Evidence of meeting #34 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was marriage.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Plan International Canada Inc.
As we know, and certainly much more clearly over the last few weeks, girls and women hesitate to report for exactly the reasons that they will be stigmatized, or rejected, or questioned in terms of their veracity. This is universal and pervasive.
We know that in Canada one in four girls reports to us that they're sexually assaulted before the age of 16, as do 15% of boys. I am never in a classroom with young children where I'm not counting one, two, three, four, and one, two, three, four, yet I wonder.... In terms of the reporting and the confidence to report, I think what's fundamentally important is for us to create safe individuals and safe institutions so children feel that they can come forward. If that doesn't work at the family level, can it work at the health clinic level or can it work at the school level? It's so important that we're able to create a safe environment for children and girls to report these abuses, an environment where they know they will receive the support they need.
I don't think it's unique to religion or societies. It's an issue that we need to get on top of as a planet: we need to get ahead of almost the habituation or the normalcy of gender-based violence.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you.
Ms. Wright, very quickly, and then we're going to go to Mr. Garneau.
November 18th, 2014 / 10:40 a.m.
Vice-President, International Programs, CARE Canada
I just want to say that a lot of it is around economic drivers. We tend to go to the religious or the cultural, but really, sometimes it's just about survival, and this is a way that has worked for them over the generations.
Of course, now we realize that it's not. We're coming to that realization ourselves, but also, as you work with people and talk to them about it, they realize it too. But that's a long, long process.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you. That's probably an answer that needs a little more than 30 seconds as well. We realize that.
Mr. Garneau.
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC
Witnesses, thank you for all the work that you do.
I think that this week we are celebrating or highlighting the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. I guess we still have some way to go, including in our own country, as you've pointed out.
I want to focus more on girls. I'm not minimizing what's happening to boys, and they very much have to be part of the solution and men as well, but it is girls who are forced into marriages and become child brides and are victims of sex trafficking and female genital mutilation. More than one person has spoken to us today about the importance of empowering girls, and I couldn't agree more. However, when I think about empowering girls, I'm thinking about some of the obstacles they face with respect to certain religions, with respect to deeply ingrained cultural traditions.
This question is for all of you. It's my only question. Could you give me some indication of how the empowerment is happening despite all of these very daunting challenges that girls face?
Coordinator, EVERY ONE Campaign, Save the Children Canada
Ultimately, we find that oftentimes—and I think this was mentioned in the first suite of speakers this morning—working with religious leaders and community leaders, most of whom are male, is actually a very good way of highlighting why change is important and what the benefit is to the family, the community, if girls are empowered.
Certainly, we've seen this in northern Nigeria where we have been working in the same areas where you see Boko Haram, for example, and a number of the communities.... I think you saw that with the parents of the young girls who were kidnapped. It was the fathers as well as the mothers who were saying that they wanted their daughters to be educated and that for them it was the future, which made what happened to them all the more heartrending. We also heard that in urban settings they've seen a decrease in the number of child marriages, in large part because the norm had shifted, as my colleague from CARE talked about. When you see around you that more children are going to school and more girls are going to school, then the norm shifts. Really, it is through this constant engagement and repetition of the importance of education and the opportunities that girls being educated can bring not only to themselves but also to their communities and to their families that will really be the tipping point for change when it comes to empowerment.
If you just focus the message narrowly on that individual girl's empowerment, you're likely not to be as successful, to be honest, as if you contextualized it within how it will be a betterment for family and community as a whole.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Plan International Canada Inc.
What I would add to my colleague's comments is that education is what empowers girls. If a girl is able to attend school and get through the transition to secondary school, if we redefine primary education or basic education to be at least nine years and get them through that vulnerable stage, they learn about their rights, and they gain a confidence to assert those rights. Then they're able to get a good job or a decent job and be empowered at a household level as an economic contributor. It's a vital force of empowerment. But we can't put all of this on the backs of young girls. We need the traditional and religious leaders, such as the Sultan of Dosso in Niger, who is one of the most outspoken advocates for girls' protection and ending girls' early and forced marriage in a country where it's universal. There's the Zimbabwe religious leaders, through the DFATD program, who came to together and created a national broadcast and created a signing agreement that they would step up to end. It's bringing in all of those. There are the wedding busters in Bangladesh, young boys who go house to house when they hear about a child marriage about to take place and advocate on behalf of them.
We can't put all of it on the backs of girls. Empower the girls, yes, but make sure all of us step up to our obligations and our responsibilities.
Vice-President, International Programs, CARE Canada
I would just add that this has to be seen under the umbrella of poverty and the injustice of poverty and the inequality of power associated with that at all levels. If we want to take a holistic approach, seeing it under that umbrella is really going to help us.
In the Village Savings and Loan Association program that we run in many countries, but in particular in Ethiopia, this is a platform that allows for economic empowerment of community members—not just women, not just men, not just girls, but the community. We know that is one of the most successful ways to empower the communities. In turn, if they are empowered and they have the ability to make different choices, and they have the income, maybe they won't take that child bride price. It's about looking at the root causes and the drivers of those inequalities in poverty. I think my colleagues are right that if we focus that too narrowly, people just may not choose to listen.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you. That's all the time we have.
Witnesses, thank you very much for being here today.
With that, the meeting is adjourned.