Afghanistan Committee on Oct. 20th, 2010

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

The argument I've often heard--I don't agree with the argument, but I want you to answer it yourself--is that western countries such as Canada have to avoid engaging in issues that are really at the heart of some of the debates under way in the culture of your own country, and that it would be wise for us not to engage in those.

I don't agree with that argument, but I would like to give you a chance to respond to it. I think it's an argument that we have to deal with.

[Jawed Ludin]

I'm glad you don't agree with it and I expect you not to agree with it, because it is something we don't agree with. We think it's deeply relativistic culturally to say that. In a sense, people who say that are patronizing as well.

There is no part of me, no cell in my body, that believes that we cannot have a country that's free, that we cannot have a country that's democratic, and that we should not live with dignity, in prosperity, and in peace, as most of the world does, and with the kind of society that you have achieved and that I enjoy today by being here.

I think the kinds of arguments those people make are not surprising, because there is also a big argument that's made in support of extremism nowadays. There are many people who justify it in one way or another, but it would be wrong to just go along with them and to fall into their trap.

As an Afghan, I would be looking up to Canada to not fall into those traps and to bravely, boldly support Afghanistan's new young democracy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much. I think that's a good note to end on. We appreciate your time here before the committee. It's been a very helpful and informative time. Thank you again for appearing here.

We will suspend for a moment while we bring in the next witness.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'd like to bring this meeting back to order.

For the second part of this meeting, until 5:30 p.m., we have CARE Canada with us. We'd like to welcome the communications manager, Mr. Kieran Green, and their policy and advocacy coordinator, Jennifer Rowell.

Welcome to both of you. We look forward very much to what you have to tell us today. The usual practice is to allow you approximately 10 minutes, together, to have an opening statement.

I'm not sure who will begin, but when you're ready you may start.

[Kieran Green, Communications Manager, CARE Canada]

I thought I would do a very brief introduction. We want to get to the meat of the report, which will be handled by Jennifer.

To begin, I'll give just a very quick history of where we came to what we are today.

CARE has been involved in Afghanistan for a very long time. We have been working, fighting poverty there, for 50 years now. So we have a strong and vested interest in the country and helping the people of that country. And Canada has been a very strong supporter of CARE's work there, financing a lot of the very good work that we do there.

As we moved towards 2011 and realized that it looked like there was going to be a shift in Canada's role there--the decision was made that the combat mission would end--we saw really no substantive debate happening among Canadians on what Canada's role would be after that combat mission ended. So we decided to take a look and basically take the opportunity to start the debate by offering some of our own proposals.

Based on our work, our instinct was that really the niche that Canada could best fill would be taking the role of champion for the women of Afghanistan, advancing their rights, their empowerment, their development. We did extensive consultation with civil society groups, international NGOs, local NGOs, right down to talking to the Afghan men and women that we work with day-to-day to find out what they believed was the best course, what they wanted to see from Canada. We universally heard the same things, that they have strong support, that Canada can be the champion for women in Afghanistan.

Why women? Because right now the women of Afghanistan are some of the worst off in the world. When you compare their relative status to men in their society, compared to the gap in other societies, developing countries, it is the widest in the world.

Currently the women of Afghanistan have no international champion. This is a niche that is currently not being occupied by anyone. Efforts towards helping the women of Afghanistan are happening in a haphazard fashion, they're not coordinated, and there's really room for someone to step in and be the body who coordinates that, who becomes the spokesperson, the voice for women there.

Finally, Canada is one of the top donor countries in Afghanistan right now. In terms of what has been done for women, we have been one of the strongest spokespersons speaking out on behalf of women and speaking out against injustice, and we have had a lot of strong work helping the women of Afghanistan. So we already have that capacity on the ground.

What we're proposing in this report really is nothing new for Canada. It's just a shift in the way of thinking and expanding some of the things that we are already doing successfully.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Jennifer Rowell, who will really get into the meat of the proposals, the things that we are dealing with or are offering as opportunities in our report.

[Jennifer Rowell, Policy and Advocacy Coordinator, CARE Canada]

Thanks, Kieran.

Thank you very much for your time today. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak to you on this important subject.

As you know, Afghanistan is approaching a crossroads. Reconciliation and reintegration are taking place. NATO has just opened safe passage for insurgent leaders to come into Kabul in order to hold those negotiations. We feel, and the women we speak to—the women partners whom we work with—feel and fear that in this process of reconciliation and negotiation we possibly stand to lose many of the gains we have won over the last ten years as a national and international community.

Right now there is no strong defender of women's rights in Afghanistan throughout the reconciliation process. You are aware of the inconsistent record on human rights within the government itself, both among the individuals and also in various pieces of legislation that have been passed, such as the Shia Personal Status Law, the amnesty law, etc.

We are concerned that women's rights may be part of the negotiation, part of the compromise that is reached in the effort to create a broader security. We're asking Canada to consider leading the international discussion on how the international community can try to stop that possibility from occurring. Women have come incredibly far in the last ten years, and they are concerned that this might be turned around.

The first section of the report is about that element of security. It's about how we can assure that the women are remembered, that their rights are guaranteed to a certain standard that the women themselves approve within negotiations and reconciliation, and that they in fact have their own voice within the negotiation itself so that they can defend their own positions.

The second part of the report is on economic and social development. This is an area in which Canada already excels. You have excellent programming in social and economic development; you have an excellent education portfolio; you have an excellent economic development portfolio; and you have an increasing maternal and child health...which I hope will turn into a priority, under the Muskoka initiative.

We believe that by changing certain key elements of that portfolio, Canada would be able to prioritize and focus on improving access to services for women within those key areas. Right now, and I can't overstress this, there is a disproportionate focus within the donor community on creating availability of services—building schools, building health clinics—and very little emphasis is going on ensuring that the women are able to access those clinics. In certain areas you can have 15 maternal health clinics in one square kilometre, and not a single women will be able to go because the socio-cultural barriers have not been sufficiently addressed. The donor community is so focused on availability that these access issues have been put by the wayside.

Canada has one of the most credible and one of the strongest engagements in Afghanistan on issues of access, because Canada is flexible and because Canada puts money into some of the more invisible barriers, and the Canadian successes have been very important. You have a very strong reputation for this, and we're encouraging a scale-up of some of those initiatives.

The third section of the report is on governance, rule of law, and human rights. We've heard many comments already this afternoon about the importance of the rule of law. One thing is sure: there can be no security in the absence of a rule of law, and there can be no establishment of genuine support for women's rights in the absence of a rule of law. But rule of law does not simply mean policing towards counter-insurgency. It doesn't simply mean having courts in place. It means ensuring that those service delivery mechanisms are capable of dealing with women's rights.

I'll give you an example on policing. Right now, new recruits to the Afghan police force go through an eight-week training. That is the limit of the formal training. There are other programs that offer other, alternative things, but the basis is an eight-week training program. Seven weeks and four days of that training is on counter-insurgency policing. One day is on community policing, and one half-hour is on women's rights.

A police force with that limited knowledge of its role as community protector, as protector of human rights and of women, of whom 87.2% have been abused over their lifetime and who require the services of the state to enable that they are not abused in the future or to enable that they have support they need to overcome the situation they're in....

The police sector, the justice sector--they do not have the knowledge or the skills to necessarily address those issue. So women remain in a state of fear, because they will often go to the services of the police and the justice system expecting support, hoping for support, and being either turned away or abused. Often that has to do with ignorance, and often that ignorance has to do with the fact that the international donor community and the Afghan priority at the most senior level is not focused on creating a community rule of law, such as the rule of law that we have in Canada and that is so fundamental.

We believe, if I may quote Ursula Franklin, that “Peace is not the absence of war. It is the presence of justice and the absence of fear.” We need to make sure that we get to the presence of justice and the absence of fear. We think that now that Canada is pulling out its military forces it can turn the breadth of its attention to the establishment of rule of law, in which women's rights are embedded concretely. The report has several recommendations on how that might happen.

Finally, we have a section on aid effectiveness. It's about the “how”. It's the collective wisdom of many organizations, both Afghan and international, that have experience in the country and know how things get done.

There was a reference made earlier this afternoon about culture. I believe it was Mr. Rae who pointed out the difficulties of addressing culture. I understand and appreciate this concern, but there are answers to it. Our concern is that in Afghanistan a lot gets clumped under culture. Anything that seems hostile or conservative or different from what we see in the west often gets clumped under the label “culture”. That means that many implementing partners and certainly many of the donors who are present in Afghanistan avoid it. If we actually explore culture, if we break it down into its constituent parts and find out how much is culture, how much is ignorance, how much is due to other factors, such as distance from hospitals or distance from schools or whatever it might be, the problem becomes far more practical.

I know you will have questions on this.

In conclusion, treat our report as a menu of options. Canada can undertake some; it can lead the international call on others; it can encourage other donors and the Afghan community itself to take up yet other options. This report outlines just how feasible and how practical it is for Canada to step into that position of leadership on women's rights, without increasing your portfolio size, but just making some very basic practical shifts in what Canada is already doing very well in the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much. We appreciate this.

We'll begin with Mr. Rae, please.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our guests. It's great to have you with us.

Can you tell me what the size is of your annual financial commitment in Afghanistan?

[Jennifer Rowell]

Are you referring to CARE?

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Yes.

[Jennifer Rowell]

Currently we have a turnover of about $40 million a year. We reach about 1.5 million Afghans a year. We have significant programming in women's development and women's empowerment. I believe we work with about 30,000 women each day in Kabul alone on empowerment issues.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

And your revenue comes from government agencies and private donors, individual donors, all around the world.

[Jennifer Rowell]

Currently CIDA is our number one donor on our women's empowerment program, for which we are eternally grateful.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

And that is for how much?

[Jennifer Rowell]

I can pass you those details. I don't have them off the top of my head. But CIDA has been a consistent donor on women's rights for the last 13 years.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Jennifer or Kieran, have you yourselves been working and staying in Afghanistan?

[Jennifer Rowell]

I have been based there for the past year and a half permanently.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

The past year you were in Kabul.

[Jennifer Rowell]

Yes.

[Kieran Green]

I was there for a number of weeks this past summer going out and meeting some of the women who have been helped by these programs financed by Canada.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I found your brief very compelling. I think it's very timely, because we are now reaching a critical point in the discussion. I don't like to disagree with my colleague from St. John's, but I don't think the discussions are ephemeral at all. In fact, I think they're very real. I believe that getting them out into the public is going to be a difficult task, but I think that these are very real questions.

These questions of the conflict between human rights, particularly women's rights, and some of the arguments stemming from religious ideology that seem to be deeply ingrained within the Taliban movement, are not theoretical differences. They are very real. You only have to look at the experiences of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime to understand how real these are.

Was CARE able to operate in Afghanistan at the time the Taliban was running the government?

[Jennifer Rowell]

We were fully operative in Kabul. We were working on education and economic development with women.

The thing about Afghanistan is that there are ways to do many things that I believe the international community assumes are not possible. If we work in the right ways, which often means with quite a bit of discretion, work with the right people, such as local community leaders and local mullahs, and take the time it requires to build up those relationships, we can absolutely work in very complicated and very distressing circumstances.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

To be clear, you're not asking Canada to argue against peace talks between the various shura that are now being brought into Afghanistan. You're not saying, “Don't do that, because if you do that we'll end up putting human rights on the table”.

[Jennifer Rowell]

Absolutely not. We believe that some form of reconciliation, some form of reintegration, is probably the best way forward. It is the non-violent end to the conflict, and it is what brings a society back together.

The way it is handled is critical. The way it is undertaken is where the devil lies. The devil is in the details. If there isn't a sufficient guarantee, at some level, that women will be remembered, then we will go significantly back in time. The women of Afghanistan are acutely aware of this. This is what they are discussing right now. Women's leaders across the country are fighting for spaces in the peace jirga. Even at the Kabul conference there was a significant lobbying effort the women themselves undertook to ensure that they could get a voice in that forum to explain their concerns and explain what some of the options are.

One thing many in the western world often don't realize is that Afghanistan has a powerful women's leadership base—a very strong, very capable, powerful base. We as Canada and as the international community need to listen to them. We need to consult with them as a priority, as a policy matter, and ensure that those lessons are incorporated into Canadian policy.

Also, on some of the more sensitive issues, we need to broker the voice of women to get into policy fora where Canada is present but the women are not. If Canada can consult with women, ensure that their voices are understood, that they have the resources to do their own surveys, write their own reports, and inform at the level you require, then Canada can be the broker of that voice in spaces where the women aren't and let their voices shine through. Let the women be the leaders, because they're capable of it. They're absolutely capable of it.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Because of your mandate, in terms of looking at the human rights situation and women, presumably CARE has operations in Pakistan as well.