I would like to thank you for the invitation to appear before you and submit my testimony on behalf of CARE Canada. I do send regrets from Gillian Barth, our president and CEO, who's attending our board meeting as we speak.
As many of you know, CARE Canada is a member of the global CARE federation. CARE, like Plan, has been around for 75 or more years, hailing back to the Second World War with the care package we all think of back then. Of course, we've evolved tremendously since then, and we are present in more than 80 countries. Our approach to development and humanitarian assistance is based on the empowerment of women and girls. Because of our expertise in this area we are a major partner in the Muskoka initiative aimed at improving maternal, newborn and child health. We have also been the recipient of START funding for programming on child, early and forced marriage, particularly in Ghana and Ethiopia.
The issue this committee is studying today, the protection of children and the prevention of human trafficking, early and forced marriage, the sex trade, female genital mutilation, and the online abuse of children, is one that is very much aligned with our mission. Based on CARE's experience in developing countries, whether through long-term programming or emergency relief, I can certainly speak about the challenges we face as we tackle these issues, with the exception of online abuse.
The first thing I should mention is that in all the countries where we work, we see that girls and women are disproportionately affected by poverty and discrimination. This poverty comes from a chronic scarcity of basic necessities: clean water, food, and protection from deadly diseases such as malaria or dengue fever. The scramble to survive on limited resources inevitably creates a pecking order, the bottom of which is almost always occupied by young girls.
Once you are considered expendable, the road from being pulled out of school to help with chores, to going to bed hungry during lean seasons or times of crisis, to becoming a victim of gender-based violence can be surprisingly short.
“Gender-based violence” is a bit of a jargon term. What does it mean? It usually means that young girls and women are being intimidated and abused, often sexually, because they are perceived as weaker, too often because nobody is there to defend them and they just don't have the knowledge and means to defend themselves. Vulnerability leads to marginalization and isolation, making it even more difficult for agencies such as ours to reach and help these girls.
Lack of education for girls contributes to early marriage, higher birth rates, and deliveries with complications that can lead to death or permanent disabilities because the body of a 12-year-old is not ready to conceive and give birth, and an 18-year-old should not be raising three or four kids, certainly not without an education, an income, and a safe place to live.
Many of these girls—we can't really call them mothers when it was never their decision to bear children before becoming adults—do not live within proximity of a health facility. If they do, they are often discouraged by their husband from seeking medical care in a clinic because of lack of money to pay for the services or the cost of transportation to get there.
Having had no access to prenatal care, they will often give birth alone, without a trained birth attendant. If there are complications with the delivery, nobody will be there to provide emergency assistance. This means that a young girl will die from hemorrhage without even knowing what is happening to her. Quite apart from the searing pain, can you imagine the dread of feeling the life slip away from you as you are trying to give life?
Because their bodies are still so small, many of the young girls who do live through difficult deliveries will suffer from something called fistula. Without going into all the medical details, this condition is a tear of the tissue around the pelvic bone, and it occurs when labour is obstructed for several days. It renders girls permanently incontinent, which only increases their level of isolation and vulnerability.
In a conflict setting, like we have seen in South Sudan right now, the threat and damage done by gender-based violence grows exponentially. For a concise yet very informative review of the situation there, I invite you to read our report, “The Girl Has No Rights: Gender-Based Violence in South Sudan”. I have submitted a copy with my testimony.
We know that child, early and forced marriage is especially pernicious because it pushes young girls farther and farther beyond the reach of those who would help them. If they are shunned by their community, what happens to their children? Who takes care of them? Who takes on the responsibility of protecting them from abuse, exploitation, and neglect?
What are we at CARE doing to counter the effects of child, early and forced marriage? In my introduction I mentioned that CARE was the recipient of START funding for projects in Ghana and Ethiopia. Last year we were successful in receiving funding but unfortunately, by the time we received the funding there were only four months left to program. While we were able to achieve some results, the time period was detrimental.
Our initiative in Ghana's upper west district was one of awareness raising and education. With our civil society partner we organized workshops with local authorities and traditional leaders to sensitize them to the harms associated with child, early and forced marriage. We also created girls' clubs in schools where we trained girls in leadership skills, so they could share knowledge and caution peers and their families. We put on a five-day camp where 80 young girls received more extensive training in the hope that they will become champions of marriage after the legal age, which in Ghana is 18.
In Ethiopia we used our flagship Village Savings and Loan Association, or VSLA, programming to empower girls who are already married by showing them the basics of saving and financial planning. This created a platform for us to interact with them and provide them with tools that will help them become more self-sufficient.
While all these interventions are inspiring and indeed showing results, the prevalence of child, early and forced marriage across so many communities remains highly problematic. Child, early and forced marriage is a practice that is cultural, generational, but also motivated by economic circumstances, as I alluded to earlier. Reversing something that is so ingrained in the fabric of a community is not done in four months, and it's not done even in four years.
By way of comparison, let's look at a customary practice here in Canada. Do you remember back in the 1960s and 1970s when most people drove around without wearing a seatbelt? It may not surprise you that Ontario was the first province to enact mandatory seatbelt use back in 1976, but that was after much lobbying by road safety advocates, public awareness campaigns, and of course, an incremental march toward a political will to legislate. It did not happen overnight even here in Canada. In fact, in other parts of the country, it took many years to convince the public.
Going back to Ghana and Ethiopia or many of these countries, the belief that a man can take a young girl as his wife is much more intimate than the belief that we can't wear our seatbelts. We cannot expect too quickly or easily to reverse thinking and practices that have been passed down and encouraged for generations, especially when they are also perceived as essential to a family's economic sustainability.
When we are able to change hearts and minds, and authorities become willing to enforce the laws that are on the books, what happens to these girls? They may be rescued from an early marriage, but who will take them in? Often the families do not want them and there are no shelters for them, no referral services, no child welfare agencies with trained staff that will provide a safe place to stay and help them get an education. Short-term funding does not allow for any of this. It may allow us to say we are addressing the problem, but it does not give us the right to think that we are. If we are going to see results, real comprehensive results, we need to make this a long-term development priority. That means that child, early and forced marriage must be at or very near the top of the pile on the desk of Minister Paradis.
If we are serious about this issue and want Canada to have an impact, it will take a sustained and concerted effort. A number of NGOs have expertise in this area and best practices do exist. What we need now is focus, patience, and the funding to back up the commitment. As we develop the post-2015 sustainable development goals, we need to focus on substantive solutions that strengthen child protection systems, provide vocational training, and promote economic empowerment. In crafting these solutions, our approach must be inclusive. This means working with men and boys as well as women and girls, and it also means going beyond prevention efforts and addressing the plight of girls who have already been married.
I will stop there.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.