Afghanistan Committee on May 7th, 2009

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

That's reactive. Are we doing anything on the ground to reach out?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

We are also working with civil society organizations. We're producing radio reports. We've trained about a thousand people, who are trainers themselves, to promote these issues. But this is a long-term process; this is not going to be done overnight.

When I met with the Minister of Women's Affairs the day before I left, she said the second part, once this legislation is in place, is that they have to make sure they have family courts in all provinces, that the people in all of these courts are trained to manage the legislation, that the legislation is promoted and explained, and that people agree with it--because as much as we want legislation that is going to reflect these commitments, we also have to realize that there are traditions working against these commitments, and these have to change. This will take a certain amount of time. There are still men and clerics in Afghanistan who believe that women are the property of their husbands.

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Saint Boniface, MB]

I understand that, and thank God I live in the most wonderful country in the world, Canada.

I'm fearful, particularly because of my police experience and the knowledge I have, that female police officers in Afghanistan are suffering retribution. We've had the death of a very renowned female police officer in Afghanistan. I'm concerned about the security measures that we're taking, not just as you've described in reactive situations, but in the proactive sense of security.

If we're hearing from police officers who are doing these investigations that there are women suffering retribution because of what has happened here, like the 300 women who stood up and said this is not right, are we investigating those? Are we just waiting for them to come to us, or are we actually seeking them out and helping them in some way?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Can we have a really short response? We're over time here.

Go ahead.

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

I'll ask Razmik to answer that.

[Razmik Panossian, Director, Policy, Programmes and Planning, Rights & Democracy]

Thank you for the question.

Very briefly, the law-writing process in our project is an important part, but it's not the only part. The project also has the proactive element, where we actually go to the communities in the provinces in which we work, and we work with community leaders, be it security.... We work with religious leaders, with mullahs, training them on women's rights issues. As such, over the past two years we have actually trained nearly 14,000 people with respect to women's rights in their own communities, and this is in a country where the state is weak and police are not present everywhere. This kind of training is tremendously important, so that community leaders, men principally--religious leaders, mullahs--understand the whole concept of women's rights. This is a very important part of the project. Obviously, today's hearing is on the family law-writing element, but that's an element of the project that we're also working on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you, Ms. Glover.

We'll go over to Mr. Harris to finish up this session.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your presentation. I want to say that I too am an admirer of your organization and the work that has been done since its inception to advance the cause of human rights and democracy throughout the world.

I'm particularly happy to hear of the work you're doing to provide capacity to organizations within Afghanistan to themselves advance the cause of human rights and women's rights. I think that's obviously important. This has to be their project; it's their country. On the other hand, along with many others, I am completely disturbed at the process. It's great to help people enforce family laws and have courts, but if the laws themselves amount to being repressive or oppressive, that's obviously the heart of the problem.

You indicated some satisfaction with the process as it related to the marriage contract law, and I want to concentrate on that a little bit. This was the same committee, I take it—the drafting committee. You indicated in your statement that this committee was sort of a debating...or there was a debating group where debate was for eventual submission to Afghanistan's Parliament. Then there's the intervention of the Supreme Court. So what's the order of operation?

I understand there was some sort of compromise reached on the marriage contract, but not unanimity in the drafting. Then it went to the Supreme Court to make sure it complied with the constitution, then it went to the Parliament. Is that the process?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

The task force at the time...now we call it the drafting committee. We called it the task force, but it was composed of similar people. They did have these negotiations about the text of the marriage contract.

What I know from the reports that I read is that the most contentious was about contractual divorce, but at some point they came to an agreement. They went to the Supreme Court to make sure that the Supreme Court would support a text like this—marriage contracts like this. The Supreme Court did, and the marriage contract is now in effect.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

But after that, it then went to the Parliament—

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

It probably went to the Parliament to become law, but I remember that a crucial part of it was that they needed to make sure that the Supreme Court would support this text. The Supreme Court was part of it and also had a representative on the committee.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

It seems to me that this is some sort of opinion of the court. In our lingo here, the opinion of the court is the acceptability or conformity of the law to the constitution. You say you don't know whether that then went to the Parliament for consideration.

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

It wasn't what I'm being told. A marriage contract was not a law. It's simply a legal document that was approved by the Supreme Court.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

So the question was whether or not the Supreme Court would enforce this contract.

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

Well, now the contract is being used across the country and even promoted by religious leaders.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Okay. So this is a different. You assumed this was the same process, but I take it you assumed this was going to the Parliament at some point, did you?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

Yes, of course. We expected that once the Ministry of Justice was satisfied that everything that needed to be done to have the Shia personal law had been done and it met all the requirements of the constitution and the convention on the rights of women, then they would draft the final text and that it would go to Parliament. There would be an open, public debate and the debate would take place in society, as we do here when a law is tabled. If people want to get involved and appear in front of committees, they can do so. That never happened.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

What I hear you say is that the...let's call it the mullahs' version or the clerics' version of the Shia family law is what ended up being signed without going through the debate process, with some minor adjustments--I gather, 10 adjustments. I see some aspects of this are extremely detailed in terms of the relationships between parents and children, women and men and grandparents, and people who are insane, etc., within families. I don't know if this has ever been codified before. Do you know? Can you tell us whether it was codified before this?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

Well, there is a Sunni family law. There is a family law that was revised, the last time in 1977, but it's based on Sunni jurisprudence. When the constitution was negotiated, the Shia minority asked to have their own law, because right now they live under the Sunni family law.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Once this came forward and your organization was involved in this process, didn't it seem to be an extremely controversial document and a political time bomb in the eyes of you yourselves and the international community, particularly with the involvement of the western governments in Afghanistan? Were you aware of that then?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

The drafting committee was aware that the clerics were promoting some contentious articles in the law. That's why they were bringing forward their own version of what they thought would meet the Sharia law and the principle of Islam while respecting women's rights. So the drafting committee was in a sort of negotiation process. We were supporting them in that process, the same way as we supported the task force around the marriage contract.

Nobody expected that all of a sudden the version that the Ulema Council put forward would be the one signed by the President.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

When the council's version was on the table, you didn't advise anybody that this was potentially a significant political problem.

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

At that time, the drafting committee was in the process of negotiations with other elements in society. They felt this was going well enough that there was no need to make it public. We have to realize this was Afghan-led. We provided them with support, but this was their own law. I asked the committee if they were concerned. They said they were, but they were putting forward amendments and discussing those things; it was an ongoing process. All of a sudden the process finished, without their forming anything.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

They were blindsided too.

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

Yes.