Mr. Chair and esteemed members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, thank you for the invite to participate in your study on the implementation of Canada's universal periodic review.
My name is Anjum Sultana, and I'm the director of youth leadership and policy advocacy at Plan International Canada, an international development and humanitarian charity focused on advancing children's rights and equality for girls, globally. As a member of the Plan International federation, we're committed to ensuring the realization of children's rights, gender equality and inclusion through our participation in international human rights mechanisms such as the CRC, CEDAW and UPR. Furthermore, my testimony today is grounded in the work we do here in Canada to advance policy dialogue on girls' rights and youth leadership. Over the last four years, we've engaged over 300,000 young people in our programming and over 1.3 million people in Canada through our youth-focused public engagement initiatives.
Children, young people and future generations are vital to Canada's prosperity. They're not just the leaders of tomorrow; they're the leaders of today. Firstly, to ensure intergenerational fairness, Canada must take urgent action to enable the full realization of children's rights, equality for girls and inclusion. This includes health, education, safety, protection and adequate standards of living for all children, especially girls and young women, in all of their diversity.
As noted in the 2022 CRC review and 2023 UPR, this must include developing a comprehensive law on children's rights at the federal level in line with the principles of the convention and ensuring equal implementation across Canada. To that end, we're encouraged by the work of Senator Rosemary Moodie and several children's rights agencies in developing Bill S-282, a national strategy for children and youth. Furthermore, as noted in UPR 2023, we encourage Canada to meet the internationally agreed target of 0.7% of gross national income towards official development assistance and to increase prioritization of children's rights in its international co-operation agreements.
There are over eight million children in Canada who are counting on our collective leadership and investment in their futures. Let's do right by them. It will pay dividends not only in Canada, but around the world.
Secondly, as noted by my colleagues, the federal government must work in partnership with provincial and territorial governments to develop and adopt a national framework for international human rights implementation. The framework must include several elements, such as the increased resourcing of, and improved consultation with, indigenous peoples' organizations and civil society organizations, including young people themselves and youth-led and youth-serving organizations. This echoes a key recommendation in Plan International Canada's CanYouth Pact calling for standardized processes to ensure meaningful youth engagement. Until we are all equal, Canada must be a vocal champion in advancing human rights internationally.
