Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on June 10th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We'll go now to Mr. Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Haag, once again, I appreciate your being here.

I'm going to tag along on my colleague's question. There is a societal, cultural mindset that you're battling along with everything else. I think you're correct that one of the ways is to make sure the laws are enforced. When people are prosecuted and people are jailed, it sends a very strong message.

I'm wondering, have you come across any cultural male champions on the ground who are promoting women's rights in some of these provinces?

[Staci Haag]

I cannot speak to any specific names. In a lot of the reports I had, the names were general, more positions, but I can tell you in Sayed Abad, the girls' school is open because the local elders okayed it. In Zurmat, which is in Paktia province, finding women and then losing them and finding them again happened over and over. The reason we were even able to take a baby step forward was that the men said they needed to have women.

Part of it is very calculating. They understand they'll get more aid if they have women who can apply for some of the specific women's programs. It's about getting them to understand the benefit to their community when women are able to apply for the tailoring courses, for the sewing courses. Most local elders are realizing this. They're not stupid; they're very practical people who understand the consequences of this. I don't have any specific names for you, but I can tell you that in a lot of these communities, over the time I was there, I started to see more and more men say they needed to do this because it would help them.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

That's more practical than idealistic.

[Staci Haag]

Yes, it is. It is completely practical, which I think is more sustainable, quite frankly.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Yes.

You mentioned that whatever their percentage was—and you said you weren't able to get a handle on it obviously because of many different factors—it is primarily young girls who are in school.

I have conjecture about it, but I'd rather hear it from you. What happens as the girls get older? Why aren't they retained in school?

[Staci Haag]

They're forced to work. They're forced to get married. They're pulled out.

I think it's easier to send a little girl to school because there's nothing else you can really do with her. As a girl gets older, she becomes valuable in different ways to her family, and they start to pull her out. It's definitely about work, family. The same thing happens to boys in rural areas, just for different reasons. Boys might be pulled out to work on the farm. Girls might be pulled out to sew or to get married very young.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

You mentioned that in Afghanistan, with the war mindset, the women were pushed to the side and men we're saying they'll handle this. We've done a number of different studies, or at least heard lots of evidence with regard to rape used as a weapon of war.

How prevalent was that in Afghanistan, the Taliban trying to make a point and demoralizing the men by using that tactic? Did that happen in Afghanistan?

[Staci Haag]

I haven't heard a whole lot about it. It doesn't mean it didn't happen; I just cannot speak to that because I have no idea, I'm sorry.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Okay.

Finally, you mentioned from a ground-zero aspect you can see a lot of progress, but when you compare it to the western world, then it's an entirely different story.

You said the past 18 months, so I assume you've been engaged very intimately in the past 18 months. Along with people talking about what they want, has there been a continuing increase in the conversation about women's rights as well?

[Staci Haag]

Yes. In my program very specifically, we actively hired women to work for us. We went from zero to quite a bit. The progress I saw might be, again, overemphasized because I saw zero activity, and then by the time I left 18 months later we had women engaging and advocating for education and smaller things too. In some of the more progressive districts, the women and the men were meeting together in joint advocacy efforts, which is a fairly big step forward, and one of the paths you want to take.

Yes, I've seen progress. You also see a huge number of people coming to Kabul because they feel that will give their kids a better chance at a better education. You also see a lot of girls who get an education want to leave because they don't feel they have a good future, which is damaging, I think, for a country in the long term, but you completely understand why they might want to leave.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Do you have anything else, Mr. Sweet?

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

No, that's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Then maybe I can ask a question before we go to Professor Cotler, as Mr. Sweet has a little time left over.

He had raised a question about parents advocating proactively for their daughters to be involved in education. I can certainly understand why a parent would want it. Let me flip it around. I've never understood—and maybe you have some insight into this—what the Taliban has had against women's education. Surely there is no Koranic injunction against women having an education, knowing how to read, and so on. Is it some sort of tribal ideology? What drives this or what has driven it?

[Staci Haag]

I think that a lot of it is rooted in fear. My personal opinion is that a lot of the oppression of women, not just in Afghanistan but in a lot of places in the world, is rooted in fear of sharing power. When you keep 50% of your population down so far they can never challenge you, then that's 50% fewer potential opponents you're going to have for power in the future. It is a political decision.

It's also rooted in tradition, in the tribal pre-Islamic tradition. Islam is fairly good on women's rights in a lot of ways, but like everything else, it's open to interpretation, and the Taliban chose an interpretation that keeps people oppressed because the further down you oppress someone, the less likely they are to rise up and challenge you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Right. Do they have an Islamic overlay for explaining why they behave this way, or do they just assert this as a matter of power and it's, “We want women not to be educated. We are the law, and that's that”?

[Staci Haag]

I'm sure they've found verses that can support them. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but it's no different from any other religion. You find a verse that supports you and then you go forward and pretend that's the only one that exists.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Right, fair enough.

I'll turn the questioning over to Professor Cotler. Thank you.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like as well to welcome you, Ms. Haag, and thank you for your presentation and your own experience and involvement in Afghanistan.

You mentioned in your presentation today that passing good laws will not really mean much unless the requisite implementation is there. This brings me to one particular law among others, and that is the elimination of violence against women law, which sought, as you know, to enhance the rights of women and to criminalize violence, in particular domestic violence. How well known is this law? What are the perceptions of it? What, in your view, would be the levels of support for this law among, let's say, the police, the judiciary, and the military?

[Staci Haag]

I would say that the law is very well known by the more educated activist women who live in the major cities, and very less well known by the women who it is supposed to help the most, the women who live in the rural areas without access to justice.

In terms of the police and the military, I can't speak specifically to the police in Afghanistan. I have done this in other similar countries, where in my experience the police tend to do what they think is best for the family. A lot of times that's sending the woman back home. I can't imagine it's a whole lot different in Afghanistan than in some of the other places I've worked.

Generally speaking, the law is seen as not really well enforced by anyone. If you were to do a survey outside the major population centres, I would guess that for most women it has had absolutely no impact on their life. A lot of times, in my experience, the women I've worked with, when I hear stories about people addressing domestic violence.... I just heard a story the other day that a woman was walking by a house and heard the woman crying and went in and talked to the husband and got some elders involved, and he agreed to stop beating her. That's how domestic violence, frankly, is being addressed right now, on that kind of personal level, but not at the legal or national level.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

You spoke about the importance of implementation. Given what you just said, do you think that the law at this point, the implementation, will come more in the way you just described rather than having the framework of implementation, mainly the judiciary, the police, both actively educated and involved in the implementation?

[Staci Haag]

I think it's both. I think that if there are no consequences for abusers, then they will continue to abuse. A key component of creating consequences is doing a better job of both educating, and quite frankly, forcing the police and the judiciary to play their role. Abusers are being let go, and they're being let out early. As long as that is happening at that kind of macro level, the smaller story I just told you is a finger in a dam. It really does need to happen more at the implementation level, and it's just not right now.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

You mentioned that over the last 18 months more women were prepared to talk about what they want and what may be needed. My question is, in the course of the election campaign itself, were women's issues, the rights of women and girls, part of the discourse in the election campaign?

[Staci Haag]

They were. I wasn't involved specifically in the political campaign, so I wasn't as entrenched in that. I know that the women I worked with all had their candidates, and they were all very engaged in talking. Some of the candidates did better. Candidates were more likely, I read, to bring out their wives and talk about it a little more. The general consensus, based on what I read, was that there was a little more conversation about that.