Afghanistan Committee on Feb. 7th, 2022

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to follow up with Ms. Grantham. I understand the idea is that we need legislative changes, but in light of the urgency of the situation, would a proposal such as...? If the government came to your organization, which is well established for many years in terms of your humanitarian aid work, and they offered a memorandum of agreement, a legal document, to exempt your organization and your aid workers from prosecution and to also exempt any approach to...potentially putting your organization in jeopardy in terms of your charitable status, would that suffice as a workaround, an idea such as that?

Somebody who's a lawyer, much brighter than me, can actually propose these ideas and come up with the documentation.

[Barbara Grantham]

Well, I wouldn't say lawyers are necessarily brighter than you.

What I would say is that this is one of the options that we have been actively pursuing. If, in a real-time situation, we were presented with an option along those lines, and our legal counsel assured us as an organization that it removed the risk to a tolerable level for us, then we would respond very positively to that.

That's exactly the kind of scenario we are hoping for.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you so much. It's about finding a workaround and also being innovative, because if we think legislation is the only way to go, we will never get there and people will continue to die.

Ms. Grantham, in the on-the-ground organizations, the women's and girls' organizations on the ground.... Many of them, of course, are in hiding, fearing for their life. I would expect that some of them would be looking to see how they can leave Afghanistan. The stance right now is that the Canadian government does not allow refugee status for those in Afghanistan. They have to get to a third country.

Are you hearing those concerns on the ground with people who are fearing for their lives?

[Barbara Grantham]

I should be very clear. Our current programs are paused, so we are not in a position to hear that level of detailed information in a day-to-day way. I think it is fair to say that for women in Afghanistan, their full participation in civic life is very limited and highly variable across the country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Ms. Kwan. Your time is up now.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Chair, if I could just interject, on that question, I wonder if the witnesses can send in their written response.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Sure.

Thank you, Ms. Kwan.

On behalf of all members of Parliament, I would like to thank all the witnesses for their participation in this important work. If you have anything to add, you are welcome to submit it to the committee clerk. We would really appreciate it.

I'm going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes so we can do the sound check for the next panel.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I call the meeting back to order.

Because I gave everyone a fair chance in the last round, I would like to see if we have consensus from committee members to extend this session by 15 minutes in order to be fair to the witnesses.

Do I have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the new witnesses.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. I would remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair. Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of floor, English or French. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your microphone should be on mute.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses and express our appreciation for their being with us this evening. Witnesses, you have five minutes for opening statements per organization.

With us, from the Afghan Youth Engagement and Development Initiative, we have Ms. Khalidha Nasiri. From the Canadian Hazara Humanitarian Services, we have Mr. Ali Mirzad and Mr. William Maley. Finally, from Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, we have Dr. Lauryn Oates.

Now we can start with the witnesses.

We'll go to Ms. Nasiri for five minutes, please.

[Khalidha Nasiri, Executive Director, Afghan Youth Engagement and Development Initiative]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the honourable members of the Special Committee on Afghanistan.

The Afghan Youth Engagement and Development Initiative, known as AYEDI, is a not-for-profit organization that builds civic engagement and social development among Afghan Canadian youth. While we do not have a presence in Afghanistan, we work with refugee youth and families within Canada and have been actively engaged in advocacy around the crisis. Our group is led by Afghan youth who have family members both within and outside of Afghanistan impacted by the crisis.

It's important to set the context for Canada's role in Afghanistan, because the scope of our response so far has unfortunately been insufficient. While Canada has contributed to important gains with respect to the rights of women and girls and other development progress, it was also involved in a combat mission and a war. About 48,000 Afghan civilian lives were lost, and that's according to conservative estimates; 159 Canadian Armed Forces members, Canadian accountants, a Canadian journalist and other Canadians working there lost their lives. We have a moral obligation to those who died—and to those still there doing everything they can to prevent mass death and economic collapse—to take on a much bigger and vocal role in the response to the crisis.

Afghanistan is in a full-blown crisis as its economy free-falls. Millions of children and youth are losing their formative years for development. Young Afghans have known nothing but conflict and instability their entire lives. Children do not know the definition of home.

According to the UN, 4.2 million young Afghans are out of school and 60% of those are girls. Without interventions, this number will increase to 7.9 million. Children and youth cannot study if their stomachs are empty. According to UNICEF, in 2022, 1.1 million children will be in need of treatment for acute malnutrition. Afghanistan is marching towards famine. This means that Afghan children and youth are at heightened risk of child labour, early marriage, recruitment by insurgence and a bleak future.

According to first-hand accounts we've heard from humanitarian partners and families on the ground, girls are not going to school. Families have lost breadwinners to hunger. Mothers are making impossible decisions between selling their daughters and selling their kidneys to feed their families. Young women are being forced to hide for wanting to participate in society, be it through protesting for their rights or showcasing talents like singing.

Canadian charitable organizations with operations in Afghanistan are facing restrictions from their banks, presumably because of the grey area in Canada's Criminal Code section 83.03.

Canada has an opportunity for leadership. In line with Canada's feminist international assistance policy and standing in the world as a human rights advocate, we must act. We have several recommendations to the committee.

First, we acknowledge the $66.5 million in aid that Canada has committed to since August 2021, but more is needed in the short term and more is needed now. As previous colleagues have noted, without urgent stabilization of the hunger crisis and the economy, a disaster is approaching in mid-2022, which could include mass displacement into countries beyond the neighbouring ones.

Second, the humanitarian crisis response must include a refugee response component. We need to waive bureaucratic documentation and anything else needed to expedite resettlement. Luckily in Canada, we have [Technical difficulty—Editor] where prima facie status was designated to Syrian refugees during the Syrian crisis. In fact, since 2003, we have assigned prima facie status to Bhutanese, Karen and Somali Madhiban refugees. We also cannot forget those at heightened risk who are internally displaced within Afghanistan, to whom we should assign temporary resident permits, a call echoed by the Canadian Bar Association. We must commit to an accelerated timeline within 2022 to meet the commitment for 40,000 refugees. We should accept more. We should not err on the side of caution. We should err on the side of generosity.

Third, Canada should make efforts to reduce the impact of sanctions and counterterrorism measures on the provision of funding and the flow of goods into the country. While concerns about money getting into the hands of insurgency groups are valid, we need to listen to what Afghans are saying, which is that they need help. In this situation, there is no perfect decision. There is only the right one.

Finally, we want to ensure that the [Technical difficulty—Editor] and all parties uphold their obligations under international human rights law and ensure respect for the rights of all Afghans, including children's right to education.

Mr. Chair, Canada's position as an international advocate for human rights and justice depends on our response to this crisis. We urge Canada to act today, not tomorrow.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much. You're right on time.

Now we'll go to Canadian Hazara Humanitarian Services for five minutes, please.

[Ali Mirzad, Senior Government Affairs and Relations Advisor, Canadian Hazara Humanitarian Services]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I want to thank you and your colleagues for the opportunity to participate in this very important discussion.

Mr. Chair, I'm not going to repeat here today what we had already conveyed to the House of Commons human rights subcommittee in June 2021, less than seven months ago: that I am a Hazara Canadian; that Hazaras have suffered over a century and a half of perpetual persecution; and that our people have been the victim of genocidal atrocities during the Taliban's previous rule in the 1990s, when we were hunted, singled out, labelled, and slaughtered simply for being a Hazara.

Mr. Chair, today I stand before you as a Canadian Afghanistani, because the pain and suffering that has been inflicted upon my native homeland is hurting all of us, regardless of our ethnicity, whether we are Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Aimaq or any of the other ethnicities that form the rich fabric of Afghanistan. We are all hurting. We're all in this together.

By Friday, August 13, 2021, as the Taliban were advancing towards Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, Canada announced that it would resettle 20,000 vulnerable and at-risk Afghanistanis, which would have included women leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, persecuted minorities, LGBTQI members and families of resettled interpreters.

Two days later, on Sunday, August 15, the Taliban [Technical difficulty—Editor] Kabul, the previous Afghan government fled away in helicopters, effectively surrendering the country and abandoning its roughly 38 million people. Unfortunately, on that very same day, the Canadian Parliament was dissolved, and, along with it, any hope that Afghanistanis had to be rescued simultaneously evaporated.

We're extremely grateful for the initiative and leadership Canada has shown on the international stage in making its great and hopeful commitments to securing the future of Afghans.

In September 2021, Canada further increased that bold commitment from 20,000 to 40,000, yet to this day scores of desperate Afghanistanis remain stranded within Afghanistan, while thousands more who fled to neighbouring countries now live as illegal aliens and must face the daily fear of deportation back to the Taliban's gulags.

The land mass of Canada is 3.8 million square miles, compared to the U.S.'s 3.7 million square miles. This quite simply means that Canada is a bigger country than the United States—specifically, 1.6% larger—but with only one-eighth of the population that the U.S. has. Canada has resettled only one-tenth of the Afghanistanis that our southern neighbours have thus far done. It is reported that the U.S. has evacuated 76,000, as opposed to Canada's 7,200.

Meanwhile, as the cold, unforgiving winter weather besieges Afghanistan, hundreds—if not thousands—are homeless, sleeping in the streets and public parks, while many others fleeing danger who have taken refuge in the mountains are freezing. According to the World Food Programme, 60% of Afghanistanis are now food-insecure, and the United Nations Development Programme reports that 97% of the population could fall into poverty by spring 2022.

Children and young girls are openly sold by desperate parents simply because they cannot afford to feed their own children. Women activists, human rights defenders and other ethnic minorities such as Hazaras have been dragged, beaten and abducted. The fate of many of these people remains unknown to this day, while the remains of some have been returned to their families.

That's unacceptable. How can any of us sleep at night having witnessed all this suffering? The good news is that we can change all of this.

Yes, Mr. Chair, we can and we must do everything in our power to change that. Canada has not only a big land mass, but also a big heart. Canada's goodwill and generosity can in fact ensure that no other girl is ever sold for food. Time and again, we have demonstrated that to the world, be it with the Vietnam boat people of the 1970s or more recently, in 2015, with the Syrian crisis, and we can do it again.

Across this vast country, Canadian Afghanistanis are extremely grateful for the enduring commitment that Canada has had to our people and our native homeland. Canadians have fought with tears and sweat, and even bled for the betterment of Afghanistan, but [Technical difficulty—Editor] Chair, will not get us there. We need concrete actions that must be executed immediately, while there's still time.

Therefore, we call upon the Canadian government to, one, appoint an ambassador at large for Afghanistan to ensure that Afghanistani's crisis is addressed through a timely and effective multipronged approach rooted in human rights, humanitarian aid, resettlement and diplomacy; two, work with the international community in utilizing all available tools to pressure the Taliban in immediately releasing all those who remain in captivity; three, engage with countries neighbouring Afghanistan to open their borders to Afghanistani refugees and uphold the right of refugees, including honouring the principle of non-refoulement; four—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Mr. Mirzad.

Can you quickly wrap up? You're already 45 seconds over.

[Ali Mirzad]

Absolutely.

Mr. Chair, the last two points would be these: first, on the 40,000 refugees that Canada has committed to, to increase that and to have a more precise approach on how it intends to accomplish that; and finally, to remove any impediment on private sponsorship and the sponsorship agreement holder to allow people to bring people to Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Mr. Mirzad.

Now we'll go to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, with Ms. Oates, for five minutes, please.

[Dr. Lauryn Oates, Executive Director, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan]

Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for having me this evening.

My name is Lauryn Oates. I represent the Canadian charity Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, which was established during the first Taliban regime. We've operated in Afghanistan for two decades, planning and implementing education programming in the areas of teacher education, literacy and technology for education, besides advocating for the equal right to education. Various projects under our purview over the years have been funded by the Government of Canada, and for this we are most grateful.

I'll describe some of the issues and challenges that we're observing within the sector as a whole, as well as specific issues facing our operations in Afghanistan, which may also represent the situation of other organizations like ours.

We hold the view that the fall of the previous Afghan government and its replacement by the Taliban was not inevitable. The response of the international community, led by the U.S. and including Canada and other governments that followed suit, played a role in enabling this outcome, when governments rather should have united to prevent it.

Governments and civil society organizations alike now face the quagmire of continuing programs and delivering aid to Afghanistan while avoiding recognizing, and therefore legitimizing, the de facto authorities, which are categorized as a terrorist entity, and rightfully so. The reality is that these terrorists now govern close to 40 million people who are trapped in Afghanistan.

Assuming the regime is there to stay—and it appears that this is what the international community has chosen to accept—as many of these people as possible need to be supported to leave. This requires thinking creatively to develop multiple avenues for Afghans to resettle in places where they will be safe, using partnerships with countries in the region and beyond, and supporting other governments to permanently resettle groups of Afghans. We strongly urge Canada to take this approach in order to assist more Afghans to reach safety.

In addition to robust support for those wishing to leave, Canada should also do what it can to meet the humanitarian and human rights needs of those left behind. To be clear, these two things—human rights and humanitarian needs—are inseparable. Women breadwinners have lost their employment due to Taliban policies. The stories of families selling children or women selling their organs are not urban myths. These are true stories and we hear them every single day. People are starving now. The human rights and humanitarian crises can only be understood together, and they can only be resolved together. This will require observing the fine balance of delivering meaningful assistance on the ground while not recognizing a regime that is not legitimate and is based on an ideology of violence and nihilism. Canada must at every turn vocally demand that the rights of women be upheld.

If a centrepiece of Canadian foreign policy is the feminist international assistance policy, then there is no place in the world where such a policy is more relevant than in the current situation in Afghanistan. Despite this, and despite the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Afghanistan, at this time it is not coming across that Afghanistan is a priority foreign policy issue for Canada. A Canadian moral stance is missing.

Besides courageous and outspoken diplomacy, we call for development assistance for both displaced Afghans and Afghans in Afghanistan. Our position remains that despite current conditions—in fact, because of them—the best place to invest is in human capital, like support programs that deliver education, build skills, increase employability and therefore reduce poverty and vulnerability, and ultimately, down the road, contribute to rebuilding peace and pluralism.

Despite the significant adaptations required, it is our intent to stay and deliver. As we contend with the challenges of operating in Afghanistan, ironically, one of the greatest barriers we face at this time originates from our own government.

Our most critical challenge at this time is having staff on the ground whose departure from Afghanistan has not, or at least not yet, been facilitated by Canada. They cannot leave—yet, as you've already heard, given Justice Canada's classification of the Taliban as a terrorist entity, it has become complicated, to say the least, for foreign NGOs to pay personnel in Afghanistan. Stuck where they are, people who were contracted to work on Canadian government programming, but who can no longer be paid through these programs, are there and in danger at this very moment.

I trust that my government will not leave behind my Afghan colleagues who worked to deliver programming arising from our feminist international foreign policy based on principles that are fundamentally antithetical to the Taliban system of gender apartheid.

We therefore urge the Government of Canada immediately to prioritize the processing and acceptance of special immigration measures applicants. In support of SIM and other Afghans headed for Canada, we further urge that the government provide an alternative to visa documents for Afghans who do not have passports, and that Canada engage with countries in the region to ensure that the right to safe passage of Afghans is upheld, which is not the case currently.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

[Dr. Lauryn Oates]

I know well that my colleagues are few among many. Most Afghans want to leave. No one deserves to live under tyranny, but our government holds the highest moral responsibility to Afghans who worked with us, who worked on Canadian programs funded by Canadian taxpayers reflecting Canadian values.

We need to get them out, and we need to do it soon. At the same time—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Ms. Oates. You're a minute over, so I have to stop you here. You can add this during your time a bit later on.

Now I will go to the honourable members. First we will start with Mr. Hallan, and then we'll go to Mrs. Zahid.

We have Mr. Hallan for six minutes, please.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses.

Mr. Mirzad, I want to applaud what your organization has been doing—actually, all the witnesses. I applaud all the great work that's going on.

Mr. Mirzad, your organization has been raising awareness of the persecution of religious minorities. Given your organization's expertise and contacts within the Hazara community, did IRCC ever reach out to you to seek assistance with the refugee situation, whether it was during August 2021, before or after?

[Ali Mirzad]

We reached out to IRCC and the minister in the early stages of the crisis. We've had some conversations with them, and we had one meeting with former minister Mendicino, but beyond that, we haven't had any interactions ever since.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

What was the outcome of that meeting? Were there any requests put forward?

[Ali Mirzad]

We certainly had a very productive meeting with the minister at the time. We made some recommendations to them in terms of how we could move forward: how we could, as an organization that has ears on the ground and eyewitness accounts, be useful, and also how to improve the processing of immigration, especially with prima facie and helping people who are outside of the border.

We've had a number of recommendations. Unfortunately, up to this day, we haven't heard back from the government on any of those.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I would suspect that it was probably in part due to the election and the switch of ministers. On top of that, we see record numbers of backlogs in immigration. We're almost at two million, which I would say is affecting a lot of these people who are trying to get here.

Out of those recommendations that you made, I believe there was one about removing the restrictions on current sponsorship programs and exempting some of those people so they could get here faster and not provide proof of refugee status. Did the IRCC ever get back to you guys on that?