Foreign Affairs Committee on March 12th, 2015

[Diane Jacovella]

In terms of family planning, we do support initiatives on family planning. We know that family planning helps reduce first pregnancies and helps to space pregnancies, but the Government of Canada has decided to not fund programs that directly support abortions.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Last year, not all of the government funding that was approved by Parliament was spent in your department. I want to know, with respect to the funding that was supposed to go to the programs in your area of responsibility, whether all of the funding was provided. If it wasn't, do you have an explanation as to why it wasn't?

[Diane Jacovella]

The funding we have for maternal, newborn, and child health has all been committed and disbursed as planned. I don't have the numbers for March, but in January we were at 97% of the disbursement for Muskoka. We are on track to fully disburse everything that had been committed in Muskoka by March 31.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is for the ambassador.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, as we all like to say, is the most ratified convention in the history of the United Nations. I'm sure Syria has ratified it. Yet we have some pretty awful situations in the world.

Is it your impression, from where you stand in the United Nations, that the signing and ratifying of this convention for many countries where Canada is involved with maternal and child care is almost meaningless and that it has been totally forgotten, or would you say that despite the challenges ahead of us, this convention has had some benefit over the past 20 years?

[Guillermo Rishchynski]

I think, Mr. Garneau, that the convention has had an extremely positive effect in terms of underscoring to member states, particularly those in a developing context, the need for them to undertake work to bring forward public policies that really put children at the centre of their agendas, whether it be in the health area or the education area. They understand clearly that their ability to progress as societies is intrinsically linked to their ability to ensure their children have the possibility of a future.

If children are dying under the age of five, they will never have the opportunity to be contributors to their society. The Convention on the Rights of the Child actually was the instrument, if you will, that put the issue that you must put children first, from the point of view of what you're doing in governance no matter what your context is, and that then exhorted countries such as ours and others in the developed world to provide the assistance, expertise, and capacity-building resources so that countries could up their game, as it were.

Certainly from what we see here on a daily basis from countries whose GDP per capita is extremely low is that they are as committed to wanting to do as much as they can for their children as we are. But the fact is that their systems, their programming, the ability to reach people in remote areas where they don't have roads or infrastructure, all work against their ability to deliver the kinds of services Madam Jacovella spoke of on maternal, newborn, and child health.

The sadness of children under five dying is that most of them die from things that are preventable, things such as water and sanitation, and nutritious food that they're not able to get because of where they happen to be or their economic circumstances.

UNICEF today is the UN's brand that is best known and appreciated around the world. I think as a catalyst to putting children at the focal point and really giving UNICEF...the convention certainly has served that purpose and is taken seriously by countries, notwithstanding, perhaps in some cases, very limited abilities to do the kinds of things that they know they ultimately must to ensure their children have a prosperous future possibility.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Marc.

We're going to start a second round of five minutes, and I'm going to lead off with Mr. Hawn for five minutes.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

Ambassador Rishchynski, there's a lot of money, obviously, at play here, and there's always the concern that the money gets to where it's actually supposed to go. What kinds of tracking mechanisms do we have in place to make sure it gets into the right hands, and how successful are we at that? How do we compare with the experience of our partners?

[Guillermo Rishchynski]

Well, I can tell you that in our own bilateral programming, and Madam Jacovella and Madam Norton can speak to that in much more detail than I, we have very strong monitoring, evaluation, and tracking methodologies that have been in place for a very long time to ensure that our investments are protected and, in fact, the funding that we provide goes to the beneficiaries as per our targeting.

With the UN, certainly over the course of the last decade or 15 years since the millennium development goals were adopted, we've seen UN agencies, in partnership with host governments around the world, really put an emphasis on the need to have accountability and on the need to have data that actually demonstrates where money is going and to the benefit of whom. When I sit with countries here like Tanzania or Zambia I can see that they are now in a position where they are able to shift resources to other areas of need because they're in a much better position to understand the gaps.

As we begin now to negotiate and finalize the post-2015 development framework, the requirements of monitoring and tracking have to be at the centre of the agenda, so that we are able to disaggregate data and ensure that the money is actually going to those segments of populations with the greatest need in a specific area. In fact, this is part of the discussion now in terms of how we set up the indicator frameworks that will allow us to do this on a fulsome basis as the program rolls out subsequent to adoption in September of this year.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Ms. Jacovella, can you talk a little bit about the type of support that we give to a girl we're rescuing from a child, early, and forced marriage and the kind of resistance and how you overcome that?

[Diane Jacovella]

Our programming works with community-based organizations and with developing countries. With developing countries, it helps them develop the systems in place, the child protection system, that will find those girls, help give them counselling, and help them adapt to the situation. We also work with some community-based organizations, some of our Canadian NGOs that are quite active, and organizations like Girls Not Brides, that try to actually work with the parents so the situation doesn't happen. We really try to focus on the prevention and then in the future, addressing situations.

In terms of the humanitarian situation, one of the issues we have seen is that often those girls are alone and the parents sometimes think it's safer for them to get married than to be alone. So we also try to work with the community and with some of our multilateral partners, as Ms. Norton mentioned, like UNHCR, to make sure that when they look at new refugees, when they look at this base population, they address those issues.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Ambassador Rishchynski, in the global community we have been working in conflict areas for a very long time, and that probably won't go away anytime soon. Have we learned any lessons that we're applying now? Is history just repeating itself? Are we getting any better at dealing with Syria and Iraq and places like that? When that pops up, do we say we know we can start at least a couple of steps ahead of where we may have started for the last one?

[Guillermo Rishchynski]

I'd like to think that we are, Mr. Hawn, but the sad reality is that in countries where conflict exists today, 50% of those countries, after they have achieved some level of truce or peace, will actually revert back into conflict over the medium term. The problem is a lack of institutions that can really sustain the kind of constructive peace building, peace consolidation, to allow countries to really move and for populations to see that they are going forward in post-conflict environments.

The peace-building architecture of the UN that was adopted in 2005 really sought to put a focus globally, among international financial institutions and donors, on the need to create resilient institutions in post-conflict settings that would allow the roots to take hold in a society that would then mitigate a potential return to conflict. Look at a place like South Sudan, look at a place like DRC. It's extremely difficult.

There are other examples in the world where we have seen countries move out of conflict, begin to consolidate gains, and if the population and good governance can then be brought in behind this, actually move and get to a different place. Countries like Mozambique, Angola, even Sierra Leone in West Africa, I think, are positive examples, but the fragility of these contexts is such that it doesn't take very much to tilt them back. That is the great sadness and that's the reason we have to keep working as we do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Hawn.

Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

I'm going to turn it over to you, Mr. Saganash, for five minutes, sir.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank Ms. Jacovella for her clear and concise presentation.

I would like to begin with a question for Ms. Bedlington.

In a former life, before becoming a member of Parliament, I was in charge of international relations for an organization called the Grand Council of the Crees. So I'm quite familiar with the process surrounding the periodic reports that countries have to submit. Member states have to submit reports pursuant to the covenants on civil and political rights, and on economic, social and cultural rights, in relation to the declaration of human rights.

The human rights committee often highlights the challenges indigenous peoples face in various developing countries.

As the director of the Human Rights and Indigenous Affairs Policy Division, what would you say are the specific challenges faced by indigenous children in developing countries? I'm not sure whether you can speak to that or not.

Afterwards, I will have a question for Ms. Norton.

[Rachael Bedlington, Director, Human Rights and Indigenous Affairs Policy Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade]

Thank you very much for your question.

Certainly, there's just no question that the challenges for indigenous children globally are profound, I would say, and they are something that Canada takes very seriously in our international engagement as we go about promoting the rights of indigenous people globally.

There is a strong partnership of countries around the world that look at these issues and participate in a range of fora to try to make progress in those areas. There, I think about just last September and the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, which covered a wide range of subjects, and certainly the rights of indigenous children are very key amongst those.

In terms of the challenges, I would say that the challenges faced by indigenous children globally are the same as those faced by children globally. Then maybe there's another layer on top of that, when you think about different national situations and, in some instances, lack of structures, lack of policies, and a lack of attention devoted to the special circumstances they face. Certainly, that is an area that we put time and attention into and that we work very hard on with international partners to try to make progress.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you for your answer. I completely agree with you.

Since the last time department officials appeared before the committee, on January 27, if I'm not mistaken, has any additional funding been allocated to deliver psychosocial support in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon?

[Leslie Norton]

We were here on January 27 to discuss Syria and Iraq. I assume that is the meeting you are referring to. I can tell you that, since then, no additional humanitarian funding has been allocated to that end.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Saganash.

We're going to move over to Mr. Trottier for one.

I'm sorry. Did you want a chance to reply?

[Diane Jacovella]

Could we hear the answer from this side?

[Rachael Bedlington]

Briefly, if I may, I would add this.

I'll just say that I'm not sure when the last committee hearing was that you were referring to. But let me say that in October of 2014 there was an announcement by our then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister Baird, putting forward a commitment by Canada of $10 million that would go specifically to women and children affected by ISIL, specifically in the realm of sexual violence. That was meant to include children in Iraq, children in Syria, and refugee populations that have been created by that whole chain of events, and certainly part of that was psychosocial support. That is a new amount of money devoted to that issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Trottier, sir, you have five minutes.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today.

I want to dig down a bit on a topic that came up in the presentation about birth registration and the necessity of getting some basic information about every person who's born. Clearly in some countries there are challenges with children being separated from their families. There are the opportunities for displacement and trafficking. What does birth registration look like in certain countries? Can you paint a picture? There have to be some systems behind it. Does that involve any biometric identification in cases like fingerprints or even DNA? In the case where there'd be children separated from their families, how could our systems help reunite families?

[Diane Jacovella]

The issue of civil registration and vital statistics, CRVS, is really critical. In the Commission on Information and Accountability that was co-chaired by President Kikwete of Tanzania and Prime Minister Harper, that was one of the key recommendations, and it was a bit forgotten because nobody was paying attention. I guess it doesn't have as much appeal as other things because you're talking about building information systems, but it is really critical. Developing countries need to develop a program, need to make decisions about how much of their budget they'll allocate to different areas such as health or education or economic growth. When they don't know how many kids are born, how many people are dying, and what they're dying of, it's difficult to have actual, real planning to know if you're making a difference.

People have tackled CRVS a lot in the area of maternal, newborn, and child health, saying that every child should be registered. It's a right. It's linked to whether they will have access to services, whether we will know what age they are getting married, whether they can go to school, all those kinds of things. We look at it from a development perspective, but also from a human rights perspective. It's a right.

The systems in place are very, very basic. There are over 100 developing countries that lack a well-functioning CRVS system. We're saying that approximately 40 million, an estimated one-third of the world's births, are not registered; and two-thirds of deaths, 40 million again, are not legally recognized as well. It's significant in terms of impact.

We are working with a number of partners to try to address it in a number of different ways. When we work with the Gavi Alliance, when people come for vaccinations, we would like a way of linking that vaccination to the birth registration, to the national system. I think our biggest achievement was last September, when we had, at the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Harper, the president of the World Bank, the Prime Minister of Norway, and the head of USAID at the time, agree to launch the global financing facility for women and children. Canada committed $200 million, $100 million specifically to address the CRVS system. We are trying to leverage the funding from the World Bank. The president of the World Bank is saying at some point we could leverage up to 4:1 to help developing countries actually put the system in place. We're trying to work with all the partners together to advance this in a coordinated way, so we don't have five different systems that don't speak to each other.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Okay.

When you say it's very basic, what would be the gaps between a birth registration here in Canada or in developed countries versus what you're seeing in the countries that we're dealing with?