Good afternoon. My name is Linda Dale. I'm the executive director of Children/Youth as Peacebuilders, CAP as we call it.
First, I thank the committee very much for this invitation to examine and speak about the role of Canada in child protection. As a small organization, for which I'm the director, we really appreciate this opportunity. I also want to say that on a personal level I'm really delighted to be here. It's not very often you get invited to tell the Canadian government what it should do. This is quite a treat. I came all the way from the Bay of Fundy to do this, so thank you very much.
I want to begin by providing a little bit of background about CAP. Our work focuses on youth contributions to peacebuilding in active conflicts and in the transitions to peace. Rather than being service oriented, our programs involve their direct participation. In that way, I could say it's almost like a youth leadership program and lots of volunteer time on their part to work. As a Colombian youth once said to me, “We are working for the future we want rather than the one they are giving us.“ Most of the young people who are involved in CAP and involved in the programs we do, have been directly affected or involved in war and active conflict in some shape or form.
We've been operating for about 14 years and we've worked with young people in many different countries. The first step in our work is always a participatory research project, to be able to understand the situation through the prism of young people's experience because we want to know both from their point of view the differences and the strengths of how they see their world. As we know, it is often quite different from how adults understand their world. This has also been used as a basis for our projects.
This brings up a strategy question in terms of child protection work that I know the committee is probably looking at. It's generally agreed that a systems-based approach is a more effective way to do child protection work, particularly with large initiatives. CAP would agree with that, but to be honest, in practice we don't do that. That's partly because of the scale of our organization, which is very small. It's also because we work very directly with young people, and young people usually want to focus on concrete issues that they understand are affecting their lives right now, rather than looking at a more general systems-based approach. They see that as the best way they can contribute to positive change.
As they're working, young people usually see how things are interconnected, but their way of working and their approach is usually more issues-based. From my point of view, I understand how a systems-based approach is more effective in many ways because it's more comprehensive. However, I also know there are certain issues, particularly for children in conflict situations, that are very unique in terms of their characteristics, and therefore, require special interventions.
I would therefore probably recommend to the committee that both approaches are required. Yes, a systems-based approach is very important, but there are certain issues that require special attention.
In the past few years, CAP has focused considerable attention on the protection of children and youth in terms of sexual violence and forced marriage. As part of that, we recently produced a collective portrait of the Lord's Resistance Army's forced wife system in northern Uganda. I will use some of that information from that collective portrait as a reference point, which will focus primarily on early and forced marriage and also on sexual violence against young people, particularly in conflict situations.
I'll start by reminding us, I guess, why we do all this work, why it's important. When we were doing the work with the girls, they were very concerned about privacy. They were very concerned about security. So we had them produce masks that they coloured to represent their thoughts and feelings about their time in the bush and their time with the LRA. I'm going to read you one of the interpretations.
This is by Vicky. She said:
I am Vicky. I want to explain the different colours and feathers I put on my mask. The blue is for the time when I was still at home. I was really very happy with my family and all of our life together. The yellow colour is about cruelty – because it was cruelty that made the LRA come and get me and take me into the bush. The black colour is for that time. I was in darkness; I thought I would never come out of it. The red colour is for when I was moving with the LRA, all the danger. There was a lot of bloodshed, a lot of death, a lot of suffering. So I put red colour for that. Then there is the top part of my mask with the feathers, the greenish colour and also the butterfly. It is for the time when I flew back like a butterfly to my home. Now I think there is going to be a lot of things that will be good in my life. I have a feeling of a new life.
Vicky was with the rebels for eight years. This is a great hope for the future on her part.
The recommendations I would like to make are to look at how we can support young people to both protect themselves from these violations—or how we can help that to happen—and also to help them in the transition for their life in the future.
As I talk I'm going to show you a very brief, two-minute slide show. I hope that the slides don't distract you from listening to me. These are slides of the masks that the girls made. As I say, each mask has quite an elaborate interpretation, but we don't have time for all. I'll briefly tell you about this one. They said that they put red around here because they wanted to say, “This is our lipstick, and we're so happy that now we're going to have a new life.”
I want to make some recommendations and I'm going to begin with community programming. I would like to recommend that a small rapid-response funding program on child protection be established and operate out of Canada's embassies. This fund could provide support for local child protection issues, both emergencies and emerging problems specific to the local context. For us over here in Canada, we often don't know what's going on, but people in the embassies do. They can provide very much needed support very quickly. I think that's really important.
I think it's important to establish clear parameters for this fund, one focused on child protection. I recommend that these funds be limited to community-based national organizations or a local organization.
Second, I recommend that Canada invest in programs to support the resiliency and leadership of female youths who escape from forced marriages or are survivors of sexual violence. Some of the elements that I think would be important in this are sexual and reproductive health services to help girls recover from the physical and emotional effects of these violations. For example, the majority of girls abducted by the LRA were 11 to 14 years old; that was the preferred age. They were continually raped and many still have injuries from this. STDs are common, and to be frank, female returnees can be preyed upon by males as they are seen as spoiled goods, so programs are needed to both fortify their physical health and strengthen their sense of self in ways that encourage them to protect themselves and to make positive decisions.
Third, I think these programs should have an element of maternal care. Most girls who have been forced into marriage have also been forced to become pregnant, even if they are very young. These young mothers need support, particularly once they are outside a contained area where all their actions are controlled. Because of the stigma attached to sexual violence, they cannot always depend on their families.
Education is important. Again, to use a northern Uganda example in that war, many girls were held for seven or eight years or longer. They lost the literacy skills they had before abduction. They have not been inside a school environment, so it is very scary for them. They don't know how to handle it. It is not just enough to be given the opportunity to go to school; they have to be given remedial assistance.
Leadership and citizenship are also important. Girls who have survived these situations have enormous resiliency. Programs can have a tendency to forget this and identify them as victims in ways that enhances passivity. This is a complaint I hear from girls all the time. Instead we should be providing opportunities for them to learn about the meaning of citizenship in civil society and strengthening their capacities and the avenues for them to contribute to their communities. This is particularly important, I think, for forced wives and children born in captivity, as they are often separated out from their societies.
This brings me to the fourth point, and that's birth registration. I'm sure this is something that other people have talked to you about, how important it is. It is the basis for all child protection work. It's fundamental.
I want to speak about particular other aspects of birth registration that I think are important, particularly in African countries and in countries where there has been a conflict.
When girls have children in these situations, usually those children are not going to be registered, so it's very important to do that as soon as they come back home. In African countries, at least the ones I've been working in, there are two levels of citizenship. I think it's important to think about that. It's not just the national legal citizenship; it's also your clan citizenship. That is usually through your father. Girls in northern Uganda, even if they were with these men for eight years, often never knew their names. They were not allowed to know their names. So when they come back home, the clan leaders will not recognize the children, because they say they need to know the father's name. That's something that needs to be looked at.
That's not to say that birth registration at the national level is not important. It's just that when we do this work and support this very important work, it's important to understand the complexities of it.
At the prevention and policy level, I'd like to make two main recommendations. One, I hope that Canada continues and strengthens its work to eliminate early forced marriage and to make this practice, which affects the lives of so many girls, unacceptable and something that is universally condemned.
There are a few points. I think it is very important to maintain the agitative force as it recognizes the lack of free and full consent and thus identifies forced marriage as a violation of a person's right to liberty. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is also critical, particularity its article supporting a child's right to have a say in decisions affecting her life. Of course, in conflict situations, this choice does not exist.
I think it would be useful and important for Canada to gain a strong knowledge of the practices of early and forced marriage in different contexts and cultures. This would deepen our credibility and capacity to speak with authority about the roots of these practices and their consequences for gender equality and girls' rights.
I think, finally, it is also very important to make the connection between forced marriage and sexual violence. I've been told that recommendations are usually given in odd numbers, so I have to do one more. That would be just to say how important I think it is in any program to include participation of young people.
That is not to say that young people need to be responsible for their own protection, but it is to say that if we, as adults, take it away from them, and they don't have the responsibility to support themselves and others around them, they will be feeling more vulnerable rather than stronger.
Those are my recommendations.
I know you've probably heard from many other people, as well as from my two colleagues. I'm sure we all look forward to your questions.