Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 18th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Good morning, everyone.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying the protection of children and youth in developing countries.

I want to welcome our three guests who are here this morning.

From Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, we have Mabel van Oranje. Mabel, welcome. We're glad to have you here today.

Ashok Dyalchand is a member of the Institute for Health Management. Welcome, sir. I'm glad to have you here.

We also have Amina Hanga, who is a member of the Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative.

Mabel, we're going to start with your opening remarks. Then you can introduce your colleagues and they will talk very briefly about what they do. That will allow us some time to go around the room and ask some questions about what's going on with your various organizations.

I will turn the floor over to you, Mabel, for your opening remarks, please.

[Mabel van Oranje, Chair, Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage]

Thank you very much, honourable chairman and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

It is a pleasure to be here today.

It's very nice to be here in person and not have to engage with you through a video link.

I am delighted to be joined by my colleagues Amina Hanga from the Isa Wali organization, who works in northern Nigeria to end child marriage, and Dr. Ashok Dyalchand from the Institute for Health Management in India, who was involved in the creation of Girls Not Brides four years ago.

I'll say just a few words about Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage. We are, as the name says, a membership organization, an umbrella partnership of more than 400 members from more than 60 countries all over the world. All are united in our efforts to bring an end to child marriage in the world. Some of the members are big organizations, big NGOs, such as CARE, Save the Children, and Human Rights Watch. Other ones are much smaller organizations, such as those of Dr. Ashok and Amina, working at the grassroots level.

Let me start by asking you a question. I'm very curious about what you remember of your wedding day. Was it the happiness? Was it the feeling of love? Was it a good party, maybe? Or was your wedding day the day you on which had to leave school? Was it the day you had to leave your family to go and live with a man—or a woman, but we're talking about a man—about twice your age? Was it the day you became pregnant even though you yourself were still a child?

That's the story of Geeta, a young woman I met in Bihar, India, who was forced to marry at the age of 14. When I met her she told me about the fear she felt on her wedding day. She said to me, “I was so young, I did not even know the meaning of marriage, and yet because I was a girl there was nothing I could do to stop this.”

Geeta's story is not unique. In fact, every two seconds somewhere in the world a girl gets married before the age of 18; that's one girl, and then another, and another.... That adds up to 50 million girls getting married before the age of 18 every year. In fact, 700 million in the world who are alive today were married before they were 18.

In the developing world we see that one out of every three girls is married before that crucial age and even one out of nine is married before reaching the age of 15. This sometimes happens to girls who are as young as ten or eleven, or even six or seven. It's true that young boys are also sometimes subjected to marriage, but the majority are young girls.

You might wonder where this is happening. This is a global issue. It happens across countries, across cultures, and across religions. It's most common in South Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa. In South Asia 46% of all girls are married by the age of 18 and in sub-Saharan Africa it's 39%. The rates are also high in Latin America: 29%. It's about 18% in the Middle East and North Africa. In East Asia it's 16%.

Disturbingly we see that as soon as conflict reaches an area of the world, for example, the refugee camps with Syrian refugees now, the rates of child marriage immediately go up tremendously. To give you the complete picture, child marriage also happens in some communities in Europe and North America.

The numbers are enormous. Even worse, the consequences are devastating for the girls, for their children, for the communities in which they live, and ultimately for the welfare of the nations in which they live. Child marriage is a major human rights abuse, but it also undermines our efforts to end global poverty.

Let me give you one or two examples. Think about it: we as an international community have said that we want to end maternal mortality. How can you end maternal mortality when you have girls with 13-year-old and 14-year-old bodies delivering babies? These child brides are themselves still children.

In fact, if you are 15 or younger when you have your first child, the chances that you will die in childbirth or that you'll have complications are five times greater than if you are in your early twenties when you have your first child. Similarly, we see that the infants of very young mothers are also much less likely to survive the first year of their lives. Infant mortality is 60% higher for children of those young child brides.

Another issue that I know has been on the Canadian development agenda for a long, long time is the question of education. How can you ever educate girls and make sure that every girl is in secondary school if girls are pulled out of school in order to get married?

This doesn't affect only the earning power of the girls. We know that for each year the girl stays in school, her earning power over the rest of her life increases by 10% to 15%. We also know that the money girls and women earn normally gets reinvested in the community, while unfortunately, men sometimes spend the majority of their earnings on the pleasures of life. How can you make sure that communities become more prosperous if you deny girls an education and the opportunity to earn a proper living?

In fact, child marriage is linked to six of the current eight millennium development goals that have been set to help eradicate poverty—six out of the eight.

You might wonder why this is happening. There is one thing I am absolutely convinced of. Parents in general want the very best for their children, including their girls. However, the reality is that in certain circumstances and in certain communities, it seems that marrying your daughters at a very young age might be in their best interest. Why?

The exact drivers of child marriage vary from one context to another, so the reasons it's happening in India might be slightly different from the reasons it's happening in northern Nigeria, which might again be slightly different from the reasons it's happening in southern Nigeria.

Overall, there seem to be four key drivers. One is poverty. If you live in real poverty, having one less mouth to feed by marrying your daughter off might be a solution that enables you to take better care of the rest of your family. Also, the dowry and bride's price might mean that marrying your daughter at a young age is economically in the best interest of your family.

The second reason is security. Many parents marry their girls off at a young age because otherwise the risks of the girls being sexually harassed and therefore becoming unable to get married later in their life or dishonouring the family are great. This is one of the drivers that we see in refugee camps. We should not kid ourselves. Early marriage does not provide a safe alternative to these girls because we know that domestic violence in marriages where girls marry young is much higher than domestic violence in marriages where girls marry at a later age.

The third reason is tradition. There are places where girls get married at an early age because that's how things have been done generation after generation. If I have an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, or a ten-year-old girl whom I don't marry off, you, the whole community, might turn against me or my daughter and think that there is something wrong with her. There might be social pressure that I do this even though it's not in the best interest of my girl or of us as a community.

Last, gender inequality is a real driver. In too many places in the world girls are considered a burden that you need to get rid of as quickly as you can. The reality is that girls are not valued as much as boys, so girls are married early because they are girls.

The numbers are enormous; the implications are devastating, and the drivers of child marriage, as I just mentioned, are complex. For far too long this issue has not been getting the attention it deserves. These girls were basically invisible, but change is happening.

It's thanks to Geeta from Bihar, who nowadays is educating young people about their rights, but also is helping village leaders to understand what the harmful consequences of child marriage are for the girl and for the village. It's thanks to the work of people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Graça Machel, the widow of Nelson Mandela, who have helped to put this taboo issue on the global agenda. For us, it's sometimes hard to do that, to come in as a westerner and say, “This is wrong; don't do this”. We might be dismissed as cultural imperialists. But when people like Archbishop Tutu and Graça Machel and Kofi Annan started embracing this issue, nobody could accuse them of being a cultural imperialist, and they could actually start a dialogue that allows all of us now to talk about it.

Change is also happening, thanks to the leadership of Canada and of other countries that have understood that it makes sense to put child marriage firmly on the international development agenda and that this is a smart thing to do. I really want to commend Canada for its visionary approach in this. It's also thanks to the hard work of Dr. Ashok and Amina who have been working on this issue for a long time, but now that their organizations are united in Girls Not Brides, it can help to get much more visibility for the issue.

The change that's happening is fascinating. At the international level, child marriage is now starting to be acknowledged as a serious problem. Thanks to Canada's leadership, together with Zambia, we hope later this week to see the first substantive UN resolution on child marriage adopted. Again, I want to commend Canada for its fantastic leadership on this. Also, working with a whole lot of other states, Canada has helped to make sure that ending child marriage will, hopefully, become a target in the post-2015 development agenda, the agenda that will come after the millennium development goals. More important, global awareness is also starting to translate into change on the ground. We see high-prevalence countries that are now starting to develop national action plans, and we see more money becoming available, including for grassroots organizations.

We know that ultimately change has to take place locally in the lives of the girls, the families, and the communities, because we know, and Dr. Ashok can testify to this, that when communities decide to change, child marriage does stop.

If you're working locally to tackle a tradition as sensitive as child marriage, you need the support of a global movement that helps to educate, raise awareness, and mobilize political and financial support, but that also allows us to learn what is working and what is not working. That's why we created Girls Not Brides, and that's why we're so happy that with Canada and other countries we're creating that global movement.

Because change isn't going to be easy, Girls Not Brides has put together a theory of change. We did that by collaborating with more than 150 experts, including Canadian experts. We'll give all of you a copy. This might look daunting, but it is actually quite neat in that it identifies the four key interventions that are needed in order to create change.

The first one is the empowering of girls. Both Amina and Dr. Ashok will talk about that a little more, what you need to do to empower girls.

The second one is community dialogue with parents, with men and boys, and with traditional and religious leaders, to help them understand that there are alternatives to child marriage that are actually in the interest of the girl and the community.

The third one is to make sure that adequate provisions are available—services for girls. We need to make sure that if these girls stay out of marriage, they can actually go to school. We need to make sure that when we think about health care services, they're tailored to the needs of young adolescent girls. Often when we look at health care services, including sexual health services, they target adult women but not young girls.

The fourth one that needs to take place is that we need to make sure there are laws that prohibit child marriage, but also, because many countries have those laws, that these laws are actually implemented, and that countries develop comprehensive strategies to tackle this issue. As I mentioned earlier, we see that happening now in a number of countries.

What does it all mean for Canada? As I mentioned, child marriage is linked to many development challenges. Ending child marriage is smart development and a good investment. It will maximize the impact of Canada's foreign policy and development efforts.

I know that your country has made really impressive commitments in the field of maternal, newborn and child health. I also note that there's a continuing commitment to work on education. Integrating child marriage into that work makes complete sense and would actually maximize the impact of those efforts.

I think it's very important to mention that the scale of child marriage is so big that this cannot be a topic for one party, for one parliamentary term, or for one project cycle or program cycle. Efforts to address child marriage must be sustained and require a commitment for the long term.

This is a non-partisan issue, and I have to say that the UN resolution, co-led by Canada, that will be adopted later this week is going to be a historic one. At a time of development aid budget cuts, I think it is wonderful to see that Canada is globally acknowledged for its leadership role in this field.

If I may make five recommendations for what I would love to see Canada do in the future, that would be great.

First, I'd love to see you continue your leadership role working together with countries where child marriage is prevalent and building close partnerships with those countries.

Second, I would encourage you to make a long-term commitment to continue your work in this field, including funding and programming for the long term.

Third, I encourage you to streamline child marriage throughout your development strategy work, including the work in maternal, newborn and child health, as well as education, but also violence against women, etc.

Fourth, it's crucial to make sure that some of the financial support that Canada is giving will actually go to the grassroots organizations that are making a difference in the daily lives of the girls, and in their communities.

Fifth, we need to scale up those programs that are working. Wherever we see that approaches are effective, we need to make sure that they get amplified.

Basically, I'm encouraging you to continue to make, directly and indirectly, a real difference in the lives of those girls. We are, as a world, starting to make progress on this issue, but we need to do much more to match the magnitude of the challenge.

We realize that our goal of changing a social norm is a difficult one. We know that change won't come quickly, but we do know what works to address child marriage. Again, we've tried to map that and we're learning how to skill it.

I'm optimistic because I am convinced that change is actually possible in one generation. I know that because when I travel through those countries where this is highly prevalent, and I ask each girl that I meet what they want for their daughters, these girls say, “We want our daughters to go to school and to only get married when they want and with whom they want.”

If we can keep this generation of girls out of marriage, we can be convinced that they will never marry their daughters off when they grow up.

Let there be no doubt: a world without child marriage means a world where everyone is healthier, better educated, more prosperous, and more equal. Let girls be girls and not brides.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. Ms. van Oranje, you're going to introduce your colleagues as well. Perhaps they can indicate what they do in their organizations.

[Mabel van Oranje]

Amina works with the Isa Wali organization in northern Nigeria. I think it would be better if she explained what they do.

[Amina Hanga, Member, Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative, Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage]

Good morning. Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to be here today to talk about child marriage.

Our organization, Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative, is based in Kano, which is in the northwestern part of Nigeria. It's a region that is very conservative and is very patriarchal.

There are lots of issues that women face. There is a low value placed on women. Child marriage is rife, especially in the rural areas more than in the urban areas. Actually in the urban areas it's declining, but in the rural areas it's still very common for girls to be married off at the age of 13, 14, or 15. That's because there's a low value placed on girls.

Poverty is high. There's high illiteracy. There's also ignorance and no appreciation for the value of education, especially for girls.

Our interventions tend to focus on empowering women and girls, providing them with basic literacy, maternal health, and economic empowerment.

For girls, or for mothers especially, we've noticed that when they attend basic literacy programs, they realize that education is very important, and that makes them determined that their daughters should get an education and should finish school.

What we find also is some girls can get enrolled into school, but when they get to secondary school, halfway through they are withdrawn for marriage. Sometimes it is because they have reached the age of puberty. Their bodies are developing, and they are looking mature, and parents would rather have them married off than have them in the public eye, so to speak. They are afraid of the girls bringing shame on the family, that is, maybe having children out of wedlock, or suffering sexual harassment. They would rather marry these girls off.

What we are doing is trying to make them see that as long as girls are not being educated, it creates a whole lot of problems for the girls, for their families and their children, in terms of maternal health risks for the girls. For their children it's malnutrition. Again, it's a vicious cycle because obviously she hasn't been to school, doesn't see the value, so her children don't go to school. All this just continues to perpetuate; it's a vicious cycle.

There are some communities where men don't want their wives to go to hospital because they don't want male doctors or male nurses to examine their wives when they are pregnant. So we say to them that if they don't let their daughters go to school, how can there be female doctors? How can there be female nurses that are going to look after their wives when they are pregnant, when they need to deliver?

In schools you have mostly a lot of male teachers. How can we have female teachers when the girls are not allowed to continue their education and to study any profession of any sort? As long as that's not happening, we are going to continue to have these problems.

This is some of what we do. Of course, it means that girls don't even have access to information, be it on health or anything to do with economic activities.

When they are married, the culture is they cannot go out unless they have permission from their husband, even for maternal health risks. What we find is the woman needs to go to hospital because it's time to have her baby, but the husband is out. Maybe he's out in the fields, or he's travelling out of town. She will not go because she does not have permission from her husband to go to hospital.

If it's a case where she has a problem such as eclampsia, and she's having a fit or something, she dies because they will not let her go to hospital. Her mother-in-law may say, “I had all my children at home so why do you feel you need to go to hospital?” It's also seen as a sign that the woman is not strong. That she had to go to hospital is seen as a failure on her part, especially when it's her first child.

These are all the various issues we come across, so we hold a lot of maternal health education for girls and for women with the basic literacy.

Also, providing them with access to legal aid if there is domestic violence is another issue, especially for young girls who suffer with this. The girls and women themselves tend to have low self-esteem. We try to do life skills education to make them realize that they have value and they should see themselves that way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We'll get a quick rundown on your organization, Ashok, and then we'll go around the room, because I know the members are anxious to ask questions as well.

[Dr. Ashok Dyalchand, Member, Institute for Health Management, Pachod, Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage]

I'm from India. India is a large country. In India, there are currently 113 million adolescent girls. We expect 45%—this is the national average—to get married before 18 years of age, which amounts to 51 million girls. Every year, roughly 8 million to 10 million are getting married and becoming mothers. That's the magnitude of the problem.

We've been doing this now since 1998. We realize that unless there's an integrated approach, we will not be able to really address all of the determinants that result in early marriage and in the disempowerment, the discrimination, for adolescent girls.

There are three components that we are implementing.

First is the empowerment of unmarried adolescent girls, both school-going and non-school-going girls, with an emphasis on girls living in villages and in the slums of India. What do we expect as an outcome of this empowerment? We expect better self-esteem and better self-efficacy in these girls, but above all else, the ability to negotiate with their parents to delay the age of marriage and to continue with their education. The outcomes would be better educated girls and a delayed age of marriage, thereby delaying and preventing some of the very adverse consequences of early marriage.

Second, while we are trying to prevent child marriage, we realize that there are still girls getting married at an early age and that they will continue to get married at an early age. We are providing primary level access to sexual and reproductive health services to these married adolescent girls. The reason this is so is that we have done research which indicates that 75% of these married adolescent girls, girls who get married before 18 years of age, suffer from a severe burden of morbidity, particularly at the time of pregnancy. Unless we address that burden of morbidity, they will suffer the consequences of this for the rest of their lives.

The third piece of the integrated program is dealing with boys and young men and making them gender sensitive, making them caring individuals, and reducing sexual abuse and domestic violence in our communities, because that is an additional load of morbidity that these girls suffer from.

If we do adopt an integrated approach, and if we do have a focused intervention on adolescent girls, we're confident that it would be a much better way of reducing maternal and neonatal mortality worldwide. Globally, there's a trend that there is a reduction in maternal and neonatal mortality. If we were to have a focused intervention for these girls, we would be able to reach our goals much faster. The reason is very simple. Mortality among these girls is five times higher as compared to women of more than 20 years of age. It's a win-win situation if we focus on adolescent girls, both the married and unmarried adolescent girls.

I would like to share this experience with you. We've been doing this since 1998, and at least in India, nobody really talked about this as an important national level issue until 2011, when we were invited to Ethiopia to establish Girls Not Brides. Suddenly, over the last three years, it has become an international issue. It has become a national issue. There are countries talking about it. There are governments that are ready to do something about this grave issue.

One of the things I would really like to leave behind, is that if we do address this huge burden of morbidity that these girls suffer from, we'll be saving billions of dollars every year. That's the kind of expenditure that the costs of early marriage and motherhood have. The thing that we really need to do collectively is ensure that this is on the post-2015 development agenda, because as I said earlier, when internationally there is pressure, there is also national pressure and there is pressure on the states and at the local level to perform.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Ashok.

We're going to start with the opposition.

Mr. Dewar, you have seven minutes for the opening round.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our guests. I should say, as a local MP from Ottawa, that I welcome you here to Ottawa. There is a very tight history between your royal family and our city. So welcome.

There are so many questions, but I'm quite intrigued by the idea of ensuring that we aren't seen as outsiders coming in. I think we have to be a little humble in our own story.

When my mother was born, she wasn't regarded as a person constitutionally here in Canada, because the Persons case, which we all should know here in Canada, declaring women to be persons, was back in 1929. Women didn't get the vote until 1918 here. I know this sounds great if you're in another country and don't have the vote, or if you're not declared a person as a woman in other countries constitutionally, but we have to understand that this is our narrative and not be arrogant about what we're trying to do here.

I'm very sensitive of the fact that, if we go into, particularly....

By the way, I should note that we usually have women at this committee. It's a bit odd, frankly; normally my colleague Hélène Laverdière is sitting next to me. My friend Robert is subbing for her. We have parliamentary secretary Lois Brown here. We're working at it.

I just want to say that these aspects that you're talking about—ensuring that we aren't going to be agents of noted imperialism, you said, or of colonialism, which is a hangover in many of these places.... We need to work at the grassroots level.

One area we're looking at as a committee is conflict zones. You touched on this issue. I note that when I was in Iraq in September with a colleague, Mr. Garneau, and the foreign affairs minister, we were hearing stories and were very concerned about what was happening there. I don't have to tell you about what's happening in Jordan: the stories of women being sold. Clearly this is happening elsewhere, but in conflict zones to which we have access through funding and through people who are working on the ground, it seems to me we're not doing enough. It seems to me more could be done, in building schools to accompany these refugee camps and in making sure that there is work there, for families to have cash. That's a program that has been working well. We provide as robust health services as we can, because after all, we know that these people have fled conflict. We know they are in harm's way. They shouldn't be put in further harm's way.

I'd like to hear from you, because we're studying Iraq at committee as well, and obviously the plight of refugees. Perhaps you could tell us about how you get into refugee camps, what kind of work is being done, and how you are making sure, when women and girls are supposedly in a safe place in a refugee camp, they aren't in further danger, which is sadly the case in some of these refugee camps that we speak of.

[Mabel van Oranje]

My colleagues in Girls Not Brides themselves do not go straight into refugee camps or do anything on the ground. We are truly a partnership organization, which means that Girls Not Brides itself is a small secretariat—not even 15 staff. Basically we facilitate the work of this growing membership, allowing them to learn from each other, share experiences, do joint advocacy and joint awareness raising. We are more a service organization than a programmatic organization. We help with the development of communication tools, etc., so I do not have first-hand experience of working in the refugee camps.

However, what I understand from people who do work there and from some of our partner organizations—we could put you in contact with some of them, if you're interested, and I think this is a broader problem than just that of the Syrian refugees alone—is that you see a situation in which people end up in what seem to be temporary situations, in camps, and therefore we only give them the basic needs, health and food. But people in too many places in the world end up living in these camps not just for years, but for decades.

I think that as an international community we're not doing enough to think about the long-term perspective for these people, including educational and economic opportunities, etc. I know there are efforts similar to what was being described by my colleagues in terms of girls' empowerment and sensitization of parents and the elderly people in the camps about the dangers of child marriage, but as long as we don't provide good alternatives, it's going to be very hard to keep these increasing levels down.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I have a couple of quick questions, because I only have two minutes.

In terms of legal reform, from what you're stating, obviously that is key. We know that if girls and women have actual legal protection—and I appreciate that there's legal aid work—that's absolutely critical. Legal reform is obviously something you're working on and advocating, and I'd like to know about that.

Also, I'm delighted to hear you talk about post-2015 MDGs. The question is, who has signed on to this? Do you have champions on this who are saying that for the post-2015 debate they will be the champions of this?

I'm not sure if our government has taken that on. I'd like them to do that. Are there other countries that are saying that for the post-2015 MDGs, we're going to universalize all these ideas? In other words, Canada has to look at itself in the mirror as well as talking about everyone else.

Who is taking this on and championing this issue?

[Mabel van Oranje]

First, with regard to post-2015, right now all the member states have negotiated a draft text, the open working group, it's called. There's a draft text now, which has 17 goals, and on average, 10 targets under each goal.

Ending child marriage is part of the third target in the goal about gender equality. As it's phrased right now—end all harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation—we're happy with that. I mean, I would always love to see stronger language, but we can absolutely live with that.

Canada was definitely one of the countries that took the lead in working to see this incorporated, but it also did a lot to reach out to countries that have high prevalence to bring them on board, because ultimately we do want to see leadership from across the globe and not just from a few countries on this issue. What we don't know as we enter the negotiations now for the open working group document is whether there will be pressure to merge some of them. What we don't want to see happen is that child marriage ends up being associated just with violence against girls and women, or just with education, or just with maternal health, or just with equality. That's not what child marriage is. Child marriage is related to all of these things.

The beautiful thing is that very often these development goals are described as we can't measure them, and they're all so wishy-washy. Well, you know what? We can actually measure child marriage. Not only that, we also know that if we're making progress on child marriage, we're making progress on a host of other development issues.

From that perspective, it is a really, really good goal, but we have to see that it doesn't get merged with other things. I know that Canada is working for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Mr. Anderson, for seven minutes, please.

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

I want to thank our guests for being with us this morning.

You mentioned the five priorities that you think Canada should focus on in the future. I want to focus on number four and perhaps number five.

You mentioned that some financial support should go to grassroots organizations. Some of us live a long way from the bureaucratic centre of our countries, and we often feel that programs that are delivered locally have more accountability and usually more effectiveness than things that are delivered from a long way away.

I would ask our two guests, how can the Canadian government help you in terms of delivering your programs on the ground, and where can we improve?

[Dr. Ashok Dyalchand]

Mr. Chair, on the first question, I think we first need to address why we need to work at the grassroots level. All the innovations we're talking about for delaying marriage, for preventing child marriage, and for protecting married adolescent girls are taking place in the NGO sector. This is happening at the grassroots level.

I would say there are two things that are really required. One is to identify these innovations and to be able to support the innovative work going on in different places. The second thing, which I think is far more important, is that we can't be experimenting and innovating for the rest of our lives. We need to scale these up. We need to be able to evaluate the efficacy of these innovations. We need to be able to scale them up and replicate them. That is where I think you need to be thinking in terms of setting up mechanisms whereby they can be identified, they can be evaluated, and they can be scaled up.

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

Are identification and evaluation grassroots—

[Dr. Ashok Dyalchand]

Innovations?

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

No, no; the innovations are, but when you back up and you spend most of your time identifying and evaluating, is that effective on the ground? That's at that other level above again.

[Dr. Ashok Dyalchand]

I think that kind of identification and evaluation has already been done. It's really a matter of being able to seek out where these innovations exist and scale them up.

[Amina Hanga]

I think, also, it's about supporting grassroots organizations. They're within the communities. They work closely with them. They have the trust of the people. If the grassroots organizations were supported, they could reach out more than they are currently able to with the limited resources they have.

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

I want to talk a bit about reform. It usually takes place when you can convince everybody in the community that there's some benefit to what's taking place. I'm wondering how you approach men in the community to convince them that there are benefits for them as well, because often people don't give up the power structures easily. You mentioned things like training young women to be nurses and doctors because there's a reason for that. I'm wondering what your approach is in trying to convince the men in the community that giving up the power they've had in that relationship is a good thing for them to consider.

[Amina Hanga]

We work with the stakeholders, such traditional institutions as the village heads and the district heads. Once you start at that level, the smaller local heads of the various villages and the religious rulers themselves have the voice of the people. If they speak, the people tend to listen to them. Once we can persuade them that there is a benefit to having girls go to school, they will pass on these messages and the men will listen to them more than would be the case if we just went directly to talk to the men. They are more or less like the gatekeepers. Once they buy into the idea, then the men.... It's easier for you now to approach the female side of the communities and to be able to work jointly with them. They give their support, which makes it easier than when you just try to go it alone on one side.

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

Thank you.

[Dr. Ashok Dyalchand]

There are two answers to your question, sir.

One is that I think all of these years we have been addressing issues related to women and girls, but we've really never considered boys and men. We've never believed that they also had reproductive and sexual health problems that needed to be addressed. One answer to your question is that we need to start addressing the sexual and reproductive health problems of men as well. There are many such problems that exist in these communities.

Another is that I think men need to realize that it is to their advantage not to marry young girls, because if they marry them, they also suffer the consequences of this burden of morbidity that I was referring to. They're the ones who would have to address those problems as well.

How does one deal with communities? The way we've gone about it, and it's been most successful, is to adopt two approaches. One is a social norms approach in which you actually deal with entire communities to change social norms, for example, the norm that condones domestic violence. It's men who will be able to change that norm. Young boys in one community started a campaign that said that real men don't marry little girls; they marry women. That changed the entire norm of early marriage in that particular community.

One is the social norms level, the community level, and the other is the perceived level, where norms are perceived at the individual level. Working at the individual level with counselling and with interpersonal communication, one can change individual behaviours.

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

Can I ask you how that applies to the notion of honour as well? I made a note here. How do we replace this obsession with honour with a sense of responsibility?

We've talked here about some of the violence in refugee camps. Paul brought that up. When we try to explore the issue of sexual violence in refugee camps, for example, no one wants to talk about it. Everyone wants to pretend it doesn't happen, because it's actually an issue of honour in many different ways.

I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about that. How do you change that cultural perception, or is that along the lines of what you've just been talking about?