Afghanistan Committee on May 7th, 2009

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

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation.

With regard to the previous question talking about the other laws that were passed, we seem to know all about them. Or do we? I wonder what kind of confidence Canadians can have about the eyes and ears we have in Afghanistan. This law is not a simple law. I've seen excerpts of it. You mentioned it was 300 pages long. This didn't come out of the sky. Most of it is probably based on traditional Shia practices and probably not codified in the way it is right now.

So how does a 300-page law show up--it had to have some process by which it was even drafted--without the knowledge of the Canadians on the ground who were supposedly engaged in creating this institution? I really wonder what kind of faith we can have, not only in what happened here but in the fact that we're being told now that other laws are being passed, which presumably we think are quite fine. This is obviously such a political, international, Canadian, politically explosive issue. Why aren't our eyes and ears effective in understanding this?

[Yves Brodeur]

I think it's a very fair question.

We have eyes and ears; we are watching what's happening. Again, in the absolutely huge amount of activity there, there will be times when, I'm afraid, we may not be as aware as we should be. In this case we knew there was actually a process to produce this law--not only Canada, by the way, but also other international actors. We didn't know about the substance of it. There was a process in place, and that process was short-circuited at some point and the law basically missed some very important steps in the production.

So as Stephen said before, it's a failure on two counts: substance and process. And we're doing everything we can, including having people, such as this lady who works on gender issues within the Ministry of Justice, keep an eye on it. We're working with Rights & Democracy. They have several very good projects to track down legislation and to make sure we have a good perspective and we understand what's going on there.

So I'm personally satisfied that we have what we need to do the job we're supposed to do, but I do think it's fair to say, as well, that there will be times when perhaps we will not necessarily know everything. This was a surprise, not only for us, again, but for many other countries and members of the international community.

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

Can I ask whether you actually have a text of this law in translation? Can you provide it to the committee? I've seen excerpts from it, and I find a little bit unsettling the extreme level of detail that is apparently being given the force of law.

We understand we're dealing with a traditional society, but now we're seeing them codify and put into enforceable law things that may have been part of a tradition but that may not survive modernity. If you codify it and nail it down into law, you seem to be putting in place things that are going to be very difficult to change.

I realize this is not our country, but we do have international human rights standards. It seems to me to be extremely difficult to square the circle when you look at the detail of this and the international legal principles that we expect or hope Afghanistan would follow.

[Yves Brodeur]

I don't think there's a debate there. The Afghans themselves recognize that the proposed law, which hasn't been promulgated as it exists now, doesn't meet the requirements of their constitution and doesn't meet the requirements of international covenants and treaties that they adhere to. That's a given. They agree to that.

In terms of the document, I have a 76-page document produced by USAID that actually provides a summary, in English, of the most contentious aspects. It actually covers the 300 articles. I think you have seen the full 300 pages. It's a public document.

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

As you have described it, the review process does not seem to be a parliamentary review, but rather a technical review by experts. It appears that what's going to emerge will be another version of this.

Does that process qualify as the parliamentary process that we're satisfied with, or is this some technical review that's attempting to...I don't mean paper over, but to reach some kind of acceptable version that will pass muster? Is it going to be debated openly within Afghanistan in the Parliament, or is it a political fix?

[Yves Brodeur]

The process now is that the text of the law has been taken back by the Ministry of Justice, or under the lead of the justice minister, and is being reviewed by a group of experts, scholars, and Afghans, with the assistance of members of civil society. They will review it from the perspective of taking out the aspects of the law that are not acceptable. We're told that this process is going to take between two and three months, at the end of which the project will be resubmitted to Parliament. That is what we understand the process to be at this point.

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

I have another question.

I recognize that two million girls attending school is a good thing, but we're not looking at going from zero to two million. If we look at the pre-Taliban and post-Taliban situations, we see that before the Taliban, girls attended school; it's now eight years since the overthrow of the Taliban, and two million girls are attending school. That's a lot of individuals. However, my understanding is that there are about 14 million children in Afghanistan under the age of 18, presumably half of them female, so we're looking at seven million girls under the age of 18, two million of whom are attending school.

The figures I've seen are consistent with that I've been told, which is that only about 30% of girls in Afghanistan have access to education. That seems to be some progress, but not very much. Would you care to comment on that?

[Yves Brodeur]

Mr. Chairman, may I interrupt on a technical point?

The document I was mentioning was provided to us by another agency, and it's not a Canadian agency. The document exists in English only. I just wanted to make that clear, because normally the rule is that we should provide these documents in both languages. It's not a Canadian document. It's English only, if that's all right with the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

That's fine with me.

Go ahead, Mr. Wallace.

[Stephen Wallace]

In 2001, only 700,000 children went to school in Afghanistan. They were all boys. The Taliban did not allow girls to go to school. We have gone from a total of 700,000 children in school in 2001 to over six million today, of which two million are girls.

The situation in Afghanistan today is that more children are going to school than ever in the history of the country. It is a country emerging from three decades of civil war and abject poverty, and it just doesn't have the basis for providing universal primary education. It has a way to go to provide schooling for all children in the country, but they have hit a high-water mark on this.

Canada has provided the lead support on the national education strategy, and it's one of the reasons Canada announced a signature project last year to build or refurbish 50 schools in Kandahar as part of that overall effort of expanding education for all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

Now, committee, we started late; I realize that. But in order to be fair to our second panel, and given that we need a few minutes at the end for some committee business, this ends the opening round. We've given each party a shot, so I think we'll suspend it here and change our witnesses and get ready for the second round.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you very much.

For the second half today, we have Rights & Democracy, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. We're pleased to have with us Mr. Beauregard, the president. Sir, welcome. And we have Razmik Panossian, director of policy, programs and planning.

Gentlemen, you're obviously familiar with the process. You sat through the first set of witnesses, and I'm sure this isn't the first committee you've been at. So we'll give you time to make your presentations, and then we're going to open it up for some riveting questions from the committee.

[An hon. member]

Is that a note of irony?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

No, that's praise.

Please proceed, gentlemen.

[Rémy M. Beauregard, President, Rights and Democracy]

Good morning to you all.

I would like to begin by thanking the chair, Mr. Casson, as well as the other members of this important committee for your attention to the issue of women's rights in Afghanistan and for inviting Rights & Democracy to today's hearing. I would also like to acknowledge the support of Canada's elected representatives in the struggle for women's rights in Afghanistan. With that in mind, we note the two motions that were passed by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women on April 23.

As you know, Rights & Democracy was created by an act of Parliament in 1988 to promote and defend human rights and democratic development internationally. For close to 20 years we have been implementing this mandate on behalf of Canadians and reporting to them through Parliament. We promote the values of human rights and democratic freedom around the world to support individual citizens and struggling democrats caught in the grip of repression and to build democratic institutions and processes that give effect to universal human rights. That is what we are doing in Afghanistan.

Rights & Democracy has been working directly with Afghan women since 2002. We supported Afghan women in their effort to ensure that the constitution adopted in 2004 enshrined equality between men and women. We currently provide support to Afghan women's organizations and the government to ensure Afghanistan family laws reflect this constitutionally assured equality and Afghanistan's international human rights commitments. We are building bridges between Afghan society and the government on this important issue.

The news that President Karzai signed a law, for the Shia minority, that would effectively legalize rape in the home and restrict the most basic rights of women was a shock and a setback. The decision to review this law, however, is an opportunity. It is an opportunity, first and foremost, for Afghan women to participate in the process of revising this law. It is also an opportunity in the long term for Afghan women to strengthen human rights protections in law and practice and to ensure that their views are taken into account in all decisions that affect their lives. For both the short- and long-term opportunities to be fulfilled, Canada must be steadfast in its support for Afghan men and women who strive for a future based on universal democratic and human rights principles.

Rights & Democracy, thanks in part to financial support from CIDA, is assisting these Afghan-led efforts. Rights & Democracy facilitates the work of an Afghan-led drafting committee in which the different elements of family law, including the Shia personal status law, are debated for eventual submission to the Afghanistan Parliament. This committee includes representatives of Afghan civil society organizations, Kabul University, government officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Women's Affairs, and members of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The objective of the drafting committee is to review existing family law in order to ensure that it respects women's rights under Islamic law and international human rights.

It is time-consuming, labour-intensive and difficult work. Afghanistan is a traditional society where the prospect of greater freedoms and equality for women under the law remains intensely controversial.

However, the diligent work of the drafting committee has produced results: in 2007, Afghanistan brought in a national marriage contract that protects a woman's legal status within marriage. The Shi'a Personal Status Law, the legislation that sparked the recent outrage, was before the drafting committee throughout the latter half of 2008.

Rights and Democracy facilitated the participation of Afghan women and civil society representatives who called for progressive amendments to Afghan laws. As we now know, most of these progressive elements unfortunately never made it into the legislation that President Karzaï blindly signed into law.

While clearly a setback for human rights in Afghanistan, the Shi'a Personal Status Law is not the absolute failure many would have us believe. While certainly a clear and troubling reminder of the complex human rights challenges that remain in Afghanistan, we cannot ignore the growing chorus of Afghan voices rising in opposition to the law's more regressive elements.

I was in Afghanistan as news of the Shi'a Personal Status Law broke. Rights and Democracy was organizing a conference in Kabul on family law in Muslim countries. The participants from Malaysia, Iran and Pakistan as well as representatives of Afghanistan's government, Parliament and women's organizations, among others, issued a spontaneous declaration denouncing the Shi'a Personal Status Law in its current form and calling for revisions that conform to Afghanistan's national and international human rights commitments. A petition signed by 5 Afghan cabinet ministers, 22 members of Parliament and more than 100 intellectuals and civil society representatives was filed to protest the new legislation and some women even took to the streets to demand their rights.

As a result of these public protests, President Karzaï agreed to revise the law, and called on women's groups and others to participate in the process. The Ministry of Justice was given the task of revising the law in consultation with Afghan civil society, and the drafting committee has participated in these efforts. It presented a list of amendments to the Minister of Justice to ensure that the revised Shi'a Personal Status Law respects national and international human rights and equality principles.

While we hope that the revised law takes into account the views expressed by women's groups and the drafting committee, the real opportunity that this nascent democratic process presents is for the long-term development of a culture of human rights in Afghanistan. The Shi'a Personal Status Law is one of many laws currently under consideration that will have a direct impact on the lives of women. The forthcoming Guardianship Law, the broader Family Law for the Sunni majority and the Elimination of Violence Against Women Law are just some of the laws that will be debated in the coming months and years as Afghan society moves toward the consolidation of democracy and the rule of law.

These laws will not in and of themselves protect against violations. Putting in place a legal framework for the protection of human rights is only the first step in a long-term process.

That is why Rights and Democracy also:

- trained 350 men and women to lead discussions at the community level on human rights and the means to ensure their protection within family law, for example, through the marriage contract.

- supported over 1,000 Afghan-led community meetings held to raise awareness of women's rights, family law and the use of the marriage contract, as well as to consult local women and men on the legal reform process.

- provided support to legal aid clinics so women will have judicial recourse when their rights are violated.

- worked with religious leaders to obtain their support for the use of the marriage contract.

- provided professional psychological/psycho-social support to girls and women who are victims of violations.

- supported civil society advocacy efforts through training and research on women's rights, and facilitated State-society dialogue on policy and legal reform.

- funded 34 local NGOs to work on projects involving women's rights. Through this support, over 9,000 Afghan men and women received training on women's rights.

- produced 12 radio shows in 6 provinces on the family law and on women's rights.

To overcome a history of exclusion and repression, Afghan women are taking matters into their own hands, as is demonstrated by their participation in Parliament, government departments, small businesses, and civil society organizations. The protests against the Shia personal status law demonstrated a growing desire for equality in Afghanistan, both in the home and in the public sphere.

The courageous women and men leading these protests need our encouragement now more than ever. To do otherwise, to pull our support for the Afghan women and men who are now mobilizing against repression with such courage and determination, would be to abandon the best source of hope for advancing human rights and democracy in Afghanistan.

Honourable members, in your deliberation on Canada's mission in Afghanistan, you are faced with innumerable challenges related to a complex whole-of-government mission in a complex part of the world. I hope to leave you with two messages today. First, our mission to help Afghanistan become a stable and democratic society is a long-term endeavour. Second, the 300 men and women who risked their lives in public protests to demand their human rights have defined that mission. We must follow them.

Merci beaucoup.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Coderre, seven minutes.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There are a few questions I would like to ask. I'm sure my colleagues will have others as well. I have tremendous amount of respect for Rights and Democracy, because I worked with your predecessor on Haiti. As far as I am concerned, Rights and Democracy is a sort of neutral beacon that tells us exactly what is going on on the ground. I know you will not be complacent.

I would like to know exactly what is going on and when the government was informed. In an article in Le Devoir, we read that Rights and Democracy had somehow informed the government that legislation of this nature was going to be passed.

Apparently, you spoke to a government representative or to the embassy. I would just like some light shed on this issue once and for all. Our impression is that a governance support group was established under the direction of National Defence. Later on, CIDA did this. We always boasted that we had very close ties with the Ministry of Justice and with President Karzaï. Now it looks like we found out about something at the last minute, that we were unaware of what had happened and that everyone was caught quite off-guard.

The article that appeared in Le Devoir is somewhat confusing. It conveys the impression that you informed the government ahead of time. We are a little like a bus driver asking people to move to the back: we could have done something to prevent the situation, rather than simply managing the crisis. I would like you to clarify things for us, Mr. Beauregard.

In addition, I did not think we did enough in the case of Malalai Joya, when she was expelled from the Afghan Parliament. We are talking about women's rights. We could do some specific things to demonstrate our support for women's rights.

I would like you to tell us whether you think we did enough as a country and as a government to protect the rights of Ms. Joya, a member of the Afghan Parliament. We talk theoretically a lot of the time, but this is a specific case. When it comes down to universal values, I don't think we should use the pretext that some issues relate solely to Parliament, or that this is a question of sovereignty. A right is a right, and we should get involved when women's rights are violated, whatever the situation may be.

Those are my two questions. My colleagues will have others for you as well.

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

In CIDA's progress report of last October, we indicated that we supported the drafting committee that was working on this bill, but we left it at that, that is, we did not talk about the work being done. We were working on this. It was part of our work plan. That is indeed what happened during the second half of 2008.

Our Kabul office—as I indicated in my presentation—supports a committee comprised of experts working within the Ministry of Women's Affairs with regard to the preparation of the bill.

Last year, we took the same approach when we worked on marriage contracts. That process went as far as it could, and we reached an agreement with regard to the wording of the contract, which was then submitted to the Supreme Court for approval. Every one of the parties involved in the process, including the working group we were supporting, was satisfied with the resulting marriage contract.

We were convinced that the same process would be followed regarding the family code for the Shia community. Unfortunately, while the drafting committee was holding discussions with representatives from the Ministry of Women's Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, we learned that the version which had been proposed by the Ulema Council, comprised of mullahs from the Shia community, would prevail, and that the president had signed it. He had given it to the Minister of Justice, who had not published it, so the bill did not yet have force of law.

I learned of this while on my way to Afghanistan. I read about the law in The Guardian, a London newspaper. When I arrived in Afghanistan, I asked the people in my office whether the report was accurate, and they told me that indeed it was. That very evening, I had supper with the Chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Ms. Sima Samar, who was a member of our board of directors. She had also just returned from Europe, and we were both astounded and appalled by what had happened.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

So you did not learn of this situation beforehand and you did not warn Canada?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

No.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

So the piece in Le Devoir is misleading.

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

Yes. I asked for a retraction with regard to the piece in Le Devoir.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Fine. And what about Ms. Joya?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

We did not work directly on Ms. Joya's case. We work with female Afghan parliamentarians and help them prepare for debates on issues of interest to them, but we did not work directly on that case.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Can I ask a question--