Afghanistan Committee on Feb. 7th, 2022

[Manuel Fontaine]

First of all, we also have about 400 people in Afghanistan at the moment. We have five small offices—one main office in Kabul and five other offices—and a number of posts as well. Our colleagues can function and can move. Frankly, we've been able to access more territory over the past few months than we've been able to before, because the security has improved to some extent and it's been easier for colleagues to move around. I think we need to say that. It's not always easy, but it has been fairly feasible to move around.

The NGOs may have different experiences. One thing we know is that it also depends a bit on the regions. In some regions it seems to be easier. In others it seems to be a bit more complicated. It varies. We need to keep track, and we need to be engaging and careful, of course, but I want to say that so far, at the moment, it has been easier for us to move around and assess needs and see the reality of the needs on the ground.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

You have two and a half minutes left.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Okay.

I wanted to hear from Ms. Grantham, but I will let my colleagues ask those questions then.

I want to hear more from Mr. Fontaine.

I think you mentioned that four million children are out of school right now, and a large majority of them are girls. I really want to learn more about the education aspect. Is the Taliban allowing girls to attend school? Are they allowing the female teachers to work? Can you speak more on that angle as well?

[Manuel Fontaine]

Just very rapidly, 20 years ago, when the Taliban left, we had one million children in school. As of last year, we had 10 million children in school, so we had managed to actually increase the participation in school by a factor of 10. There are still four million children out of school. There were children, even before the Taliban got back into Kabul, who were not in school and those were the four million. What we're worried about now is losing the 10 million, or even eight million of those, who were in school until August.

What we know at the moment.... It's winter. In the winter, two-thirds of the schools actually close because it's winter, so we will see better in March what this is going to look like. It seems that for primary school it's not going to really be a problem to get girls back into school. Secondary school might be a little bit more difficult. So far we're getting some form of assurances that girls will be allowed to attend school as long as some guarantees are given in terms of separation of classes and making sure that women teachers teach girls, while boys are being taught by male teachers, but we will see how that goes. We will see when we get into March whether this is actually happening. Primary school shouldn't be too much of a problem and we've seen girls going back to school fairly rapidly.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

I want to ask Mr. Nickerson if he has anything else to add.

I know you were rushed in your remarks at the end there, but I think I have 30 seconds and I just want to make sure I hear some of the important aspects of your opening remarks as well.

[Dr. Jason Nickerson]

Certainly. We will make a written submission to the committee, but we want to emphasize—and I think several witnesses have spoken about this—the impact of sanctions and anti-terror laws and how these sanctions and anti-terror laws, as they apply in Afghanistan, need to be placed in the broader context of their impact on humanitarian assistance, and in other areas of armed conflict as well.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Mr. Sidhu.

Before I go to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, I will say that Ms. Barbara Grantham, president and chief executive officer from CARE Canada, is here.

On behalf of all members of Parliament, I welcome you, Ms. Grantham. You have five minutes to make your presentation to the committee. Please go ahead.

[Barbara Grantham, President and Chief Executive Officer, CARE Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am very sorry. I had one of those horrible technological nightmares signing on. I am here; I am going to proceed and I ask for your patience. Please accept my very sincere apologies.

I'm speaking to you from our offices located on the unceded and unabandoned territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe nation. I thank the committee for inviting us to appear as part of this study.

CARE has been working in Afghanistan since 1961, and has received generous Canadian funding since 2001.

I have two key messages for this committee this evening.

First, as Mr. Nickerson has already alluded, the Canadian anti-terror legislation currently bars humanitarian organizations from implementing Canadian-funded programs in Afghanistan, and this must be addressed immediately. The humanitarian imperative to respond is clear, with concurrent crises leading up to the takeover and escalating dramatically since then. Yet humanitarian organizations like CARE are unable to respond. The Taliban is on Canada's Anti-terrorism Act list of terrorist entities, and it is the country's de facto government. The view is that paying ordinary taxes on rent, salaries, imports, etc. would violate Canada's Criminal Code, which makes it a criminal offence to make available resources and services “knowing that...they will be used by or will benefit a terrorist group”.

The intent of this legislation was never to impede life-saving humanitarian support from reaching the most vulnerable people in Afghanistan, but this is the result. CARE has been unable to implement Canadian-funded programs in Afghanistan since August 2021. Our mobile health teams cannot travel to remote areas, purchase medicine or provide protection or nutrition services—in a country in which one million children are at risk of dying of malnutrition.

Canada is the only institutional donor to the CARE confederation whose funding has not resumed.

This interpretation of the law also does not align with the vision and objectives of Canada's feminist international assistance policy, which acknowledges that “[w]e need to be willing to take responsible risks, with decisions based on evidence and learning”. The policy itself acknowledges that delivering responsive and accountable assistance for meaningful social change cannot be achieved without this.

We urge the Government of Canada to pursue all innovative solutions that ensure that Canadian humanitarian organizations can resume operations without exposure to criminal liability, as per the UNHCR, in the short and the long term.

My second message to you this evening is that gender equality and the response efforts of women, humanitarian and civil society leaders must be prioritized in Canada's support to Afghanistan. Principled humanitarian action must reach all people in need, and it's necessary to acknowledge that gender inequality persists and leads women, girls and marginalized people to be disproportionately affected by crises like this one. Of the 22.8 million people facing acute food insecurity, half are women and girls. Of the more than 500,000 people displaced in 2021, at least 80% are women and children. For this reason, local women's leadership is critical to delivering humanitarian aid, especially in marginalized communities, and it must be prioritized in the response efforts.

Women-led NGOs' own ability to deliver [Technical difficulty—Editor] communities is severely constrained by the ongoing economic and liquidity crisis, as you have learned, and they are unable to access funds to run their operations. While it's possible in some provinces, the full participation of women humanitarian staff remains limited, which risks marginalizing women and girls even further.

To conclude, first we urge Canada to pursue all innovative solutions that allow Canadian humanitarian organizations to resume programming in Afghanistan in the short and long term. Second, Canada must prioritize the leadership of women humanitarian staff and civil society organizations in our response. Flexible, predictable funding must reach these local responders, and the newly established Afghan women advisory group, which informs the humanitarian country team's engagement with the Taliban, must also be supported by Canada.

I look forward to interacting with committee members in the discussion to follow.

Thank you to the committee. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Ms. Grantham.

Now I will go to the honourable member Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for six minutes, please.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm very grateful to all of the witnesses here this evening.

Mr. Fontaine pointed out that he was very pleased that we struck this committee. I want to remind my hon. colleagues from all parties of this committee's mandate. The wording is very clear. In fact, my party had moved an amendment to the original motion to have this committee focus on the current humanitarian crisis and the situation in Afghanistan in the short-term future. I would like everyone to remember what we passed in the House of Commons: This committee was created to help people on the ground right now and to find solutions in short order.

Ms. Grantham, I would like to ask you about something you just mentioned in your remarks. In fact, other witnesses talked about this last week, in terms of what is happening in Afghanistan right now. They said that the Criminal Code might need to be amended so that NGOs on the ground could operate in Afghanistan without fear of being accused of funding terrorism. In my opinion, this is a very important subject that we need to address.

What are your thoughts on this, Ms. Grantham?

Mr. Nickerson and Mr. Fontaine can also answer the question.

[Barbara Grantham]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe.

Let me make it clear that CARE Canada's Canadian funding is effectively not operational on the ground in Afghanistan, because of the restrictions of the Criminal Code.

The current framing of the Criminal Code, as interpreted by the government, is that the risk of prosecution under the code would be entirely borne by humanitarian organizations like CARE if we were to proceed without an exemption or some form of workaround, or a change to the legislation as the current Criminal Code sits. All of those are options. We have been working actively with counterparts inside the Government of Canada to endeavour to bring those options to bear, but the reality is that the timeline here does not jive with the timeline you have heard from Monsieur Fontaine in terms of the short-term acute nature of this crisis.

I really want to emphasize that Canada is the only significant donor/funder, sovereign funder, to Afghanistan that has not provided some form of exemption or change to its Criminal Code framework that enables the humanitarian organizations from those countries to operate. In the case of CARE, all of our CARE compatriots, across the confederation globally, are able to operate in Afghanistan, with the exception of CARE Canada.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Fontaine, maybe you have an opinion on this, because you are from UNICEF and you work with a lot of NGOs.

Are you seeing the same thing on the ground?

[Manuel Fontaine]

Yes, it's an issue for us, although it's a different one, since we're part of the United Nations system and we have a slightly different system of privileges and immunities. Having said that, it's certainly an issue for NGOs.

It's also a problem for us in terms of Canadian funding and how it is spent, since it can only be used for expenses outside of Afghanistan. In other words, you can buy equipment from abroad and bring it in, or pay the staff. However, if you want to try to work with NGOs or civil society locally, you cannot do it with Canadian funding, and that's a problem. Obviously, it's even more complicated for NGOs since they do not have those guarantees associated with the UN system of privileges and immunities.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Nickerson, it's your turn to respond. Since you represent an NGO, you are directly affected.

Should the Criminal Code be amended? Would that help you on the ground?

[Dr. Jason Nickerson]

I want to reiterate that our activities in Afghanistan are privately funded, so our perspective on this is slightly different from organizations that are receiving Canadian government funding. MSF is unique in that situation and slightly different. However, with regard to Canada's anti-terror legislation, the short answer is, yes, there is a problem that needs to be fixed here. At the moment, there is no humanitarian defence, or humanitarian exemption, that exists in Canadian law.

We would agree that there is a problem here, and the potential for humanitarian activities to become encumbered in some way by these laws. As I said, that is not a problem specific to Afghanistan. It's a problem that needs to be addressed to ensure that Canadian laws do not interfere with the ability of humanitarian organizations to provide humanitarian assistance inside all armed conflicts.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I'd like to ask Ms. Grantham a question.

The Taliban is attacking many segments of the population, of course, but they are mostly targeting LGBTQ+ people directly.

Are you seeing that on the ground? If so, what options do these individuals have?

Can you shed some light for the committee on their situation on the ground and what can be done to help them?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Time is almost up, but go ahead, Ms. Grantham.

[Barbara Grantham]

I would reiterate, Monsieur Brunelle-Duceppe, my comments that women and girls—and marginalized communities, in which I would include LGBTQ Afghans—are significantly disproportionately negatively impacted by the current nature of the crisis.

While Canadian funding is not currently activated in Afghanistan, as we've made clear in this presentation already, we're in very close and regular touch with our other CARE colleagues on the ground in Afghanistan.

The programs we're providing are largely in the area of health care, nutrition and protection services, particularly for women who are victims of gender-based violence and girls who are victims of violence. These are largely delivered through mobile health teams in a number of provinces across the country.

We also do a lot of primary health care in the whole area of COVID-19 response, vaccinations, first aid, trauma support, sexual and reproductive health services and so on. We do a lot of work in the whole area of nutrition, infant and child feeding and nutrition—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ms. Grantham, please wrap up. You are already two and a half minutes over.

[Barbara Grantham]

Okay. I apologize.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you for having been so indulgent, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

Now I will go to the honourable member of Parliament Ms. Kwan, for six minutes, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I just want to say thank you to all the witnesses for your presentations today, and in addition to that, for the ongoing work you do in the global community. There are many humanitarian crises and you've always been there. I very much appreciate that.

I'd like to first turn my question to Ms. Grantham to carry on with the issue around Canadian organizations' inability to provide aid on the ground. You're not the only one. Last week we heard from other organizations as well. This has been going on since August 2021, as you have indicated. When was the last time you had a substantive discussion about this with the government? When did you bring this to their attention? What was their response?