Foreign Affairs Committee on May 14th, 2014

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Have you found that's the case, then, that you've been able to move on to other places?

[Evelyne Guindon]

There have been countries where we've been successful, where our interventions have been short. I have to say that many of the countries we work with, whether it's the Palestinian territories...and right now we're working in Jordan. It's a country where we had a very light touch, and today we have a much heavier touch, unfortunately. There are countries like Benin, where I can see the end within the next five to ten years, because we have that concerted effort now from a few donors that we will be able to actually leave a very different education system.

In other communities it's a little bit different. The situation's more precarious.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Ms. Reid mentioned something about working with mothers and reducing levels of corporal punishment, and I want to come back to that.

Can you talk a little bit about the role of parents, and how you address that? I realize you have all kinds of different situations and realities there, but how do you approach—particularly when you're talking about child protection—parents and parenting with your organizations as well?

[Dr. Lorna Read]

For us, it's actually a central part of the programming. Primarily we have what we call our child-centred program, with protection mechanisms and so on at the forefront of that model. But built into that model are ensuring the protective environments and the points of interaction for the child. The parents are obviously foremost in that model, and are very often the entry point for War Child's programming in terms of when you start your needs assessment and understanding where some of the highest risks are.

In our particular situation, very often it's related to the home situation based on the circumstances of the conflict. So it's ensuring that the mothers and the female heads of households have access themselves to education, to livelihoods, and to the type of life-changing circumstances that we know will then have a positive impact on their children.

With fathers, it's different. Very often, for us, fathers are more a part of the advocacy work of our engagement. That's often about awareness for the men in communities, to understand the importance of the work with women and children. Afghanistan just sticks out as an example for us of such a successful program there. We really focused on the women and we focused on mothers, understanding that they are ultimately the primary protective mechanism for the children and how we then would be able to work more directly with children. But that also required significant understanding and almost approval of the men in the communities, whether it be fathers, as parents, or religious leaders.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I'm out of time, but Evelyne, I'd like a response from you as well.

[Evelyne Guindon]

Again, I think it's critical that parents are involved. Once again, for us as an organization focused on children, working with parents as community leaders but also as influencers, what we see in a lot of our programs is we actually have children who are empowered and who are able to go back to their parents, to their communities, and make changes, changes that impact their health and impact their education. It goes both ways, but for us the parents are at the core of all of our programs and must remain.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Dewar, five minutes, please.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thanks again, Chair.

I'm glad you brought up the arms trade treaty. I was going to ask you that question, but you've already answered it. I would just plead with the government to acknowledge the need to do that, because particularly in a place like Africa the effects on children are clear. We see it in real time, right now, and hopefully we'll see fit to sign that treaty real soon.

On some of the UN resolutions, the resolution on children in armed conflict or the UN Security Council resolution on women, peace, and security, we've seen some member states engage in this and put in programs. Our government actually has an action plan on women, peace, and security. We've talked about child protection. From what you’ve seen of other member states, how are we doing? What’s your assessment of where Canada is at in implementing those resolutions regarding both child protection, in particular the one on children in armed conflict—obviously there’s a direct connection there—and the one on women, peace, and security, Security Council Resolution 1325, and subsequent resolutions following that?

It really is clear that women are the agents of change here, as you mentioned in your overview. But in light of the fact that we've had these for a couple of years, and in light of the fact that governments have had the time to respond and put things into action, how are you seeing it on the ground in terms of the work you're doing? And what improvements can we make to strengthen and improve those resolutions we've signed on to?

I'll start with War Child.

[Dr. Samantha Nutt]

I'm of the belief that there is always room for improvement in everything we do. Certainly I would say that Canada's visibility, at least in the areas where we are working, is not that high when it comes to protection. The exception I would put on that would be Syria, because certainly in the refugee camps in Jordan we've had a very high visibility. You could also argue that with Haiti we had a much higher visibility.

But when it comes to...keeping in mind that most of our programming is in Africa—in eastern Congo, South Sudan, Darfur, northern Uganda, and elsewhere. Canada's involvement in those contexts—South Sudan would be the exception, because we have had a much more prominent role there when it comes to these issues—has been, in some of these other places, not as much.

I think there has been a shift: the high-visibility activities we are engaged in tend to focus, as I've said, on these bigger announcements of the shorter-term interventions in response to a crisis or a natural disaster. Alternatively, those big announcements also tend to go to, say, UN pooled funds, which has been mentioned already. The opportunity for Canada to be visible within that is understandably diminished, because it's not seen that there is a very prominent role for Canadians, either diplomatically or at least within the humanitarian movement. There's not a prominent role we are taking on that is visible, being reported on, and shaping or influencing policy at that level. That's just the context in which we are working. Within that there are exceptions: Afghanistan, South Sudan, and a few others.

When you look at what's happened in Europe, for example, with the greater alignment of the AIDS strategy within DFID, and the Scandinavian countries that have committed to achieving or are already achieving or exceeding the 0.7%, we have a lot of catching up to do. I think there is great room for us to define ourselves on an international level as being a country deeply invested in human rights, child protection, and the protection of women and the advancement of girls globally. But it is incumbent upon all of us to seize that platform; to think about our aid in a more concerted, progressive, longer-term way to target those high-risk countries; and to stop chasing our tails with crisis announcement, crisis announcement—to actually be meaningfully invested over the long term.

So we're doing some good stuff, but we can do more.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Can I confirm or just underline some of these? You said the U.K. is doing good work, and you mentioned Scandinavian countries. Is there any particular country within that—

[Dr. Samantha Nutt]

Norway. Absolutely Norway.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have.

To our witnesses, thank you very much. I'm sure we could have gone on for another hour. It's always a challenge with that limited amount of time we have.

We'll suspend the meeting so we can get our next group of witnesses up.

Thanks again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Welcome back, everyone.

I want to welcome our two witnesses to finish up our last hour here.

From World Vision Canada, we have Elly Vandenberg, who is the senior director of policy and advocacy.

Welcome back. You're no stranger to our committee, so we're glad to have you back.

From UNICEF, we have Susan Bissell, who is the associate director of program division for child protection.

Susan, welcome, and we're glad to have you here as well.

We'll have both of you give your opening remarks, and then we'll go around the room. I believe we have bells at quarter after five, so we'll try to finish off what we're doing just shortly after that. We'll try to keep our rounds a little bit tighter.

Ms. Vandenberg, you have ten minutes.

[Elly Vandenberg, Senior Director, Policy and Advocacy, World Vision Canada]

Great.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for inviting me to be part of this important study on the protection of children and youth in developing countries.

World Vision Canada, for those of you who don't know about us, is a Christian relief, development, and advocacy organization operating as a federation in about 100 countries. We use a long-term community-based development model. We are a child-centred organization committed to protecting children from abuse, neglect, exploitation, and other forms of violence. We're really thrilled to be here for this committee meeting.

Today I want to share some recommendations on the role that Canada can play to ensure that children and youth are safe from harm. To understand the approach that's required, I'll begin with a story from Bangladesh, where I was recently.

Shabira, currently 15 years old, is from a very poor family. As a child she worked in a shrimp factory to help earn extra income for her family. After years of struggle, Shabira's aunt sold her to a brothel in India. She was exploited sexually there for a year until police found her and took her to a nearby shelter.

With no education, Shabira didn't understand what was happening to her. Desperate to get home to her parents in Bangladesh, she left the shelter. She reached out to a group of men to help her, and they ended up raping her.

When some community members found her and heard her story, they brought her to World Vision volunteers, who put her in touch with World Vision India, who made the connection with World Vision Bangladesh so that she could be repatriated back to her family in Bangladesh. Once home, she received medical attention but was too young to understand what had happened to her.

At 15, Shabira is now a young adolescent with physical and emotional scars.

I love working for World Vision, but it's stories like this that break my heart. I'm sharing this story as a way to help us understand the interconnectedness in the issue of child protection. I wish there was just one thing we could do that could protect children like Shabira, but what we've learned from our experience is that it takes a holistic approach to address issues of child protection. This approach starts with the child first.

You know, when I try to explain the systems-based approach to my mother, it's hard. The other day, when I was trying to explain it in a family setting, I said, you know, what we mean by a systems-based approach is that there can't be just one thing done for a girl like Shabira. The systems-based approach is with a child at the centre: we strengthen that child and we strengthen the protective environment around that child.

That includes different elements. It includes her parents—you had questions before about the role of the parents—it strengthens the community, it strengthens the government and different bodies within the government, and it strengthens international bodies. So it takes strengthening the child and strengthening that protective system, that protective shield, around the child.

Shabira's story shows just some examples of how complex and interrelated child protection issues are. We know that it's impossible to treat any of these issues in isolation.

Let me give you just a few examples of the interventions World Vision uses with children like Shabira. Like many girls in her community,

The fact that Shabira has never set foot in a classroom limits her potential and makes her vulnerable to exploitation once again. Our work involves providing her with good quality education and professional training so that she can acquire the skills she needs to fulfill her dream of working in a small business.

We're also engaging local and national governments to not only enact but to enforce legislation that would increase the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18.

Through Citizen Voice and Action, World Vision's approach to local-level advocacy and local government accountability, we're mobilizing girls, boys, parents, and leaders to change discriminatory gender norms and create alternative social, economic, and civil opportunities for girls. These provide a small sample of the many interventions needed to help somebody like Shabira reach her full potential, and create that safe environment for her and so many like her.

With regard to World Vision's recommendations, there is no silver bullet for addressing child protection, but the Government of Canada can continue to make a contribution to efforts that build that protective environment for children by taking action in diplomacy, trade, and in development.

We would like to highlight three areas where Canada can make real and lasting change for protecting children. The first is to eliminate the worst forms of child labour by investing in vocational training and increasing safe and decent employment opportunities for youth. Second is to prevent harmful practices, such as child marriage, by investing in birth registration and in education, both formal and informal. Last is to protect children in emergencies by prioritizing child-friendly spaces.

On eliminating the worst forms of child labour by investing in skills training and increasing safe and decent employment opportunities for youth, ending child exploitation and child slavery are top priorities for World Vision. It is also a priority for Canadians. Through our No Child For Sale campaign, we have learned that Canadians are deeply engaged on this issue. They have asked us to work with key players to protect children from hazardous conditions. In fact, a recent Ipsos Reid poll showed that 86% of Canadians want the Canadian government to play a role in making sure that Canadian companies don't directly or indirectly support poor labour practices in other countries, including using child labour.

We're seeing good results from combined efforts. Recent statistics indicate that the number of children working in dangerous, dirty, and degrading jobs has actually dropped, from 115 million children to 85 million children, since 2008. However, progress is not fast enough. There are 85 million children still suffering in the worst forms of child labour. We're not talking about paper routes here or jobs on the farm. These are dirty, dangerous, and degrading jobs. We encourage Canada to join with World Vision to address child labour as an urgent global priority.

As a starting point, Canada can help to fully implement the 2016 International Labour Organization's road map for achieving the elimination of the worst forms of child labour, by doing two things: continuing to develop and invest in education and skills-based training opportunities for children and youth and supporting employment creation and livelihood diversification for youth to access safe and decent employment.

World Vision's goal is to continue to promote a dialogue on child protection, with both the private sector and with Canadians, to ensure that the worst forms of child labour—dirty, dangerous, and degrading labour—can be traced in global supply chains. This isn't easy. We're not exactly sure how to make that happen, but we want to start the dialogue.

Second, I want to highlight the importance of preventing harmful practices, such as child marriage, by investing in birth registration and in education. Canada has shown real leadership on ending child early and forced marriage.

Child marriage, early marriage and forced marriage constitute a violation of children's rights. They are also a major obstacle to the reduction of poverty and, more generally, to the achievement of development objectives.

Beyond its engagement with the United Nations, we encourage the government of Canada to invest in formal and informal education, especially for girls, in both long-term development and humanitarian responses. Supporting girls and boys to enrol in school enables them to broaden their choices in life, and develop the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need to help break the cycle of poverty.

We appreciate Canada's generous support to the No Lost Generation initiative as a concrete example of how investing in education can be done in fragile states.

It's important to emphasize that in situations where children do not have the option to attend formal school, we need to invest in flexible, informal education—such as peer-to-peer learning—that offers children life-skills-based education.

We also encourage Canada to support universal birth registration as a key tool in making sure that all children have legal protection against exploitation. As we have found with our investments in maternal, newborn, and child health, a critical aspect in mothers and children getting the help they need requires knowing who they are.

Finally, there is protecting children in emergencies by prioritizing child-friendly spaces. A child like Shabira would be faced with unique child protection issues if Bangladesh were hit by a flood or engulfed in a conflict.

World Vision has long been recognized, for more than 50 years, in fact, for its ability to respond to humanitarian emergencies. Our experience has shown us that, because of the complexity of emergency situations and of their consequences for children, the process of prevention must focus on making children and their families aware of the dangers of violence and sexual exploitation, of human trafficking, of child labour. It must also focus on ways in which they can protect themselves.

Sadly, conflict continues to destroy the social fabric of communities, and many children are separated and without the protection of caring adults. This exposes them to high levels of violence, including gender-based violence, exploitation, abuse, and deprivation.

In times of humanitarian need, one practical thing Canada can do is ensure that creating safe spaces for boys and girls is prioritized as a key life-saving intervention. World Vision's child-friendly spaces serve as an important means of providing care, support, and protection for children in emergencies.

In conclusion, I want you to imagine the hundreds of children I have met as though they were sitting beside me and behind me, children who wish that they could speak to you themselves—that they had the opportunity I have right now—about what it takes to build their protection. We need to keep looking for new and innovative ways to work together to reach our goal of ending the worst forms of child labour by prioritizing skills-based training and increasing opportunities for youth to access safe and decent employment. Each of us has a responsibility to protect children, especially those who are most vulnerable.

World Vision, along with other partners, is collaborating with national governments and communities to strengthen the environment that will protect children and prevent them from being harmed. We've been encouraged because children and families are using their voices to advocate for change in their communities.

World Vision's No Child For Sale campaign points to the fact that Canadians are ready to take action to protect children and expect their leaders to protect children as well. There is a consensus that no child should be for sale. Let's say that my hand shows the child and each finger shows the parts we have to play: strengthening the child, strengthening that protective system, strengthening the family, and strengthening the communities, the government, and the international bodies. My pinky finger represents strengthening the participation of you and me as individuals and shows that we all have a part to play in protecting children.

Thank you for inviting World Vision Canada to be here today and for including our perspective in this important study. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We'll move over to Ms. Bissell, please.

[Dr. Susan Bissell, Associate Director, Programmes Division, Child Protection, UNICEF]

Thirty years ago, over two summers, my job was updating the index to the rules of procedure in committees of the House of Commons. What a pleasure to be back here. I know from that exercise that I'm not supposed to use any profanity. That was under “P”.

Thank you very much for inviting UNICEF to be with you today. I can't think of a more important reason to come home to Canada than to be with you for this critical conversation at a distinct moment in human history.

Think back to December 2012. Malala of Pakistan had been shot. We were all witness, mostly via the media, to the gang rapes in India. The Russian government sentenced children to life in institutions, preventing their adoption to the United States. The war raged in Syria. And children in a small school in Newtown, Connecticut, not far from where I currently live, were gunned down.

I could go on and on. The picture is violent and graphic, and plays out even today in northern Nigeria, where a mass kidnapping is now potentially a scene of rape, child marriage, trafficking, and even sale.

The time has come to say enough is enough and to centre the protection of children on the global stage. It is true that more children than ever before are being saved from preventable diseases. They are in schools, have access to potable water, and sanitary facilities have improved dramatically. As countries develop economically, the basics are being addressed, at least in part. What remains is a long list of child protection issues, from child labour to trafficking, female genital mutilation and cutting, child marriage, the sale of children, online bullying, and more. Sadly, no country is immune to violence, and to abuse, neglect, and exploitation of children.

Getting the world to wake up to the protection of children from all of this has been my life's work. From my current vantage point in UNICEF's headquarters, I want to share with you in the next few minutes some data on protecting children, and from there a vision that we have for the future of child protection and that I hope is also potentially a vision for the Government of Canada.

Equity is integral to this vision. Programmatic work in child protection is all about reaching and achieving results for marginalized and excluded children. Many children who suffer violence suffer in poverty, but not all. Poverty does not explain harmful practices, violence against children, and the systematic discrimination of certain segments of society. There will indeed be equity in human society when all children are protected all the time.

A little later this month—I'm not supposed to have this, but they snuck me a copy—we're actually going to be putting out a report on violence with some updated data. I'm going to draw from that a little.

We also put out a data-driven report on female genital mutilation and cutting last June, which we launched in Washington, and another report on birth registration in December of last year. This upcoming report on violence will be our next major publication; this year there will also be another one on child marriage. I'll be very happy to share with the committee links to all of this data—this one—at the end of the month.

I want to begin with what Elly very wisely brought up, the subject of birth registration. We refer to it in UNICEF as a child's passport to protection for life. Without proper registration, the risks of being bought and sold, trafficked without legal documentation, and other potential harms are great. In many instances, a missing birth certificate can mean that a child is refused a leaving certificate from school, or worse, she or he may not even be allowed to enrol.

Pause on this statistic for a moment: 230 million children under the age of five in the south are without a birth certificate today.

Every year, 1.2 million children are trafficked. This is an old statistic, and we expect it's a gross underestimation of the situation. For every 800 victims of trafficking, there is one conviction of a trafficker.

Add to this the millions of children Elly already mentioned who are in exploitative, numbing, and soul-destroying work and we begin to get a picture that lingers, not because it's interesting but because it simply should not be.

I've seen and worked with children for whom so-called work is picking through heaps of garbage for usable debris, and others who are sent down diamond mines daily, for whom daylight is an unknown. This is 2014, not 1768, and this is wrong.

The report on violence that we will bring out shortly tells us that spousal violence is common among married adolescent girls. Uganda had reported rates of 67%. These are girls between the ages of 15 and 19. In the Democratic Republic of Congo the figure is 70%.

What the data tells us about bullying is that, in many countries, students between the ages of 13 and 15 fear for their lives daily. In the Solomon Islands, for instance, 64% of boys and 68% of girls say they have been bullied in the last month, and likewise for children in Ghana, Uganda, and Sri Lanka, to name but a few.

Let me leap from what is most definitely a bleary picture to some visionary ideas and thoughts that we're trying to put into action.

The vision shares the following characteristics: a world focused on the protection of the millions of children it has helped save from preventable deaths; a professional workforce; a social service workforce that is funded and supported; a world where leaders, public sector and private, are passionate advocates for, and supporters of, child protection; a world engaged in a global movement to prevent violence against children; a world in which young people—they're called the millennials, apparently, I have one at home—care about, and are engaged in, the protection of children; and a world in which the rights of all children are realized.

Against all that negative data, I want to quickly say, in true UNICEF fashion, that we're making a lot of progress. I have the good fortune to have accompanied UNICEF through these last 25 years in this process of evolving work in child protection. I want to humbly suggest that our organization is uniquely placed to leverage our own presence and our leadership, but that needs to be done in partnership with governments, including that of Canada. Leadership and partnership is how I like to characterize things.

Two decades of hard work and solid advocacy from many agencies—World Vision being but one of them—are a big part of the reason we've arrived at this point. The “we” I refer to is UNICEF and the many other UN and civil society organizations. Starting from the Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF and others evolved from more issue-based, response-driven programming to one that focuses on systemic, holistic approaches that address the multiple underlying vulnerabilities of children and their families.

We heard in the earlier Q and A session that the sector is guided by Security Council resolutions, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed alternative care guidelines, and other standards that previously we didn't have. Child protection is visible and a necessity, but with this advocacy victory comes great expectations.

Importantly, we as a child protection sector have a strategy. That strategy comprises...and it's really encouraging to hear everyone who's been here this afternoon talking about strengthening systems that prevent harm, helping those who are violated and, at the same time, addressing social norms to strengthen those things that are helpful, and changing those that aren't good for children.

Together, we're part of a child protection community that's growing both in number and in its effectiveness. The community speaks a similar, if not always the same, language. That wasn't the case two decades ago.

Nevertheless, there remains a dearth of examples across the sector where there are scalable programs to achieve results for children. I want to highlight a couple of them, and one of them you should all be very proud of. Your recent support to UNICEF in Ghana holds great promise. It is a substantive grant that will allow the team and its partners to take child protection efforts to scale. Such investments are rare. They need to be encouraged. We're often taking a small-project approach, hampering the delivery of results that are truly systemic and sustainable. So all eyes are on Ghana.

The second example is Ethiopia, where the government and its partners are strengthening the child protection and social welfare system with significant financial support, in this case from the U.S. government. A degree of political will and the collaboration of child protection actors are expected to deliver evidence-based results in five years. These comprise an increase in the numbers of children in stable families, a decrease in the number of children living in institutions, a stronger judiciary, and a social welfare workforce.

Regionally, work in eastern Europe is preventing the institutionalization of children. Mildly disabled children were being institutionalized for a range of reasons. By tackling those reasons, and strengthening and supporting families, we're seeing a sustainable change for the good. These efforts already show evidence of scalable programming, with great results.

As one more example, by the end of next year, 17 countries will have completed high-quality household surveys of violence against children. A growing number of government-led comprehensive action plans to prevent and respond to violence are being developed. Importantly, the leadership of these governments brings to the table actors in education, justice, social welfare, and others. They take a systemic approach.

There are enormous advocacy challenges internal to the sector, and child protection advocates call for the kinds of investments that child health, nutrition, and education sectors have benefited from. Scholars Shiffman and Smith examined why some global health initiatives were prioritized by political leaders, whereas others received little attention. They told us there were four major factors that appear to influence an issue, and why it would become a priority. Those four factors are actor power, ideas, political context, and issue characteristics. All four of these exist for child protection today. What the sector needs is voice, political will, and financial resources.

So if I may be so bold, I have two big asks of Canada, a nation recognized as a leader in caring for women, children, and human rights. Please continue to bring your clout and commitment to this crucial work stream. What you have already done for child protection in Ghana, for protecting children affected by armed conflict and children in armed conflict, is enormous.

Second, please add your voice to the post-2015 discussions. Preventing violence against children must be a clearly articulated goal in whatever the goals are that the world sets for itself. We have a saying in my team that if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, and we've been on the menu throughout the MDGs.

Thank you again for this invitation, and I look forward to your questions and our discussion today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

I'm just going to propose to the group that we have one round of seven minutes each. We're going to go over bells a bit, but I think that way everyone will get a chance to get in.

Paul, for seven minutes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'll be disciplined, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Promises, promises.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

First, to Ms. Vandenberg, you mentioned Bangladesh. We just had some hearings on Bangladesh, so it's timely.

How would you like to see the Government of Canada show leadership in supporting Canadian companies—because, obviously, they have a role to play here—to do things such as sign the accord? I'm sure you're aware of the accord that was negotiated on fire and building safety in Bangladesh.

How do you see the role of the Canadian government in signing that very important accord, which, as you probably know, one Canadian company has signed on to?

[Elly Vandenberg]

Thanks so much for the question.

During my recent visit to Bangladesh, it seemed that everywhere I looked there were workplace tragedies just waiting to happen. Our partners in Bangladesh suggest that the accord is the best way to tackle the issue of workplace safety, so we've encouraged our supporters. We have something called the No Child For Sale campaign going on right now. It's really an awareness-raising campaign.

Canadians want to do something. Many of them were shocked and appalled when they knew that Canadian clothing, some of the clothes that they were wearing, that they had purchased, was part of the collapse of that factory in Bangladesh, so they want to do something. The polling suggests that Canadians would pay more if they knew that the clothing was made in such a way that didn't involve child labour.

It's a complex issue. We know that. We don't know how exactly to ensure that supply chains are completely transparent, but we know that something can be done. There have been these efforts made to have this accord for workplace safety in Bangladesh. Our partners are suggesting that it's the best way to go at this point.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Another facet to this, and you were touching on it, is how government can actually engage with Canadians, citizens and communities, to support the advocacy and the partnership on child protection efforts, because clearly—it was mentioned in the way you laid it out and in the key visual you had with your hand—everyone has a role to play.

What suggestions might you have in terms of having the Government of Canada do that facilitation to engage Canadians on their role? One of the obvious things is on purchasing; that makes sense. Are there some other things that you can see the Canadian government playing a role in to engage Canadian citizens and community groups and others to get involved and support this advocacy on child protection?

[Elly Vandenberg]

Well, I can draw on our experience of something we call Citizen Voice and Action, which I think I referred to earlier. It's our social accountability tool that we use for local-level advocacy in the countries where we work.

It's not an expensive thing, it's a tool. It takes some time to be trained on the tool, but it's about helping people at the local level—including children and youth who are very excited about this tool because they can see immediate results from being engaged in it. It's a tool that helps them ask the questions about the responsibility of their local government around meeting their particular needs.

So when you go into a community and you ask children and youth what it is they need, they're very clear about their needs and what needs to be done. The role of the local government is not as clear to them. When they're exposed to learning how to read budgets, read the local development plan, the local community plan, then they're in a position where they can ask questions.

What we have found is that it's not an antagonistic relationship with local government, because the local government wants to be engaged with the community and wants to be able to respond to their needs. What we found with using that tool around health is that we've seen a huge increase in, for example, the number of skilled birth attendants, because families will say it's a need that they have.

Around child protection, I can imagine they would make clear demands around the needs that they have related to safe working environments, for youth in particular.

That would be my response.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I have just two minutes, so I want to turn now to UNICEF.

Ms. Bissell, you referenced where we're at in our MGDs. In the post-2015 discussions that are happening—I look forward to hearing from government on this, because clearly Canada has a role to play—the agenda that we're looking at is to try to.... People are talking about the globalizing or universal approach to these issues, which I think is great.

How do you see child protection in that agenda? Where are we at? Do we need to give a lot more volume to the issue to make sure it will be part of the post-2015 focus and goals? And how do we get there, if that's the case?