Honourable committee chair, members of Parliament, the clerk of the committee, and esteemed colleagues, Save the Children is honoured to appear today before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs to talk to you about Canada's role particularly as it relates to the prevention of human trafficking and early and forced marriage.
I wish to extend the regrets of Patricia Erb, the CEO of Save the Children, who was unable to attend today because she is travelling.
As you know, Save the Children is the world's leading independent organization for children working in 120 countries. We were established almost 100 years ago; our anniversary will be very soon. We build our expertise through our work around the world in partnership with local organizations and governments. Child protection is an area of particular focus for us and is one of the reasons that Save the Children led in the formation of the International Child Protection Network of Canada, mentioned earlier by Rosemary McCarney. This is a coalition of Canadian NGOs that was formed in 2013 to share knowledge and experience on child protection programming and to engage the government and the public in this critical development issue.
Save the Children believes that child protection is vital to ensuring that the equal rights of girls and boys can be fulfilled. The simple fact is that if children are exploited, abused, or neglected, it is unlikely that they will lead healthy, educated, and empowered lives. Child protection is therefore a minimum requirement to meet our political and ethical responsibilities to girls and boys,
But protection should not be at an end in itself. Our ultimate goal should be to enable children to become healthy, educated, empowered citizens, engaged political, social, and economic actors, and young leaders. To achieve this goal, we understand that protection should integrate the three following critical approaches: investing in the participation of children, understanding how the potential of each child can be leveraged and maximized; investing in the prevention of violence, including early forced marriage and child trafficking; and focusing on the root causes that lead to the exploitation, abuse, and neglect of children, integrating our response into a systems approach to child protection.
Obviously, underpinning those approaches there needs to be gender equality. This is a priority area for Save the Children Canada. We believe that the two thematic areas, child protection and gender equality, are inextricably linked. We recognize that girls and boys face different child protection risks and challenges, but if we are to make real change for girls and women, boys and men have to be part of the solution. We need not only to address the inequality faced by girls and women, but also the limitations that this discrimination imposes on boys and men. Only in promoting and enabling gender equality can we ensure that no harm comes to children, end discrimination, and advance our vision of a world in which every child attains an equal right to survival, protection, and development.
Why is child participation so important? Ultimately children themselves, while they experience vulnerability, have tremendous potential. They are also able to articulate what the greatest risks are that they face. A proper weighting in child protection of building systems and responses means listening to the voices of girls and boys and facilitating a space in which they can seek information and build their own understanding, as well as shape their own destiny and our responses as development actors.
An example of how important this is is found in child trafficking. While of course children are trafficked and we need improved laws, enforcement, and child protection systems to address this criminal activity, often there are pull mechanisms that come into play, whereby children make the choice to leave their own homes and communities and then are exploited in their effort to seek out safer environments or economic opportunity. This was a primary example of the work we have done in child trafficking in West Africa, where for years the migration of girls and boys was simply understood through the trafficking lens. What became apparent once we listened to what girls and boys were saying is that they were leaving for a variety of reasons—poverty, abuse within their own families, sometimes just for the adventure of the trip or for the experience, because it was deeply rooted in their cultures—and the trafficking and exploitation came after the initial choice was made by them to leave their homes and families. If we're going to respond to their needs and actually try to mitigate the dangers that they experience, you have to understand that the initial choice to leave was their own.
Engaging children in meaningful participation allows us to more accurately understand the root causes and to address the potential violence. We believe it is vital for the Government of Canada to ensure that meaningful participation of girls and boys is integrated into its work on child protection, and that programs are planned and executed in partnership with civil society organizations that are best placed to encourage this participation. Child protection programs should include sufficient time and funds to ensure that this participation is equitable and meaningful. Other colleagues have talked about the importance of a strong prevention framework. This is obviously important as it relates to understanding the root causes.
In terms of child, early and forced marriage, recently Save the Children was working through a DFATD supported program with the Nagaad community organization in Somalia. What came to be obvious was that the knowledge from this partnership enabled us to identify that one of the key drivers of early marriage in the area where we were working was social isolation. Parents, as others have said, were afraid that their daughters would lose their virginity before marriage, or that they would be socially ostracized if they were to stay unmarried, so they kept them at home and away from school. As a result, girls were not properly informed of the risks and were seeking their own escape from their domestic burdens, and often again would choose or would seek out marriage themselves. Again, that's another example where by working with communities, community organizations, and with girls themselves we were able to identify the kinds of programming that would educate and support girls in making different choices for themselves and support families in making different choices.
We call on the Canadian government to ensure that its leadership on child protection takes a holistic approach that addresses in a sustainable way the root causes and engages entire communities in working to end the violence that children often experience. That involves definitely a protection system that engages legislation and policy mechanisms that serve the service and social welfare systems at the national and local levels, that addresses the cultural framework and practices, and as I said previously, ensures the participation of children.
One of the things that Save the Children has been keenly engaged with is the conversation around sustainable economic growth. Poverty is an underlying driver in many instances when it comes to both trafficking and early and forced marriage. The children's rights and business principles launched in 2012 were developed by Save the Children, UNICEF, and the UN Global Compact in response to a call from the UN for companies to better address the rights of children. They're a guide intended to encourage business to respect and support the rights of children. Through its engagement with the private sector, the Government of Canada should work to see that all its partners adhere to the children's rights and business principles.
Addressing the vulnerabilities and potential that children face, whether it's at work and the exploitation at work and sexual exploitation at work.... We call on the government to continue its efforts to support girls and boys who are working. Many of the children we're talking about who face trafficking or early and forced marriage are also children who are facing the potential of working, or are working. Providing equal access to quality education, market-oriented training, and decent working opportunities for children can help break the cycle of poverty for families and communities as well as break the cycle of early and forced marriage and trafficking.
To conclude, we would like to call on the Canadian government to ensure that girls and boys can participate equitably and meaningfully in decisions that affect their lives, prioritize, identify, and address root causes of violence, as well as mandate the work we do collectively—governments, civil society, and children—through a systems approach to respond to violence, to incorporate a response, and to encourage the private sector to engage meaningfully in that collective work as well.
I'd like to thank you for allowing us to speak today.
