Foreign Affairs Committee on May 14th, 2014

[Dr. Susan Bissell]

Where we are depends on whether it's Monday or Thursday in those discussions, because it's just a constant turnover.

We call ourselves the “C-six”, the child-focused agencies who have come together in their advocacy, together with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children. So we're in a reasonably good space right now, but we don't believe we can let up for a moment.

As an example, Canada in New York is very good friend of child protection in all contexts—in armed conflict as well as non-armed conflict—so we are planning a couple of things leading up to a higher-level meeting in September. But even as early as June, we're just continuing to lobby governments. Actually, we've prepared together a list of possible indicators. We've worked with measurement people to come up with some suggestions for this.

We have a lot of interaction with Jeff Sachs and his group to whatever extent they have influence, but if Canada would throw even more of its weight into those conversations, I think that would be very important.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Are you able to share that information with our committee?

[Dr. Susan Bissell]

Yes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

That would be great. Thanks.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You're right on time: perfect.

Mr. Schellenberger, sir, you have seven minutes.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

That you very much.

Ms. Vandenberg, my wife and I at Christmastime were very fortunate to adopt a child, Elizabeth, from Malawi. She's eight years old from a family of peasant farmers. She is not labourer, and she loves going to school, so she's getting some education.

It's probably easy to set up some of the things that you've been talking about in areas that are relatively stable. Malawi right now is relatively stable. But in war-torn areas, and in some of these countries where the rule of law just isn't there, it has to be very, very difficult. There's corruption, there's everything to go against even education.

Now, it's my understanding that the investment in education in Afghanistan, and the education of girls, was one of the foremost parts of the Canadian government initiative there. Yes we had forces there, but along with that we did support the education of girls, and to give more education.

Could you just speak a little wee bit about what happens in some of the more stable countries like Malawi, and what might happen in Afghanistan, and the change we've made there?

[Elly Vandenberg]

When it comes to child protection, or education in particular?

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Education and child protection, because I think they're very much combined.

[Elly Vandenberg]

I'll start with the question around war-torn areas.

That's why I was raising the issue of child-friendly spaces. There are emergency contacts where safe spaces can be protected and informal education in particular can take place. A lot of work can be done around societal norms, and changing some of those norms around early forced marriage, child labour, and gender roles, in those child-safe spaces.

In terms of other environments, there's both formal and informal education. It's important that children are in school and that the quality of the education is good, but there's also the issue of the kind of education that children need for life skills training, peer-to-peer education.

I took a group of MPs to Cambodia and Thailand, and we saw the incredible work that children were doing around helping to educate each other and about how to protect each other. There was a particular initiative that was done with boys, called My Son. Late at night, they'd come out with their lanterns, and kids would come out from the street and gather around these young boys. Giving them a voice to describe what it takes to protect a child had great meaning for their peers.

Those are some examples that come to mind.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Ms. Bissell, how do UNICEF and other partners coordinate a global response to child protection?

[Dr. Susan Bissell]

Oh, wow.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I know it's a big question.

[Dr. Susan Bissell]

We have an eight-point plan for this. I'll skip some of the points in it, but let me start with a couple of them.

One, which has been two years in the making but we'll launch in September in India, is called Know Violence—and the “no” is in red. It's a global learning initiative on violence prevention in children. It's not just passive learning; it's scholars, academicians, and others from around the world, ordering their research on the magnitude of the problem, and a second group working on what works to prevent it, so bringing in the research that they have.

Lincoln Chen, if any of you know him, is a leading public health professional, and he has agreed to chair the steering group on this. Amartya Sen has agreed to grandfather the process. We'll be publishing. We'll be getting the BBC to do things. We'll be really upping our game, in terms of what the science tells us about preventing and responding to violence against children. That's one initiative, and that's galvanizing us globally.

A second part of the eight-point plan is getting the academy around the world—academicians and universities—to take more seriously child protection as a discipline, an inter-disciplinary discipline. It's not charity. It's actually very important scientific work. We have an international advisory committee, made up of scholars from India, Mexico, South Africa, Scotland, Ethiopia, and a couple of others, and we need to get into French-speaking Africa so that we address some of the linguistic issues. This is a start, and Harvard is the home for the establishment of the first-ever Master's concentration in child protection. Those advisors from around the world are growing their own field, in their own countries, in their own academic institutions.

The third thing that's been incredibly galvanizing is a communication initiative that my boss, executive director Tony Lake, launched last July. A bigger impact than anything in UNICEF'S history was the launching of an end violence initiative. Some of you may have seen this quite famous and powerful PSA with Liam Neeson. It's not about Liam Neeson. The sort of chapeau for this is to make visible the invisible. What's happened is that the global chapeau has created a platform at the local level, in country after country around the world, for the excellent work of many civil society organizations that were in the shadow, small projects. It's also made it much more legitimate globally for us to have this conversation.

I'll tell you, I spent five years of my life in Bangladesh. When I got there, in 1992, the government didn't want to talk to me about child labour. Look where we are now. There are a number of global things that are galvanizing.

Getting back to the Government of Canada, we've been working with this newly established child protection unit. I couldn't be happier. I spent the morning with them today, strategizing and planning and plotting. I think the more that Canada can grow and bring its voice and its leadership to this, the more other countries will come on board.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Schellenberger.

We'll finish up with Dr. Hsu.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Vandenberg, you spoke about the importance of investing in education, both formal and informal, to help prevent harm to children, and you gave some examples of informal education of peer-to-peer learning and life skills training. I wonder if you could elaborate on that.

Specifically, what can or should the Government of Canada do to encourage that? What kinds of actions should the Government of Canada take, and what would they look like, on the ground, for the children?

[Elly Vandenberg]

Thank you for the question.

I was so focused in response to Mr. Dewar's question about local-level advocacy in country that I didn't actually respond to your question about what the Canadian government should do.

Broadly, there is a trade, diplomacy, and development role for the Canadian government. Around trade, it really is looking at the supply chain and the kinds of agreements we have; looking to ensure that child labour isn't part of that; looking at the link to informal education that's happening at the peer-to-peer level in the streets of Cambodia. And in terms of how it's directly linked, we have to ensure that there are safe alternatives for children to have. It is not enough to be aware that you need to be protected, and aware that you shouldn't be involved in child labour, but to also have those decent employment options out there.

Around diplomacy, the Canadian government has done a great job at highlighting the particular issue of early forced marriage. Informal education deals with the underlying root causes of early forced marriage. It deals with issues of discrimination, of societal norms, of mothers' and grandmothers' ideas about when children should marry and the pressure they're under to have their children married early, so that, again, is the link to informal education.

As to the way in which we can get at this through our development programs, I'm thrilled to see the interest of the development minister around child protection. I look forward to seeing that the same kind of leadership role Canada has played on maternal and newborn child health sees a similar role around child protection, and that we invest in proven interventions that we know work, don't cost a lot of money, and really make a difference in children's lives.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Okay. So there's a potential for an investment there from the development side.

I want to ask about birth registration and how it actually works, again starting with what the Government of Canada could do. Presumably birth registration would involve local government or other local institutions. How does a Government of Canada action affect what happens on a local level? What happens when you try to encourage birth registration?

[Elly Vandenberg]

We can tag-team this, because we both mentioned it. I think it's a good way to show again the system-based approach, because I can speak to it from the community level and Susan then can speak to it from the international-body kind of level.

At the community level, church leaders, for example, play a key role in the conversations they have, when partners come to them and want to marry, to say that it's probably not a good idea and that the couple is kind of young. There is a role there at the community level, or knowing what's happening in relationships. There is a also key role with faith leaders around actually registering marriages. That's sort of a very practical example at the community level.

What we have found in maternal and newborn child health, in child protection programming, is that without a birth certificate, you don't exist. You don't have access to the services that are required, so the role of the Canadian government is about encouraging birth registration as part of programming. It's one of those things that don’t cost a lot and that can be included on the checklist of ensuring that is an element of the programs we support.

You might want to add to that.

[Dr. Susan Bissell]

Sure. I'll try to be brief.

There's an encouraging global movement afoot on this, with various regional bodies. Let me just speak to a meeting that was held in Addis Ababa last week with the African Union. There's an all-Africa push for civil registration and vital statistics.

We're speaking about birth registration, because that's the most relevant part of that systemic approach to child protection. That involves advocating—it could potentially be a role for Canada—with other governments to prioritize birth registration. Financial support is definitely an option. Of late we have had masses of funding coming in through the EU on this. At a country level, child protection actors are leading this together with the health sector and the faith-based community and so on, but the advocacy position is that there needs to be a central civil registration and vital statistics body that is of a high standard. There are about six or seven criteria, including the protection of data, etc.

I would like to share with the committee a guide book we prepared in December for everybody, for the field, to really understand the ABCs of getting birth registration in place. We've seen globally that when countries are boosting their civil registration and vital statistics, they tend to focus first on birth registration. So the role for Canada would be as an advocate in whatever fora.... We know that in Toronto, in a couple of weeks, there will actually be a panel on civil registration and vital statistics as part of the MNCH summit.

Let me stop at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have.

To our witnesses, thank you very much. Once again, I realize we could spend many more hours talking about this. We really appreciate the comments you had today and the input to the committee, so thank you.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.