Evidence of meeting #5 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was russia.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
Thank you for your question.
I will answer it in English.
In terms of examples, often there are women's committees in camps. We'll work to bring together all of the women to have a women's committee. In those committees, they'll talk about a lot of things.
In DRC we have these committees. They'll come together and talk about structures that are preventing them from accessing all kinds of things. They may talk about gender-based violence. They may even report it. Even if they don't, as I was saying in another meeting the other day, they're in a setting where they don't have therapists who are helping and giving counselling after gender-based violence. They don't have anti-depressants. They just have their sisters in an NGO meeting, and sometimes that's what they need. That kind of programming does make a difference on the ground. It is important programming.
That's one set of things. Generally women's rights organizations, when it comes to....
Another study showed why there was a reduction in violence in countries. The number one indicator of lower gender-based violence in a country is not legislation. It's not policing and security. It's the presence of a strong women's rights movement and strong women's rights organizations in the country. Supporting that kind of organization does make a difference in some of these issues.
I think the most important thing is to talk to the women, which often is not something that happens. As I was saying earlier, where are their toilets located? What do they need? You don't know unless you ask them, and traditionally women often aren't asked. They're very straightforward pieces, those kinds of things.
Another one would be providing the kind of guidelines that have been created, UN guidelines, to be able to make those real and to provide that training. Those are not for gender advisers. They're not for health practitioners. They're for average humanitarian workers and those who are providing those services. It can give them ideas about how to see what some of the issues are for women.
Another area would be referral systems in a camp. When you come to a camp, you're told where the latrines are, that the food is delivered on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at such and such a time, and so on. We consider those basic needs, but we don't often talk about where the reproductive health services are, or where you can go if you've been raped. Those sorts of referrals aren't considered basic enough to be given through basic referral systems.
It's not hard stuff, really.
Liberal
Liberal
Marc Miller Liberal Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC
Thank you, Chair.
First, thanks to all three of you for taking the time to come and present to us. It's very insightful, and the testimony today has been very thought through.
Ms. Delahanty, I'd like you to touch on what you said on the government progress reports and the lack of specificity in what is allocated to gender inequality and women's rights. What are the key indicators that you're looking to see progress on from those reports?
Connected to that, what is the number you're looking for from government? You mentioned a 15% number, but what is the specific number in relation to that?
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
That 15% of Canada's development assistance is—
Liberal
Marc Miller Liberal Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC
You're just saying any Canadian assistance, 15%.
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
Well, that is what the UN is saying, 15%, so we're saying 15% for ours.
Liberal
Marc Miller Liberal Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC
It's what the UN is saying. Okay.
That was more the first question. I was just curious if you had an exact number.
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
No, I don't have an exact number. I'm sure I could get one for you. If you call me, I can give it to you.
Sorry, what was the first part of your question?
Liberal
Marc Miller Liberal Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC
It was on indicators of progress that you're looking to see more development on in the progress reports.
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
Well, it would be greater funding. That would be one part of the political progress. Right now we have just a series of activities. It's just put out as a set of activities that have been done. There's not really a link to what the results are of that activity.
I mean, as a charitable organization, when we ask for funding from the Government of Canada, we have to give quite, believe me, detailed responses around what kind of results we are achieving. We would like to see the same thing coming from the government. We do logic models and results-based and all that stuff, and we'd like to see that same kind of thing instead of just a listing of activities of what the government has or hasn't done.
Gender Advisor, International Programs, CARE Canada
There are actually UN indicators specifically for national action plans. Even if the first step was to use those UN indicators that are there for Resolution 1325, that would be great. The reason we quote 15% as the magic number is that we found that in resourcing projects such as these, that's the magic number where you begin to get a rollout of effective and sustainable programming. That's the resource base that is needed to get that effective and sustainable programming.
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
May I add one more thing? It would also be really useful to have participatory approaches to finding out what indicators the women think are useful for that, doing more of that, asking women's rights organizations what they would see as success and then developing our indicators from that.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you very much, all three of you, for being here. I really appreciate your comments.
Because I have a medical background, I want to put this into a medical context.
Ms. Delahanty, you mentioned this during your remarks. In post-conflict situations we know that rape is sometimes used as a weapon of war. What can Canada do to ensure that women and girls are able to access both the mental health services and the physical aid they need, as well as ensure that they have the ability to access justice in the aftermath of these conflicts?
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
I think the earlier point about money and referral pathways.... A lot of it exists in communities. It is part of that whole development, humanitarian.... It is divided, and trying to put that together isn't just about supporting local organizations; it is also about recognizing what already exists in communities, what is already there.
We have been doing long-term development work in most of the countries that have crises. Traditionally, what seems to happen is that you go into a country, and it's like we forgot that we have been working on gender equality in that country for 20 years, that we have resources, that there is health care, and that there are women's rights organizations offering those kinds of services. It just sort of gets lost in the shuffle. Part of the narrative these days about linking those two is to make sure that there are those services that are often available, as well as justice. There are women who work on helping women get access to justice, which is a problem even in Canada. That is a bigger issue that we could talk about. I think it's just more money, better referral pathways, and better linking of long-term development with humanitarian....
Vice-President, International Programs, CARE Canada
I think one of the things you need to build in good humanitarian programming is safe spaces for women and children, where you can have some professionals and put together a good psychosocial program.
In that case management centre I talked about, for example, you can't sit and discuss your case with your children by your side, so you take the children away, and obviously they are suffering greatly. There are professionals who can provide a play environment where they can really express themselves.
Also, one of the vulnerable groups.... I know we are talking about women, but young adolescent boys are tremendously at risk. They are part of the family, part of what the women are trying to protect. It is really important to have safe spaces for those young men, too, to be able to express their anger and disempowerment.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bob Nault
This is the end of the first round. I want to go to the second round, so we'll go back to the Liberals. We will go to five-minute rounds.
I think it is your turn, Mr. Sidhu.
Liberal
Jati Sidhu Liberal Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC
Thank you so much. There is a lot of knowledge and a lot of hard work behind it.
With any natural disaster, how come the numbers are high for women and girls? You touched a bit on the issue that accessibility to the medical system is not there. What is the reason for the deaths, and what can we do to prevent the high number of deaths of women and girls?
Gender Advisor, International Programs, CARE Canada
Studies show that women are the last to leave and the first to return. Being the last to leave, you are in the most dangerous position, and being the first to return, you are in the position where things are the least stable.
Studies also show that women are actually less visible than men. We are not thinking about them so much when we do search and rescue operations. You can take a look at this on YouTube, if you want to. The videos are there to show that in disasters like the one in Sri Lanka and a couple of other places there is a woman sitting on the roof and waving, and there is a man sitting on the roof and waving, and the helicopter picks up the man. That's why.
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
I'd also add there is a broader issue around poverty and vulnerability. The people who die the most in humanitarian crises are the poorest and the most vulnerable, and the people who are the most poor and vulnerable are women. There's a direct correlation. If you're in a country where there's a lot of flooding, the richer people will live on the hillside and the poorer people will live in the flatlands. If you have a country that has a lot of mudslides, it's the other way around. It's where the poorest are located. There are disasters all over the world, but where people die is where they're the poorest. That correlation is the same. The most vulnerable and the poorest are women.
Liberal
Jati Sidhu Liberal Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC
Where is the improvement then? If a chopper is picking up a man, who's calling those shots?
Gender Advisor, International Programs, CARE Canada
I will point to some good work done by Tufts University and a number of other organizations, and Julie referred to the inter-agency standing committee work on gender equality in humanitarian action.
One of the reasons all three of us are now going to mention collecting sex and age disaggregated data is that one of the best ways to make progress so that people are counted in—elderly, children, and women; all three—is to make sure that when we're doing data collection, and even at the beginning of a project or at the beginning of considering a response, we're asking the questions seriously: How many men? How many women? How many boys? How many girls?
Some of my colleagues in the organizations where I'm training get tired of my asking these questions over and over again. I ask them because that's where the improvement lies, in being able to intentionally count women or the elderly in. A number of agencies under the UN are leading the charge on trying to make sure this happens.
Executive Director, Oxfam Canada
To me it's not about who's calling the shots or who's saving those few people. It's about the structural inequalities, including gender inequalities that are leading to that vulnerability for women that has to be addressed on a much broader level.
