Foreign Affairs Committee on March 9th, 2017

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We'll go over to Mr. McKay.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to take a big political risk right now and compliment a woman on her jacket. I think it's quite smart.

[Rand Sukhaita]

Thank you.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

I concur.

[Rand Sukhaita]

It's made by a group of Syrian women in Turkey, actually.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

There you are. Is that as a result of the Darna centres?

[Rand Sukhaita]

They do this, sure, but this one is not. It's made by a group of Syrian refugee women. My mother got involved with them, and she was training them. They try to.... I'm doing marketing for them.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

You're succeeding. It looks terrific.

[Rand Sukhaita]

Thank you.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Syria is a pretty complicated country even at the best of times, even when there is peace. For the last century, pretty well, the Alawites have kind of kept everything under control by a really brutal regime of political oppression. Yet the war has pretty well displaced everybody: Alawites, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Sunnis, Shia, or whatever the particular group is.

You've been forced out. You are in a Turkish refugee camp. How do all of those tensions that normally exist in Syria play out in a refugee camp for you?

[Rand Sukhaita]

Actually, I didn't come from a refugee camp. I have good experience dealing with refugees in Turkey. I was a volunteer with a lot of organizations doing this. Yes, there is tension between people from different political and religious views, and here I'd like to mention that we didn't face this before. The conflict made it. We faced it for the first time after the war. Before, when I was in university, I didn't know. We went to the same university. We went to the same schools. We lived somehow in one community, but after the war it has been worse. That's why the safe space that the centre provides is very important.

I would like to give you an example. One of our programs is called peace education, which is psychosocial support for children and youth. Children just adopt their parents' view, for example, if they are with the opposition of the regime, children just have it ready and they adopt it. A lot of tension happens among the children in the centre.

From the first time they came to the centre, we had a very big white paper, and they set the rules of this room. They said that we should respect each other, that we are all Syrians, that we all need a better future for our country, and that there is no political discussion in this room. Then, when they played in teams, our team was able to make them one team so that they would feel themselves together.

What you've mentioned is a huge challenge now. That's why it's very important to also have these psychosocial programs with all types—children, youth, women, and men. That's why it's very important to support these safe spaces.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

That's an interesting initiative, and I wish you all success. However, President Assad does have his supporters. Certainly, he has his supporters among minority groups. How do people who are in those minority groups survive on a daily or yearly basis in the situations where they are displaced to Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan? Do those conflicts work themselves out one way or another, other than the programs that you are suggesting? I compliment you on your initiative.

[Rand Sukhaita]

Actually, personally I don't believe that Assad supports the minority.

One of my friends, Marcell Shehwaro, is an activist, and she was Aleppian. She was arrested because she was participating in the demonstration. She participated in the demonstration in my city, Idlib. She held the microphone. She's Christian. In my city, most are Muslim, and conservative also. She said that Assad didn't protect her. He arrested her. He killed her mother at one of the checkpoints.

This is the picture he's trying to market, but I don't think this is the reality. Even the Christians are displaced. As you mentioned, most of them came here to Canada and to Europe illegally in small boats. If they felt safe, they would have stayed. But they don't feel safe.

I would like to say that the conflict, for sure, affected every area it was in. I consider that most of the areas in Syria have now been affected, starting with Damascus, which was facing no water for one month. Last month there was no water and no electricity, and that led to no school. So, no, I can't consider one area in Syria safe. It affected everybody. Since there is an ISIS, and Jabhat al-Nusra and extremists, it's helped him to market the picture this way.

I hope I was clear because my English is bad.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

That was good. Nice job.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're going to move to Ms. O'Connell.

Welcome to the committee, as well. The floor is yours.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the work you're doing.

My questions actually are around something you said in your opening statement about preparing the community for these changes, whether they are in Turkey, as you are, or one day getting to return to Syria, which I think most Syrians hope for. With the work your centre is doing, as I said, this comment really struck me, preparing the community for these changes.

As more women enter the workforce, or become the sole breadwinner, how will the men's mentality change whether they're now in Turkey or some other country that is relatively safe, or when they return? I wonder how that dynamic will change. I think we've seen instances where this has happened, where there, then, can be an increase in sexual violence toward women or abuse toward women because of this new role in society. Has your centre looked into this? What's the type of work? Were there any statistics showing this uptake in violence against women in a lot of instances because of their new societal role or head-of-family type of role?

[Rand Sukhaita]

Actually what you've said is totally right because for most of the women their role in their families, yes, it changed. Since we support women and most organizations are saying that we should support women who lost their breadwinner and they are now taking more roles, that reflects badly on their men.

When we started working in Syria, we just wanted the women to go out of their homes. That's why we sometimes went to their husbands and described what they will...and that's why we started with sewing workshops because it's more familiar for them. We cannot start with computer skills because they feel it is strange and wonder why they should learn this. That's why we go to their family and describe to their husband that it's like a safe space and there are women only, and we also provide the kindergarten so they don't have the challenge if they have babies of where to put them. That takes much effort just to convince them to go out from their homes, and we know that. When they would try it, they wanted to learn more.

I can give an example. We have a PSS or protection session with women. One man came and said that he was stressed from work and he had a lot of personal challenges in his life, and he yelled at his daughter and wife. After one year, he thought it was very silly to go to this session and wondered what we were doing there. After a year, he yelled at his daughter and she told him, no, you should not do this; you're not respecting children's rights. Then he did the same to his wife, and she told him, you're abusing me. So he came to the session and told us that maybe the wrong is with him because he was stressed and this was not the right way to deal with it. He said, maybe he should take those sessions. He didn't, but he admitted it at least.

This is what we should prepare the community for, because in some of the liberated areas even the military groups that are also controlling the area didn't expect that a woman can go out and go to work and earn money, and when she earned money, she had a decision in her family. This is the kind of power that we need.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you very much.

Following up on that, in the liberated areas or again in communities where Syrians have had to leave Syria, you mentioned in your opening statement the example of the situation where the husband had a heart attack and couldn't work. I wonder too if at your centre and in the work you are doing if you're also looking at.... We've seen this in other conflicts or frankly in changes around the world at different points in time, that as conflicts end women are now used to this new independence and this education and this workforce and like it, but then there becomes growing resentments around lack of employment, when men want to re-enter the workforce and there are only so many jobs.

Is there work being done.... I recognize there's a lot to do right now as the conflict is ongoing. I recognize that, but I wonder about the long-term thinking of what those impacts will be as there's limited employment and women continue to grow in society and have that independence and that education within society. I think in some of the testimony and the information in the brief, women were making serious strides forward and now with the conflict, it's complicated things obviously.

Are you looking at that longer term vision too on that overall resentment in the workforce and then how women continue to get educated and have these independent financial lives?

[Rand Sukhaita]

Yes, you're right.

Until now we couldn't. For all our programs, I could not consider it. Even if we invested a lot in it and we thought it would be a type of income generation, it's not sustainable as long as there is no security. We don't know. Maybe we will wake up tomorrow and see our centre being like what happened in Aleppo, with people evacuated from it or with it destroyed from bombing and shelling. Until now, even though we always ask for long-term projects, it has not been safe. It's threatened. As long as there is no solution and there are no safe areas in all of Syria, we won't be able to make it sustainable or to think of the future in maybe a better way.

Also, this is the about needs of the Syrian civil society. We are new in this field. Before 2011, there was no civil society organization. Most of the Syrians are learning from their mistakes. That's what happened to us. Even our curriculum has been changed sometimes, because we made mistakes and we learned. Maybe this is also the kind of support we need. We don't need just financial support; we also need capacity building. Maybe other NGOs or governments that are aware of other conflicts happening in the world can support us in how to do gender policy equality, how to study the incomes.... With Development and Peace, we're trying to make this workshop go from non-profit to profit so the ladies can sell their products.

It's totally new. We need that experience to help us to think of better ways. Unfortunately, most of the training we get is how to write our proposal, how to do that.... There is no training on what our goals should be, on how we can make change, on how we can effect it. Maybe this is the kind of capacity we need.

[Elana Wright, Education Material Officer, Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, Darna Centres]

If I could add to that from the Canadian NGO perspective at Development and Peace, the Canadian government has been very generous and just last week announced new and very generous funding for Syria and the neighbouring countries, but on the development side there has been very little coming through.

We have very few projects to support these women who are empowering themselves and learning to make a living, but we also need them to get involved in civil society to become local leaders. We need them to rebuild Syria later. We know—all of you who have participated in this study know—that if women are empowered it's going to create a less violent society, a less patriarchal society, and a more peaceful society. We know that is the key to this, so we need to have both the short-term humanitarian approach and also the longer-term view.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to turn it over to you, Ziad, for six minutes.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

[Member speaks in Arabic]

Elana, welcome this morning.

I'd like to focus on the children's education. Human development is the biggest issue that Syria is going to continue to face going forward, and for decades, not just for the next few years. On the education side, based on what you know and what you've experienced, are the Syrian children getting enough education to catch up with what they missed so far? How far behind are we in that area?

[Rand Sukhaita]

The main problem with education inside Syria is that after they finish, they don't have a certificate that they can use for applying to any university in the world. I'm talking about the liberated area here.

In the regime area, yes—

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

The lack of a state—

[Rand Sukhaita]

There is no formal certificate, so after finishing high school they can apply for any university. No university accepts Syrians. The funny thing is now even some countries don't accept any Syrian certificates because there are a lot of fake ones. After high school what can they do? This is what the women, what their mothers told us, “Why should we send them to school if they stop when they are 15 or 20?” This is the main problem.

Most of the education that's provided in Lebanon and Turkey is informal education so that leads again to the first problem, which is that there's no approved certificate or something to continue their education. Most of the children inside Syria and also in Turkey drop out of school. They have been out of school for four or five years and there aren't catch-up or remedial classes to help them to enrol in the government school. In Turkey the language barrier is an added challenge.

The law in turn leads to fewer children enrolled in school because they are working, especially youth inside Syria. They don't have anything to do. They simply go to fight with military groups because it gives them a sense that they are in power. Also sometimes children and youth are given money to join them.