when women are part of those forces, it changes the dynamics, the environment and the entire notion of why they're there.
There are some practical reasons. It's a confidence-building measure that we need to recognize. Part of the question has to be: Why is it that we think women don't want to join these forces? Are we doing effective outreach? Are we making the institutions conducive for women to actually feel safe and feel that they have equal opportunity in terms of moving forward? There's the aspect of how much our institutions are willing to adjust the daily spaces, and so forth, to make it equitable for women and men to be present at the same time.
On the targeting question going back to the issue of peacekeepers broadly and whether it's Canada or elsewhere, for 15 years we have been asking for higher percentages of women in police forces and in military forces deployed in peacekeeping contexts. Every time we say this, we're told that they can't find the women. We come across policewomen, women who have military backgrounds, and women who used to be in armed groups in many parts of the world who would be very capable and actually want to be part of peacekeeping forces; but it's an old boys' club. The benefits are better for the men, and so forth, so they don't necessarily want the women there.
So the issue of targets is absolutely critical. One of the things that governments should be doing is pressing to say, "If you want to be a troop-contributing country for a UN peacekeeping mission or any kind of mission, the percentage of women has to be 25 per cent or 30 per cent; otherwise you don't get to send your troops.'' We have to have some kind of incentive and some kind of disincentive for the countries that are unwilling to do this. It's just better practice to have the balance and the diversity, especially given that we are dealing with contexts where the threats to security are coming from so many different sources and places. It seems absurd not to want to have the diversity of your society represented in your security forces.
The Chair: I have a lot of questions on this, but I will first go to committee members. I'll start with the deputy chair of the committee, Senator Ataullahjan.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you for your presentation this morning.
This committee did a report in 2010 on the engagement of women's rights in Afghanistan and their role in decision making. Women make up 27 per cent of the seats in Parliament but only 13 per cent on the peace council, while women comprise only 1 per cent of the police force.
What has improved in Afghanistan? We recently heard of women reaching out and holding talks with the Taliban. The only woman who wanted to be identified was Shukria Barakzai, who, a few months earlier, survived a suicide attack. What has improved for women in Afghanistan?
Ms. O'Neill: Improvements and steps backwards, certainly. There are two women who were willing to be identified with those talks, Shukria Barakzai and Fawzia Koofi, whom I think you know. She also ran for President of Afghanistan two election cycles ago.
There are slow areas of progress, including related to the National Action Plan for Women of Afghanistan. It's something that we've been involved in. It's been a three-year process by which 18 different parts of government have been involved, working together to set various targets and lay out a strategy. It includes a range of very Afghan-specific steps, including having imams on Friday prayers discuss the issue related to women, peace and security and women's inclusion in decision making and bringing this to a local level.
We've also been working with female members of the High Peace Council at a provincial level, as you've identified, to build their capacity and engagement in the process. Currently, the High Peace Council is tasked with negotiating peace or negotiating with the Taliban. The talks that occurred last week were outside the process that the government set up of the High Peace Council, including at the provincial level. We've been working to ensure that women on those councils have the capacity to sit beside their male colleagues and that their rights and priorities are heard.
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: The broader situation of what's going on across — I want to say "the region,'' but then I think which region are we talking about? Basically we're seeing the pervasive threat and spread of these extremist movements from Afghanistan, Pakistan and through the other Stans, such as Tajikistan and elsewhere.
The Taliban have been interesting because we're seeing splits in how they perceive women. Over the years, all of the advocacy and experiences are finally bringing some element of them to the table to say they would speak to women and engage on very practical levels.
But the broader security conditions overall are problematic. This is something that we have to bear in mind. It's really important to make sure that the talks that happened in Oslo are not "one off'' and that they will be built on and expanded on and that Afghan women will be part and parcel of all security-related discussions. For a long time, they have been the early warning, the canaries in the mine, telling us where threats are emerging and where things are getting worse. Yet they really haven't been at the tables where the international community is making decisions for their future.
I hope this particular incident that happened in Oslo last week is the beginning of opening the space and allowing for them to have their own voice more systematically at the international level and then all the way down to the local level, where they have already been very active.
I don't think you can underestimate the spread of the extremist threat at all. It's something that we should all be concerned about.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Ms. O'Neill, I want to ask about the report you did for Canada. You may be aware that at one of our military colleges a woman came in to talk about sexual harassment and she was booed out. Then there were some disclosures of evidence of this. Did you, in your discussions with the Canadian Forces, have any evidence that training on 1325 actually went down as low as training officers in our military colleges?
Ms. O'Neill: We did, yes. Our assessment occurred before that incident, so we weren't at all looking into that. We did uncover quite a lot of significant progress related to training both in the RCMP and in DND.
What's challenging and goes back to the indicator question is that we learned of a large number of training activities that were taking place, including at that level, but we weren't able to assess, and there are no measures by which we can assess, the quality of that training. We were told that topics of training include issues related to sexual assault and a healthy working climate within the forces, as well as the way those forces engage with host communities around the world.
Again, because we weren't able to measure and there are no plans or there is no way of measuring attitude or behaviour changes as a result of that training, we just don't know what difference it has made.
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: To add to that, this is a problem that we've seen across many countries, including the United States, where on the one hand we're told that they do gender or human rights training, but when you look at the broad scope of what that training is — a week, 10 days or however long the training program is — a half-hour session on gender is absolutely useless, to be honest with you. The question is: Who is going to give us access to look at the content, to look at who is doing the training and how these issues of protection and service to — they are there to serve the community, to protect the community. How will that really be integrated and woven in as a core element of what a security or police force is meant to be doing? This is an opaque world for those of us who look at it. We understand that we need to look at the outcomes, but don't have access to how the process is designed.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Would it be fair for me to assume that when they are trained on how to use a particular kind of rifle or machine gun that they get practice in it? In this kind of theory, is there no identification of practice or of their behaviours within their own college?
You don't have to answer that question. That's a hypothetical.
Anyhow, it sounds like not much has happened since Elissa Goldberg testified about the half-hour training many years ago and that nothing has changed in Canada. That's sort of depressing to me.
The other question I wanted to ask was in terms of after a war, if there ever is such a stage. Canada sold a lot of ATCO housing units in Iraq after the Bush wars. But there was no definition by our department or international trade people that the first group of housing should go to women with children, the second group to families with children and thirdly to everybody else. Have you seen movement anywhere in the world with regard to national governments involving themselves in trade relationships so that there is preference for women and children?
Ms. O'Neill: I've never seen it.
Have you?
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: No.
Senator Nancy Ruth: It's something that I hope Canada will do in terms of Syria. For me it's a positive thing that a country can do in terms of training in the after-war stage.
Ms. O'Neill: I would like to jump in on your previous question about training. Later this morning you will hear from Beth Woroniuk, from the 1325 network. She was one the representatives of Civil Society at this National Action Plan Academy. One of things that Civil Society urged and advocated to their colleagues in government from RCMP, DND and DFATD in December was to enable Civil Society to go and observe training. In this case, it was for RCMP training prior to their deployment on oversees peacekeeping missions. The RCMP committed to allowing Civil Society to do that, to sharing the curriculum with inviting them to come in, observe and then critique the training. A great question for Beth would be whether or not that happened and what they observed.
Your point on practising is exceptional as well. A lot of times we see training, which is often lecturing, that is fit into a small portion that's captured in a broad human rights or some other section, but then it's not incorporated into all of the other aspects of work. Something that we did was an assessment to the extent that we could get access to simulations, exercises and war games that the U.S. military was running with cadets and with others. We found overwhelmingly, extremely low representation of women in those simulations and exercises, and almost exclusively women who are serving in the role of victim or a very passive person in a community.
Perhaps one of recommendations the committee might make would be to examine some of the simulations and exercises that both these cadets and various others in the military experience as a way of applying what they are being trained on in a classroom setting.
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: On the point about housing and the preference for widows and children, I have one thought on a recommendation. Before you put this in place — and we'd be happy to facilitate access — engage Syrian civil society organizations that are active, on the ground and working with the communities. Ask them whether this would work, because the last thing we would want is to inadvertently put widows at greater risk because now they are getting something before the men get it; so figuring out the best way of ensuring the intent, which is to make sure that they are protected, that they get the housing, but not put them at greater risk. If you wanted to, we could put you in touch with a number of Syrians who are working on the issues.
Senator Nancy Ruth: That's an excellent idea.
The Chair: I will go on the questions I was asking earlier.
How can the Canadian Armed Forces define and measure success in relation to the women, peace and security agenda? Both of you work very much with our government, and I would like to hear from you on that.
Also, how can discrimination against women in the Armed Forces be prevented and addressed?
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: I think the question of the Armed Forces specifically has its own complexities because it is obviously a very male, macho environment. If we want women to enter into these spaces on these forces, then we need to listen to them on a range of things: What is it like within the cultural institution? How safe do they feel? What are measures and mechanisms in place if they are being harassed? The basic safety question is one area. Is there accountability? That's one thing.
But more than that, when we have talked to women globally over the last 20 years, in all of my work, and we asked how they define security and what the notion of security is for them, it's very much around human security issues. It's around safety in the community, clean water — it's a range of things that is not just to do with guns and tanks. It's relevant to the context where we are seeing deployment or conflict. The developmental aspects and the underlying developmental causes of conflict are not really being tackled, and we have put so much emphasis on the military side.
If we want more women to come into the Armed Forces and have a transformative effect, which I think is the goal of this particular agenda, then we should be listening to women in terms of how they think the priorities should be changing for security forces.
I say this specifically right now in the context of the agenda that's emerging around countering violent extremism. It is so military oriented. It is so focused on just chasing down the people that are becoming radicalized. Specifically when it comes to women, they are only interested in the handful of girls and young women who are joining ISIS and going to Syria.
When we talk to people in Washington or elsewhere about the importance of having local women at the table to tell us how they are doing demilitarization of forces, how they are engaging security forces and their communities, what they see as the core needs and what they want from the international community, that message is completely lost.
So we need more women. I think more women will actually enhance the way in which we are responding to CVE issues, but we also need to be prepared that if women are going to come in, the institutions themselves have to be ready for significant transformation.
Ms. O'Neill: I completely agree with all of that and would like to address your question of how we define and measure success of implementing this agenda within the Canadian Forces?
There are a few measures that we could look to within the institutions themselves. The first is the actual percentage of women serving and then far, far deeper. What is the retention level of women, particularly among different levels? Do we have a situation where women come in and there is a bulge at the bottom, but they are increasingly leaving the forces? As Sanam was saying, are we examining this by asking what the reasons are for that?
Looking at the levels of service across different components of the armed services, the RCMP as well, looking at the number of women in leadership levels, and retaining this idea of critical mass. I think what we see is that we can't simply expect to add a few women to an overwhelmingly male-dominated or predominantly male-dominated culture and expect them to speak for all women, to behave as we expect women to behave and to represent women's perspectives, et cetera. We have to recognize that women are diverse, just as men are diverse, and that we need the law of larger numbers in order to obtain the full spectrum of benefits that we get from having a more diverse force.
There are areas we could look at to measure success within the forces themselves. Of course, there is a whole level of impact in the way those forces conduct themselves in their operations. Measures along those lines would be the extent to which they have constructive relationships with civilian communities, both within Canada and within the theatres in which they are operating, and the extent to which their definition of security evolves.
As Sanam was saying, this much broader definition of security that is beyond simply protection from tanks and guns in some cases needs to evolve to a much broader sense of community security, security both in the home and outside the home. It is not always the military's purview or mandate to be providing that but to understand that there is a different sense of security that is understood by communities they are serving. I recognize that we need a set of measures to define progress within the forces and then looking at the impact. That's something we weren't able to do in our assessment, to look at the impact of the national action plan in the communities in which Canadian Forces and diplomats are working around the world.
The Chair: Discrimination?
Ms. O'Neill: There are two points I'd make on this. The first is that we won't address discrimination or issues related to women's experience in the Armed Forces unless we more thoroughly understand their contributions to the core mission or mandate of our Armed Forces and recognize and fully appreciate the different types of benefits that accrue to the services, that enhance the mission of those services themselves, that improve their ability to achieve our Canadian objectives via military operations. We recognize that we need that diversity. We hear the "why'' message from the highest levels consistently, not just that we need to do it because we have a mandate or there is a security council resolution. We need to fundamentally internalize the benefits of why we actually need women, and not just women, but why we need diversity along a range of spectrums, a force that represents the communities in which it serves.
The second point is that we cannot accept that the culture of any institution will not change. We have to recognize there are ways to change that culture from within, and this is not something where, if we have a military, it will be by definition a patriarchal, male-dominated culture. We have seen transitions around the world, and we need to recognize that we do need to change that culture and that culture can be changed.
The Chair: As you know, I have been involved in this issue of women, peace and security for a long time. My anxiety is that with young women from North America, Canada and Europe getting involved and going to conflict zones, the focus will move away from women in conflict zones to women who go from our countries to the conflict zones. I'm really concerned that the women, peace and security agenda will be taken over in our countries around the dialogue on extremism. Would like you both to comment on that?
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: I think this was the point I was trying to make also, that it's becoming very distorted in terms of how much time and attention and resources we are putting toward trying to identify possible and potential — they are predominantly young girls. The numbers are really not that high. It is alarming, and the media is making a lot more of it than it is. We are putting all this attention on resources there, and I think it has multiple damaging impacts.
The first is that we are turning these girls into heroes for a slew of other girls that are wondering what to do and think that they can get attention if they want attention. The copycat effect is dangerous.
The second is that the messaging that we are sending is that unless you are radicalized, unless you become violent, we really don't care who you are, what you are and what you are doing.
The third is that one of best ways to counter this flow of young women into ISIS territory is to actually profile and show them the voices and the work of women from Syria and Iraq and elsewhere on the ground and what they have to say about what is Islam and what is going on and what they need. The research that exists right now shows that many of these girls are feeling a sense of injustice. There is a sense of, "I need to do something because this is a terrible conflict, and I want to contribute.'' It's coming from a place of a good heart, but then they are being trapped into thinking that going toward ISIS is the only way.
Finally, we need to start looking at these girls not as perpetrators but actually as victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. They are being groomed online in the same way that pedophiles and others groom people, basically creating a channel for them to go join. Once they are there, they can't leave. They're not allowed to leave. Here we are turning them into perpetrators. We need to reframe the entire discourse around these young women that are going.
To your point about discrimination in the Armed Forces, one of the biggest issues that Canada, Europe and elsewhere needs to be looking at is how do we make sure that our institutions, whether the military or government, our educational curricula, et cetera, really reflect and represent the diversity of our society? If second-generation and third-generation immigrants look at a military force and see that it's all white men, they don't feel it's theirs and they belong to it. They don't necessarily feel a responsibility towards it. Making sure our institutions reflect the diversity of our society is critical to the prevention of the kind of conflict we are seeing.
Ms. O'Neill: It's been fascinating to watch, and disheartening in many ways, the dialogue in particular in this city around countering violent extremism. Sanam was referencing this fascination and fixation on foreign fighters. I think if there is any silver lining to this, it is the recognition that women are important actors one way or another.
There was a stage where many people in either insurgency groups or others felt that women were simply irrelevant and would simply go along with whatever plan others decided for them. What we are seeing here is that women need to be targeted with a narrative, and ISIS is targeting women with a narrative, tapping into this sense of wanting to battle injustice, have a broader purpose, serve a community and create this so-called Islamic state that they have been sold as something that is not. The bottom line is that they are making decisions and having an influence one way or another.
If anything comes from this fixation, it has to be the realization that if we don't target women with a narrative, ISIS and others will be targeting women with this narrative. If nothing else, it's a step up from the perception that women are sort of irrelevant one way or another.
Senator Ataullahjan: I wanted to ask about Burma. We are hearing about the violence and human rights abuses. I know that you are doing some work in the region. Can you tell me what kind of programming you're involved with and what is the state of women's rights in Burma, specifically the Rohingya Muslims?
Ms. O'Neill: I am not in a position to speak thoroughly to the issue. We've worked with a small number of women from Burma, from Myanmar, who are very active in the ongoing peace negotiations, trying to ensure that there are women's voices in all subsequent stages of the peace negotiations. Right now there are something like 19 different ceasefires, and women are, in particular, emphasizing the importance of women's oversight and influence in defining the terms of those ceasefires. But I couldn't speak more broadly to the status of women in Burma.
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: I think that is the extent to which we know.
Of course, we're also seeing the question of the Muslims and how that's being handled, and clearly it is not being addressed adequately. The question of what will happen to these people is important as well. If we leave them, and their status in Burma, their recognition that they are Burmese, is not addressed, something else will come in and tap into them.
This is like what I said earlier about the spread of extremism: We are no longer in a world where we can forget about communities and say they don't matter, because groups have mobilized and are tapping into those grievances and channeling them in a different direction. That is something to bear in mind.
Also, on the one hand we are seeing interesting progress around attempts to bring women into peace processes in Burma, and in the Philippines some extraordinary events are happening. On the other hand is the fragility of these processes and the inadvertent ways of international actors. For example, in the Philippines recently, the U.S. had a military operation going after terrorists. They basically put at risk a 17-year ceasefire process and negotiation.
We have to be really cognizant of the community work being done and the fragility of the process so that as international actors we are not inadvertently doing harm by pursuing our own goals and interests in some of these places.
Senator Hubley: Thank you for your presentations this morning.
Ms. O'Neill, you shared with us the six recommendations you made on Canada's national action plan. I'm wondering if you have seen any change in Canada's national action plan and, if you have, if you could share that with us.
Ms. O'Neill: We haven't followed up on the specific recommendations that were made. We are looking to the government's next update or assessment that it will release. Ms. Woroniuk, who is coming later, can give you a more comprehensive assessment of some of the progress.
A couple of main things have emerged: the point I mentioned earlier related to Civil Society being invited to observe some of the training curriculum and practice within the RCMP, as well as the establishment of regular meetings between DFATD and Civil Society. Those are two areas of progress we have seen, but we would not expect to see changes and indicators, et cetera until either a new national action plan is launched or an update is created. I believe the current plan expires in 2016. We look forward to seeing whether a new plan will be released or whether it will be an update or revision. That would be the opportunity for a more wholesale rethink of the indicator issue.
The other things we have not yet seen but are hoping will happen are the broadcast statements from the most senior levels of different ministries. Again, I'm not sure whether it has happened, but it could happen in a short time frame.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I want to follow up on the comments that inferred that the military doesn't always understand the advantages or the benefits of having women involved in their forces.
In Canada and many other western and northern countries, this whole business of women on boards has become explosive. There is draft legislation everywhere and we hear of stock exchanges taking punitive behaviours. Has this group had any impact on the hierarchy of the military to indicate that better decisions, higher profits and better productivity happen when you put women in leadership? Have you seen any evidence of that in the countries involved in this women-on-boards stuff? If not, would you start looking and asking those questions around the world for us?
Ms. O'Neill: We certainly would.
Norway is probably the country that has made the strongest connections between the two areas you referenced: women in the corporate sector and women in the public service. Norwegians speak about the benefit of having women in the corporate sector. They talk in economic terms about the difference it has made to their GDP having woman in the workforce at different levels.
Often there is a strong aversion, which I don't understand within a security community, to learning lessons from other sectors. People say to us all the time that when it comes to peace negotiations, "Where's the evidence?'' We have to ask, "Where are the inclusive peace talks?'' When you have some, we'll document the heck out of them and draw lessons, but for now, the best we have and the most we can do is draw lessons from other analogous situations.
You mentioned that there is no shortage of social science research indicating that mixed groups make better decisions. Groups that are all men or all women make weaker decisions, regardless of the IQ of the individuals in those groups. I have not seen an explicit link to those toward military service, but it is something that absolutely has to be done. I would not be surprised if it is occurring in some military academies across the world.
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: On the question of boards, I see it in two ways. The Norwegian example is very important not only because of the way they talk about the GDP question but also because they have put in place countless very effective policies for working mothers and families. The idea of having dual income families actually conducive is something that other countries should look at, including where we are sitting here. They have terrible family planning, maternal leave and child care issues and so forth, so they have put the infrastructure in place to enable women to be effective.
My other point regarding the question women on boards is that we also have to be careful about how much of it is rhetoric and how much of it is actually being practised even by the women who are advocating for this. I've looked at the boards of some of the companies from which we have some of the advocates, and they don't have 30 per cent on boards, or whatever the percentages are. I'm saying that we should be practising what we preach.
At the end of day, we have to be cognizant of the fact that militaries generally are being trained to make war. We say "defence,'' but there is an element of war-making, so they are going to be very closed to the idea of women coming in and saying that they should do things differently here and there. It's a point of changing thousands of years of culture, so of course they will be resistant. We have to push and we have to change that culture.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Talking about culture, I want to raise another issue, which Senator Jaffer raised, about young women now going into the Armed Forces. I have been involved in polling data for the last nine years on a restoration of O Canada! so that it would include all races and all people. It's interesting in the polling data that people under 35 don't see the issue at all, and that polling is consistent even up to the last poll taken in April this year before the vote in the House of Commons.
This is an issue in this country. Is it an issue in other countries you travel to? If so, how do you see that affecting the Armed Forces, the RCMP or other policing agencies if young women go into them, given the values that you are espousing?
Ms. O'Neill: I'm glad you mentioned that. I see it consistently. I used to find it surprising but now I find it a little sad.
We're often approached after talks, including one at West Point, by young women who say, "This isn't a problem for us. I can understand how the generation before needed 'feminists.' There is something to do but we have a woman running for President of the U.S. or Speaker of the House in the U.S. We're good.''
I consistently see, in part because of the issue Sanam was just referencing, that once people start to get into their mid-thirties and see how non-family friendly many of the career choices they've made are — some of the star choices they have to make to continue in military service — they begin to realize the value of these institutional changes.
For example, in Bosnia we worked with the government this year to revise their national action plan. They changed the requirements of Bosnian military personnel to serve in overseas peacekeeping missions. It's an area of status and pride to serve on international missions, but there is requirement that the Bosnian military have seven continuous years of service. Women were saying that they were disadvantaged by that because they couldn't take maternity leave. If they work six years, leave to have a baby and then try to come back, they would have to start all over again. So their national action plan changed it to be seven cumulative years of service.
There is a huge issue where young people don't recognize the institutional barriers that they will face, particularly later in their career because they see 50 per cent women in their engineering or medical classes at university. They don't recognize until a little later in their career, after about age 35, some of the ways these barriers are going to affect them.
Senator Nancy Ruth: How will that affect policy within the military, if this is the pool that they're drawing from for promotion and so on?
Ms. O'Neill: I think the positive is that you end up with a larger pool at the lowest levels, so you get an intake of women that is a little healthier and larger because they see themselves having an option in these less traditional careers. But I think you absolutely have to be listening to women within the forces about the changes that need to be made for retention. That's why I'd make retention one of the key indicators of implementing this agenda, but retention particularly in the 30- to 45-year range for women, to see where they start funnelling off. Then you see this dramatic shortage of women at senior leadership positions.
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: To give you a comparison, a number of years ago I was talking with someone from Ernst & Young, and they had instituted a policy to try to get the gender disparity issues resolved at the highest levels. They said the same thing: At entry level it's 50-50, and by the time people are in their thirties, it goes down to 40-60 and then tails off. They were stuck at a 12 per cent partner rate for having women. When they looked at the women who were at that level, either they were single, didn't have children or their spouses were the primary caretakers of children at home. If we assume that a lot of women will get married and will have the roles of being the primary caretakers of children or the elderly, the institutions they're working for are not being conducive to enable that. That's one thing to bear in mind.
The flip side was that I was doing some research in South Africa a number of years ago, because they did have a significant security sector reform process and were cognizant of trying to make the security sector more diverse and reflective of their society, including not just women, but all the different ethnic groups. I remember interviewing one gentleman and he said, "To make people feel at home in the institution, you have to be responsive to their needs. We have people here that if there's a funeral in their family, they have to be away for three weeks. That's not part of our standard policy, but we've adjusted and changed it to make them feel okay about having to go for these types of cultural traditional practices so that they can be retained.'' It's the same principle for women. It really needs to be looked at.
To be honest, we're doing a study right now for UNDP on gender disparity, and so much of the bias is around women who have children won't do this or that job. A, it's not true, and B, we're finding a lot of the men are actually complaining about duty stations and job conditions because they have children and nobody cares about them. So perceptions are driving bad policy.
Senator Andreychuk: I wanted a clarification. There was a statement made that I found troublesome, which was that we are training our military to make war. That's not my understanding. It's to defend our security and safety. That may mean that they engage in a war. It just is not what I'm hearing. Therefore, the perspective that you start with is important.
I'm involved with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. We heard from the person in charge of women's issues within NATO and assessing the progress of all NATO countries. I think it would be an excellent resource to have here, to update us on what NATO is doing, which is one of the key arms for our defence, and Canada within that. I must say that it was very enlightening because it is a difficult situation.
When you put it in the perspective of our security, then women become even more important because they are part of the society that we're trying to protect, rather than looking at it on the flip side, which is what we do when we engage in war. If we started from what this representative was saying, it would be a much more helpful approach for Canada and others. This is what NATO is working on.
The Chair: Ms. O'Neill or Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini, do you want to comment on what Senator Andreychuk said?
Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini: What we've seen in the last 10, 12 years is that many of the militaries that we're talking about are engaging in various places, in a mixed world. On the one hand they're there supposedly to keep the peace, but they're also engaging. Increasingly we're seeing that they are participating in war, which is part of it.
We might say it's for our security back home, but I work with people on the ground who have to deal with the drones, the bombings and so forth by our militaries from the West. It's looking at the perspective of where you sit and how you perceive the presence of the military.
I completely concur with you, as I said before, that I think having women in the forces, having the diversity, especially in police forces, is absolutely critical in all sorts of places in terms of both defence at home, but also in terms of if we're sending peacekeepers out to engage with communities out there. But the fact that militaries right now have always been male dominated and over the last 10 years there's been a consistent involvement for many of the Western countries in fighting, then I think we have to be fair about that — including NATO in Afghanistan. It's not had a very clear-cut role. It's not the traditional peacekeeping that we used to see in many parts of the world in the past.
That's all I wanted to say. I'm sorry if you disagree with me.
Ms. O'Neill: Related to the point of NATO and Canada at the UN and elsewhere, I think one of the most positive elements of Canada's national action plan is that it addresses the fact that Canada can and should be an advocate for certain values within these multilateral institutions. I think some of the indicators that are set up to be tracked according to this plan don't actually capture the influence that we're able to have and have had in certain instances in some of these international settings.
I often tell people about how Canada was the first country to put women, peace and security on the G8 agenda. When we hosted the G8, we put it on the agenda and it's been there ever since. That forces all G8 — now G7 — countries to be addressing women, peace and security.
Canada has stated the opportunity that it has to promote Canadian values in these multilateral institutions and has written it into its plan. I think we have an opportunity to track and to build much more upon the positive influence that we can have in organizations like that, where they're eager to learn from good practices from Canada and where we have many to share. I think that's an area that we really can build upon and recognize as a strength of this plan. It may be harder to measure, but it is really important, especially for a country the size and influence of Canada.
The Chair: I want to take the opportunity on behalf of the committee to thank both of you. You are exceptionally busy and you always make yourselves available to our committee, at short notice, so we can continue to learn what's happening on Resolution 1325. We look forward to working with you in the future. Thank you very much.
Next, by video conference from New York, we have with us, from UN Women, Nahla Valji, Policy Adviser and Officer in Charge of the Peace and Security Cluster.
We're happy to have you with us today, Nahla, as another Canadian working in the UN system. You have appeared here before, and we appreciate your presence.
We will also hear from Beth Woroniuk and Jessica Tomlin from the Women, Peace and Security Network. Everything I know about 1325, I've learned from Ms. Woroniuk. I'm glad you are here as well. We will have a lot of questions for you.
We will start with Ms. Valji's presentation.
Nahla Valji, Policy Adviser and Officer in Charge, Peace and Security Cluster, UN Women: Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the invitation to be with you today.
I want to thank the Canadian government. As you know, Canada leads the Friends of 1325 at the UN and, for the last year and a half, has led a separate group of friends for the Global Study on the Implementation of Resolution 1325. This is the review study that UN Women has been charged with for the Security Council, reviewing 15 years of implementation of 1325, looking at where we are at the moment, where the obstacles and challenges have been regarding implementation and where we need to go in terms of future implementation.
Having Canada play a leadership role and convene a group of friends has been incredibly useful for UN Women. It has provided a platform for us, for member state consultations, for inputs, and for the support that we've needed over the last year and a half to take forward this project. For that, I want to begin by saying thank you.
This year is important for the Women, Peace and Security agenda as it's been 15 years since the passage of Resolution 1325 in 2000. We've had six subsequent resolutions on women, peace and security in the Security Council. We've also diversified and deepened the normative agenda.
In 2013, CEDAW passed general recommendation 30 on the same day that Resolution 2122 was passed. This is an incredibly important accountability tool because CEDAW is one of the most ratified treaties and takes this agenda beyond the Security Council to be more fully about prevention and recovery efforts as well.
It's also an important year within the UN system. We have three peace and security reviews running simultaneously in addition to the women, peace and security review. Of course the UN system is undertaking a review of some 30 peace operations missions with a budget of $9 billion. The most visible component of the UN system in countries is under review, as is the peace-building architecture of the UN system. We have these three peace and security reviews running simultaneously. UN Women has consistently said that there should have been only one review and that we should be looking at the cycles of conflict and fragility and women's participation in gender equality within that. However, we have these three panels.
We also have the post-2015 agenda, the sustainable development goals, or SDGs, and the World Humanitarian Summit next year. It's an important year within the UN but more importantly within the international community as a whole. It's a real moment of both reflection and an opportunity for us to think about how we approach some of the challenges we face globally at the moment.
With regard to peace and security, we are seeing now a period of time when, as I said, cycles of fragility and conflict relapse into conflict. The rise of violent extremism is perhaps the largest peace and security threat that we face at the moment.
We're seeing increasingly entrenched long-term conflicts. For the first time since World War II, we have the largest displaced population of the last 70 years. The average period of time that these displaced populations will spend displaced will be over 20 years. We're facing new challenges and threats to peace and security. The relationship between emergencies, humanitarian conflict, fragility and violent extremism provides a context in which we really need to rethink our tools, approaches and what we are doing differently to address the new context.
I believe that the women, peace and security resolution is one of the tools that we need to revisit concretely to look at the contribution it can make to supporting us to achieve sustainable peace and real security.
Over the last decade, we've had growing evidence on the relationship between women's participation and our effectiveness in the area of peace and security. We know, for example, that if we can increase the number of female peacekeepers among our troops, it increases the credibility of our peacekeeping forces. It gives us access to communities and new sources of information. It increases the reporting of gender-based crimes, gives us access to early warning information, and decreases the incidence of sexual exploitation and abuse. Yet, 15 years on, the number of female peacekeepers we have in the UN system is less than 3 per cent. This has been one area of incredible resistance within the agenda over the last 15 years.
We're also increasingly seeing evidence that women's participation, gender-equality and women's empowerment form a concrete buffer to the spread off radicalization and violent extremism. This is something that I believe the international community and the Security Council itself have increasingly realized over the past year. We see with violent extremists that what is common to their agenda is a push-back on women's rights and oppression of gender equality. We need to make sure what is common to our agenda is women's empowerment as a buffer to radicalization. We have the evidence with regard to that.
We increasingly have the evidence with regard to women's economic recovery post-conflict, accelerating growth, stability for communities and increasing our peace dividends. Through the global study that we've been working on for the past year, we now have empirical evidence on the correlation between women's participation in peace processes, the conclusion of talks, the implementation of agreements and the sustainability of peace.
Essentially we have a growing, unambiguous empirical evidence base which shows us that women's participation and inclusion is core to our operational effectiveness as the international community on peace and security.
What does that mean in terms of where we need to go from here in order to utilize this tool that we have?
First, we need to stop treating this agenda as an add-on agenda. We need to stop seeing it as a tick box agenda that we can address if we have any additional resources, political will or desire to do so, often after the fact and many years down the road. We have to see this as core to all of our peace and security efforts.
One of the biggest challenges and obstacles we've identified through the global study is the financing issue. OECD-DAC commissioned research for us looking at financing peace and security. Less than 2 per cent of the money that goes into peace and security contexts is utilized to address women's needs and to further women's participation.
I should note that within this, Canada scores as one of the highest countries within OECD in terms of ensuring gender mainstreaming within their funding to conflict and crisis contexts. But what remains is a huge obstacle with regard to financing.
Further obstacles include consistent political will. We need to stop having an add-on approach, which means that in some contexts we will push for women's participation and in others we will accept an excuse of cultural resistance that we often encounter. Financing political will, structural reform, within the UN system and within the international community and greater expertise to take forward this agenda are just a few of the areas that are coming out from the global study and will be recommendations that will be taken forward in October during the high-level review.
As UN Women, we've begun to do outreach to member states to share some of these findings and recommendations and to encourage that we come out of October with a transformative agenda, with something that looks different than it has for the past 15 years, with real, concrete commitments to take this agenda forward and to see it as a tool to address the current peace and security context that we have globally, rather than simply an add-on and tick box agenda as it has been for the past 15 years.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Valji.
Now we will go to Ms. Woroniuk, from the Women, Peace and Security Network.
Beth Woroniuk, Steering Committee Member, Women, Peace and Security Network - Canada: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and good morning to you all. I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear today. I'm a member of the steering committee of the Women, Peace and Security Network - Canada.
As you may be aware, our network is made up of over 60 Canadian organizations and individuals, including the MATCH International Women's Fund.
We have two objectives. One is to promote and monitor the efforts of the Government of Canada to implement and support the United Nations Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security, and the second is to provide a forum for exchange and action amongst Canadian civil society on this same theme. We operate as volunteers with no office and no budget.
In my comments today, I will cover three broad areas: first, positive developments; second, ongoing concerns; and third, priorities for action.
We are pleased to report that there have been some positive developments since we appeared before you last year. As mentioned by Jacqueline O'Neill, the network is now holding biannual meetings with the interdepartmental working group on women, peace and security, chaired by the Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force, or START, in the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.
As a second positive development, as Ms. O'Neill also mentioned, we are pleased to note that the RCMP has extended an invitation to our network to observe parts of their pre-deployment training and advise on improvements. We have had several informative meetings with the RCMP and look forward to working with them on this important issue.
As a third positive development, we commend the government for its recent statement on the United Nations' response to sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, both military and civilian. Civil society will be monitoring the mandate and composition of the external independent review recently announced by the UN Secretary-General to ensure that it is truly the impartial, independent and broad review of the UN's system-wide handling of sexual exploitation and abuse that is so urgently needed.
Despite these advances, we continue to have major and ongoing concerns regarding gaps in Canada's positions and actions on the women, peace and security agenda.
First, we continue to be frustrated by the lack of regular and timely reporting on Canada's national action plan. As you are aware, the report for the period April 2013 to March 2014 has yet to be released. Even if this report were to be released tomorrow, the information in it would be significantly out of date.
Nor have we seen the midterm review conducted last year. This was referred to by Ms. O'Neill. In fact, today was the first time we've heard the recommendations of that report.
With these delays in reporting, we do not know what progress, if any, has been made by the Canadian government on these important commitments.
A second concern is that we are disappointed by the lack of Canadian action on two major issues. The first is the failure to fund the full range of sexual and reproductive health services, including those related pregnancy resulting from rape, and this was recognized in the UN Security Council Resolution 2122. The second is Canada's failure to sign the arms trade treaty. Inaction on these issues undermines efforts to address and respond to the full range of peace and security issues.
Our third concern is that we are also disappointed by the slow response of the government and the Department of National Defence to the recommendations of the recent inquiry chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps on sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces.
In conclusion, we would like to highlight the following priorities. First, the Canadian engagement in conflict prevention and supporting women's involvement in conflict resolution should be given a higher priority. You notice this issue was raised both by UN Women and by the speakers on our first panel. The goal is not to make war safe for women but rather contribute to the peaceful resolution of armed conflict. We urge the government to provide strong and consistent support for involving women in negotiations and efforts to resolve the numerous conflicts the world is currently facing.
A second priority is that Canada should make significant financial contributions to local grassroots women's organizations to build their leadership and support their participation in all aspects of peace building, conflict prevention, peace negotiations and economic recovery. We can only reinforce the point made by Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini that many of these organizations are operating with very little resources despite incredible responsibility placed on them. This includes providing support for the soon-to-be-launched global acceleration instrument. My colleague Ms. Tomlin will address these issues in more detail.
As a final priority, we would like to highlight an emerging but little discussed problem, namely sexual violence against those working for humanitarian organizations. Investigations conducted by one member of our network has found little research to date or statistics on this issue despite widespread on-the-ground knowledge of this crime occurring. Canada should demand zero tolerance policies for all organizations receiving humanitarian assistance and work to ensure stronger international sexual abuse and exploitation prevention and accountability systems.
We would like to thank senators for the invitation to appear before the committee today and we welcome the opportunity to engage with you in the future. With the fifteenth anniversary of Security Council Resolution 1325 being marked this fall and all the important processes happening internationally, 2015 is an important year. We hope that it will be a year that marks a new chapter with concrete progress and actual implementation of the goals behind the UN Security Council resolution on women, peace and security.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you.
We will hear from Ms. Tomlin now, who has previously been before this committee. It's always a pleasure to have you back.
Jessica Tomlin, Executive Director, MATCH International, Women, Peace and Security Network - Canada: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and good morning to you all. I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to appear before you today.
My name is Jessica Tomlin, and I'm the Executive Director of the MATCH International Women's Fund. As many of you around the table will know, we have been supporting women's movements over the last 40 years. We are Canada's only international women's fund, and we strive to channel more resources directly into women-led, community-based organizations that serve women and girls.
We support organizations in 25 countries globally, and because of this, my remarks today will focus on the vital role women's organizations are playing across the broad spectrum of women's peace and security.
Two years ago, the MATCH fund launched a global call for proposals to take the pulse on the state of women's organizations around the world, many of them in conflict-torn countries. We received nearly 1,000 proposals, the large majority, 75 per cent of which, asking for money in relation to combatting violence against women. It still remains, conflict or no conflict, the most pervasive issue standing in the way of women's full realization of their rights. Of these thousand or more proposals, we received $3 million worth of requests from women's organizations working specifically in conflict-torn countries. We were able to fund seven. I'm here today on behalf of the other 159.
When I last spoke to this committee in March 2014, I shared that the average annual income of a grassroots, community-led women's organization was $20,000 annually. This figure has dropped significantly to $12,000 in sub-Saharan Africa.
Today let me also highlight that 48 per cent of these organizations never receive core funding for day-to-day necessities. Half of these organizations do not have funding for turning on the lights, powering the Internet, much less hiring staff. It is therefore no surprise that one in five of these organizations regularly face the heartbreaking decision to close their doors forever.
Yet these are the organizations that have the greatest positive impact on women living in conflict. When they close their doors due to a lack of funding, women cannot access valuable services. These are the women that stand in the way of the side effects of violent conflict in its many ugly forms: early forced marriage, trafficking, rape and other forms of extreme violence. I implore the committee to see the work that women do at the grassroots as an essential part of brokering peace. I will illustrate this quickly by drawing on examples of women's organizations that we currently support working in situations of conflict.
During the 2014 protests in Ukraine, women's organizations were the ones staffing hotlines and volunteering at pop-up medical clinics. It is also these women's organizations that are working hard to mitigate the rise in trafficking because 1 in 10 Ukrainians know of a woman who has been trafficked since the onset of this conflict.
In Uganda, an organization by the name of Akina Mama wa Afrika that we support ensures that women in the Great Lakes region are included in peace negotiation processes. This year, the Pan-African Association reviewed the implementation of the Kampala declaration, and 90 per cent of the organization's recommendations were taken up by the Ugandan government.
In the DRC, 1.7 million women in a 2011 survey reported having been raped, most often by armed combatants. Midwives of a South Kivu women's organization noticed that a significant number of pregnant women with whom they worked were carrying the child of their rapist. Due to the midwives' unique position within the community, this organization provided midwives with training to deliver trauma services to these pregnant rape survivors.
In Colombia, sexual violence is widespread and has been used by all sides in the conflict as a war strategy. A recent study situated the impunity rate for these crimes at 98 per cent. Women's groups worked tirelessly over years to pass a new law just last year that protects survivors and improves access to justice.
In spite of the fact that these organizations run wide and deep, responding in ways few others can, they remain the most underfunded asset in the international peace and security effort. In April 2015, Canada announced an additional $5.5 million to address sexual and gender-based violence in fragile and conflict-affected areas.
As the most recent government progress report on Canada's action plan specifically states:
The empowerment of women, in decision-making processes, including for conflict resolution, is central to Canada's foreign policy.
By all means, this is a welcome and necessary commitment. However, of the organizations that receive that $5.5 million, not one of them is a women's rights organization. By that, I mean an organization that is led by women working to support women and girls and working at the community level. We cannot empower women if we are unwilling to increase our direct support to women and organizations in conflict zones.
I once again reiterate that Canada must commit in a significant, long-term way to grassroots women's organizations as they are an essential asset in building lasting peace.
To conclude, I would also like to echo my support for the Global Acceleration Instrument for Women's Peace and Security, which is on track to launch next fall. This instrument is just one of the ways we can work together to put much-needed funding into the hands of women in conflict areas. Propping up those organizations will ensure higher success in brokering peace and keeping people safe.
Thank you very much for your time and for listening to me today. I would be very happy to answer senators' questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
We will go to Senator Eaton first.
Senator Eaton: To the UN, do we have data or research showing why women are not lining up to join the military? I understand the roadblocks woman in the military would face, which were explained to us by the previous panel, but do we actually have data showing why women are not interested in joining police, peacekeepers and the military? If so, what does it show?
Ms. Valji: Thank you very much for that question.
When looking at why we have such low numbers of women peacekeepers, we are finding that two obstacles feed into that. The first is the concrete obstacles coming into the national military. We find consistently that the numbers deployed from the national military by troop-contributing countries to peacekeeping forces is even lower than women's participation in the national military. We have a range of obstacles women face coming into the national military, and many of these are institutional and cultural challenges.
UN Women recently ran the first pilot two-week training of female military officers. The idea of that was to create a pool of women military officers who are ready for rapid deployment to peacekeeping forces, to be used in particular for outreach to communities for early warning information, gender crimes investigations, et cetera. What we found as a side outcome of this two-week training was that it built a community of practice within the women who were sharing common experiences of harassment, abuse, obstacles within their national militaries, as well as obstacles within their deployment to peacekeeping.
From the national militaries to the peacekeeping, we are finding that some of the troop-contributing countries are stating that it costs them more to deploy women, which I don't believe stands up to scrutiny. However, one of the issues they do raise is that as the UN, we don't have the facilities on the ground for women's deployment and that we don't have separate facilities; for example, safe spaces, sanitation facilities, et cetera.
So one of the things that we are looking at is whether we can create a financial incentive scheme to deploy more female peacekeepers. We pay a premium for peacekeeping trips that deploy quickly to dangerous areas and for gender balance that then helps to address it within the national militaries as well.
Senator Eaton: What I wanted to do was start at the beginning. Are there as many women applying to enter the military and police forces in countries like Canada and the U.S. as there are men? Do we have data showing that?
Ms. Valji: I'm not aware of Canada's specific data. We could certainly have a look at that.
We do run into even the challenge of finding out what the gender numbers are in national militaries globally. One of the reasons for this is obviously countries are often not keen to disclose this information for security purposes.
What I can tell you from experience is that the numbers are certainly not the same. We find that a package of measures, whether quotas, temporary special measures, institutional reform, et cetera, is needed to increase these numbers. They are also different by country and different by police and military.
We have made significant gains in increasing the number of women police officers, including in peacekeeping troops, but we have not made the same gains in national militaries and peacekeeping forces.
Ms. Woroniuk: I think it's a question for when the RCMP and the Department of National Defence appear before you, but we certainly know that the numbers of women currently serving in these two institutions are very low and there has been only marginal or slow progress. I assume it would be a reflection of the number of people opting for those as career choices in the beginning.
Senator Eaton: I am trying to get to the root causes.
Ms. Woroniuk: As a young woman, if you saw the media coverage of several recent events, including the Deschamps inquiry and the incident that happened at the Royal Military College that Senator Nancy Ruth referred to, if you saw that, it would perhaps make you question a decision to enter the military as a career.
Senator Eaton: I could say, too, that every time we see a body coming back from Afghanistan or a conflict zone, that might discourage men from going into the military.
I hear your point. It would be interesting to have hard data as to why women are not lining up to join the military.
Thank you.
Senator Ataullahjan: Ms. Valji, I feel that the situation for women and girls cannot be changed without changing the attitudes of men and boys. Are there any efforts being focused on men and boys? The recent HeForShe campaign attracted a lot of attention. However, we did see the reaction to some men to Emma Watson. She faced a lot of criticism, and some of it was quite brutal. Has that campaign had any relation to peace and security efforts?
Ms. Valji: Yes. In fact, we are working closely with our executive office to take forward the HeForShe campaign and engage it with the work that we're doing on peace and security. Part of what we are looking at doing, as the HeForShe campaign took off, is now trying to link this to concrete actions. In the area of peace and security, we have created concrete actions targeted at specific actors within peace and security, actions that they can take forward in order to further the women, peace and security agenda.
I think the engagement of men and boys is crucially important, but I think you also point to something when you talk about the reaction to Emma Watson's speech. As I was saying, as the international community was facing the rising threat of violent extremism, we are less willing to look at a global rise of conservativism and a backlash on women's right. That is, in fact, all connected. The focus out there detracts from the fact that there is a rising conservativism that we see every year at the UN during the Commission on the Status of Women, a push-back on women and girl's rights that I believe feeds into a global push-back on women and girl's rights that we really need to guard against. Yes to engaging men and boys, whether they be government officials, whether they be diplomats, whether they be peacekeepers. A huge area of our work as UN Women is training of peacekeepers on pre-deployment training, on prevention of sexual violence, and finding the individual champions that are needed to take this agenda forward.
Senator Ataullahjan: Talking about peacekeepers, there have been consistent allegations of sexual abuse in UN peacekeeping operations, recently in transactions for food and medicine in Haiti. How did this happen? Was 1325 or related resolutions on women integrated into the peacekeepers' training? What has been done to resolve this? This culture of sexual abuse seems to follow UN peacekeeping forces wherever they go.
Ms. Valji: There are different issues to look at here.
With regard to CAR, those were not in fact UN troops at the time. They were French troops. However, if you follow the trajectory of what happened in terms of reporting, the slowness of response, the inadequacy, et cetera, there is an effort to address all of that currently with regard to investigations of MINUSCA within the country, as well as the recent establishment of an investigation by the Secretary-General into this issue as well.
I believe these issues are much more structural. As you note, we seem to see periodic scandals of this nature arising. I do think that if we relate this back to the women, peace and security agenda, we know that where we have increased numbers of female peacekeepers, the incidents of SEA decrease. There is a different institutional culture that comes with women's participation and inclusion. I believe that is one of the concrete areas that we need to be look at furthering.
In terms of the investigation, the reporting and the response, all of that requires a much more concerted reply. I know that General Dallaire has been leading the Code Blue initiative, calling for an international commission of inquiry into sexual exploitation and abuse within the UN. This is one of the things coming out of the global study on 1325: Whether it be revoking immunity for peacekeepers or independent investigations, some kind of mechanism needs to be much more consistently put in place.
Senator Andreychuk: I want to pursue the peacekeeping issues. With Resolution 1325, we focus in on our own countries, and I think that's important, but the conflict zones and the women in those areas are of prime concern to me.
There was a lot of talk in my work that women don't get a chance in some of these countries to be peacekeepers, and not just because of all the other barriers for women in the military. Peacekeepers get more money than the local national forces, and therefore the lineup is usually from the traditional group and women are less able to access the peacekeeping positions. You've said they make a difference when they are there, and I tend to agree, but some of the barriers are just financial. Can you comment on that?
Secondly, I have been monitoring this but not that closely, but we need to set up institutions and awareness in, say, Africa. The Kofi Anan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, for example, should have a strong component about women in conflict zones, women who have lived through it being mentors and being in charge of the programs, because they know better on the ground what is necessary than we do from outside. Can you comment on the progress of those?
Ms. Valji: Thank you, senator, for that question.
With regard to the financial obstacles, absolutely, and one of the reasons for one of the concrete recommendations coming out the global study that would really benefit from support of countries such as Canada is the question of financial incentivization for troop-contributing countries. As I was saying, we pay a premium to troop-contributing countries who are willing to deploy faster and to more dangerous areas, et cetera. We need a gender balance premium. We need to be incentivizing troop-contributing countries to be increasing the number of women that they are deploying. This would also create internal incentives within their national militaries to bring more women on board. That's a concrete way in which we can move forward to address the financial obstacles, but also through financial incentives.
With regard to the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, I absolutely agree. In the last two years, they have had a relationship with the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sexual Violence in Conflict. The UN system has been working with them systematically to do training of AU troops, in particular, on prevention of sexual violence.
I absolutely agree with you; I think we need more women who have been affected by conflict leading these. What we have found, however, is that what increases our effectiveness is also operational training. For example, the training that UN Women does on prevention of sexual violence for peacekeepers has been designed by General Patrick Cammaert, a former force commander in Eastern DRC. It was designed by the military, for the military. We find that it gets more traction and implementation when it is designed in that way. But I think it needs to be coupled with greater participation of women impacted by conflict so that they can also see the consequences and the objectives of the training at the end of the day.
The Chair: Ms. Valji, one of my concerns is young women from the West going to conflict zones, and the focus becomes on them rather than on the women in the conflict zones. You put it very profoundly when you talked about women's empowerment being a concrete buffer to radicalization. Can you expand on that, please?
Ms. Valji: Absolutely. We see that where there is greater gender equality, the chances of radicalizing young men to an agenda, which at its core is a push-back on women's rights and gender equality, becomes more difficult. It is more difficult to have young men accepting an agenda of oppression if they have been raised in communities with mothers and sisters and who are educated with women in positions of political power. It is more difficult to socialize young men into gender inequality when that has not resonated with their own experiences. This is the first thing. So when we talk about prevention, we need to be looking at this as a concrete tool of prevention.
With regard to the focus on women's recruitment from Western countries, I absolutely agree. That is one the challenges we have encountered. We are seeing an increased focus on women, peace and security and violent extremism, but much of that has been on the recruitment from Western countries, rather than a focus on the work women's organizations are doing on the ground to prevent, address and demobilize radicalization.
But we do need to be looking at what are the driving factors, even for women's recruitment from the West, because that links to the underpinnings of this agenda. This is a gap area. The push and pull factors for recruitment are different for different contexts and groups. This is a gap area that UN Women is trying to look into at the moment by conducting research into the push and pull factors for recruitment. How do we integrate that into counter-messaging? How do you also integrate that into de-radicalization of returning fighters?
I think the focus, as my two colleagues have said, needs to be much more on women's organizations, women's civil society, on the ground, who are concretely doing this work on a daily basis, whether it be addressing the trauma of sexual-violence survivors, documentation, prevention, early warning — that is our first-line response.
I want to use this as an opportunity to mention and thank my colleagues for mentioning the Global Acceleration Instrument on Women, Peace and Security. This will be launched in October alongside the high-level review of the Security Council. This is an initiative of the Civil Society of the UN and member states, jointly together. Canada has played a real leadership role in helping to get to this point. This is about concretely getting the resources, the expertise, the capacity to women's organizations on the ground as well as to supporting crisis countries for their implementation of women, peace and security, particularly during the funding gap that we see during crisis and conflict.
As I said, less than 2 per cent of our funding goes to addressing women, peace and security in these crisis contexts, and this is simply inadequate to allow us to achieve what we need to in terms of sustainable peace.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
To both Ms. Tomlin and Ms. Woroniuk, when you go to conflict zones, Canada is very much respected. Canada's work is respected, and that continues. But my frustration is that the lead we took on the women, peace and security agenda in 2000 and for many years afterwards, we have lost our way. I am very frustrated that we have not even had a national action plan since 2013, and even that plan happened after a lot of push from this committee. What is going on?
Ms. Woroniuk: I agree.
What we hear from our members as they travel around the world is that Canada used to be a very important player on the global stage and locally. We had programs that supported human rights initiatives and women's organizations in different countries that were previously funded by CIDA. These were cut a number of years ago. People are saying, "Where is Canada's leadership now?''
We hear that this government has undertaken specific initiatives in terms of action at the G8, as Ms. Tomlin mentioned, the announcements on funding for prevention of sexual violence and conflict, but there doesn't seem to be a coherent overall approach of leadership, resources and dedication to women's rights on this particular agenda.
In terms of the national action plan, it runs until 2016, but what we've seen consistently is a major lag in reporting on the plan. As I mentioned in our remarks, we are still waiting for the report to cover the period up to March of 2014. So we don't know in a coherent fashion what's been happening, what's been achieved and what the results are. As civil society organizations, we are often left a bit in the dark about what is actually happening and how the government is fulfilling the obligations that it set out in the national action plan.
Ms. Tomlin: I would just add that for me it's the notion of watering the roots and building and strengthening women's movements. We have incredible longitudinal research that points to the fact that women's movements are the first line of defence across a number of issues, peace and security being one. As funding cycles become increasingly unpredictable, project oriented and indicator focused, there is the nuance of the way in which women's organizations work, often times with a community garden, a women's shelter, an outreach program and a men's counselling session all under one roof that they may not have the rent for. These kinds of things are happening all the time. It's very difficult sometimes for these organizations to play the game that other international NGOs or bigger players can do; and because of that, women's organizations have really suffered. That has ultimately, I believe, had a big impact in terms of how that women's movement is sustained over time. I would argue that that is perhaps part of the problem now because it's been so crippled over the last decade.
The Chair: There is a great concern that we are not moving as swiftly as we were on the women, peace and security agenda, especially when it comes to national action plans. We have asked DFATD and Defence to come and explain it to us, and hopefully they will come soon. We will take your concerns to them.
I want to thank Ms. Valji of UN Women, Ms. Woroniuk of the Women's Peace Network and Ms. Tomlin from MATCH International. You always make yourselves available to make our work flourish and so we greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)