One of the things I find frustrating is that our international system, the media, the UN, etc.... Everybody talks about the issues, the victimization of the Yazidi girls and the Yazidi women. When you actually look and see what kind of systematic support we are providing, it's really very little.
One of the things I think Canada could do very practically on the ground, in addition to what my colleague was saying about providing refuge for so many of the victims.... On the ground, we've been thinking about convening women from across the region, in Iraq, around the experiences they've had in Egypt, in Iran, and in other countries. There are some phenomenal initiatives out in the region that are culturally relevant and can be adapted to the Iraqi context. How do you deal with victims of sexual violence? How do you deal with that in their communities? What kind of psychosocial support could be provided? What kinds of mechanisms are there, both the ones that are more quick and dirty but also the longer-term initiatives? These are the kinds of initiatives.
We should bring those experts together, have the discussions in Iraq, and put the money down, so that the people in Iraq who have been victimized don't have to live with the repetition of that victimization. Something happened to them. They need to reclaim their lives as best as possible. We need to provide the psychosocial and medical care on the ground, along with the economic and so forth, at least for the ones who have come out or the ones we have access to. We're not doing that. It doesn't have to cost that much money. It's just a matter of putting the focus.
I've talked to my colleagues at the UN. They'll talk about having gender advisers and missions. That's great. We need that. We need people to document. But documentation isn't addressing the needs of victims today, and every day they are being re-victimized by our passivity and by the technicality of whether or not something is called a “genocide”.
There's plenty that we can do, and we'd be happy to share with you ideas, concepts, and so forth to move it forward.