Foreign Affairs Committee on April 12th, 2016

[Ian Thomson]

I'm more familiar with the African context, where I relate directly to our partners. I can't speak to the other regions.

In Congo, I know that the pressure has been on how to build it from the ground up, and that's where our recommendation around the public engagement and consultation with Canadians emerges from. I do wonder, as others were mentioning earlier, how you can make this a priority that ministers will be working into their speeches out of necessity. I think it is by engaging Canadians to a greater extent in the development and knowledge of the plan. In Congo, to the extent that it's coming from the grassroots, that is where the hope lies. There isn't a lot of hope in the existing institutions.

The context is very different in Canada, and I'm not trying to equate the two. But I do think that building a grassroots constituency in Canada that is committed to women, peace, and security would be very powerful. I also think we are at a unique moment in our country's history where we have just been through a process of welcoming thousands of people fleeing conflict. I think Canadians are open to this and prepared for this. I think their hearts and minds are open. I'm hoping that if the plan is done in a way that is very consultative and engages Canadians, it will become a much stronger document. But more than that, it will become a truly living document.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today, as well as the witnesses from the previous panel.

I'll start with a question for Mr. Thomson.

Sir, you represent a faith-based organization, a partnership of different churches, so I'd be curious to hear your reflections on that intersection between faith groups and also issues around gender. In particular, what are ways that you see religious organizations around the world being involved in these things, and how can an awareness of that dimension improve our activity in this area?

[Ian Thomson]

I would begin by encouraging the Canadian government to think of faith-based organizations as partners in advancing the women, peace, and security agenda.

Certainly, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in South Sudan, the churches are present in every corner of the country, some corners in which the government itself is not present. If we are talking about how to reach all of the citizens, faith-based institutions are a powerful partner. Likewise in Canada, our presence in so many communities, I think, can also animate this conversation with Canadians.

The example I might provide is our partner in South Sudan. The South Sudan Council of Churches is working very hard to unite women across tribal lines. It is a predominantly Christian country, so their churches do represent the vast majority of the peoples. Their sessions, starting with simple prayers for peace, have been so powerful as a tool to open up conversations, both with women from one ethnic group that may be in a UN camp and those living outside the camp. When these two groups come together they learn to talk about peace. By bringing the women together, they return to their communities and then they talk to the men and the boys, so the women, peace, and security agenda is not an agenda that only involves women and girls, it involves all the participants of society.

I think churches, in some of these challenging contexts, have found novel ways of breaking down barriers and engaging people in conversations around peace and reconciliation that can be replicated in various contexts. That's an example in a predominantly Christian country, but organizations from other faith traditions could help in other contexts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Mr. Sidhu.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

First of all, I would like to thank you, Mr. Thomson and Mr. Fairbairn. You're doing a great job and have great information for the committee.

Last October your organization launched a strategic plan for five years. Could you explain the importance of women, peace, and security, and the strategic plan for the next four years? Could you enhance it a little bit? You gave us some information on it, but on the plan itself, what is your strategic importance or what do you visualize in the next four years under the plan?

[Ian Thomson]

KAIROS has developed a plan around our programming on women, peace, and security that, as I described, has the different elements of psychosocial counselling and support, and legal support, but the last point I mentioned was the international exchanges between women's human rights defenders. These models, which are very similar in the different elements that are being implemented, are then customized to the context and there can be sharing and learning between how the agenda is being advanced in different countries.

That's really what is key, from my point of view. It is a very unified program, so despite the fact that we're dealing with such different contexts, such different roots of conflict, many of the responses that our partners are implementing bear a striking similarity from one place to the other. That's something that we'd like to promote, more sharing over the five years of the plan.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

You have asked about Canada's role in more funding. Is that funding important to implement that plan for the next four years?

[Ian Thomson]

Yes. We don't have the funding currently to implement the plan we've developed.

Our proposal envisions the Canadian churches supporting 25% of the plan. We are asking for the Government of Canada's support for the remaining 75%. That's the model that historically we had employed in the past and that we're looking to continue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

There's still some time on the Liberal side.

Peter.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, I would respectfully defer my time to Karina Gould, if I could.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

That's fine.

Go ahead, Karina.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you to both of you and to all the witnesses today for presenting and intervening, and also for all of the work you do on this topic. It's very important.

I was hoping that you could speak a bit to how you empower women in peace processes and move them from the status of victim to the status of change agent. I think the work of Inter Pares in the Sepur Zarco trial and the women of courage program are emblematic of this transition and how that works. Then, as the Government of Canada is looking at our national action plan, could you speak to how we work to support women to be agents of change and to be participants in peace processes around the world?

[Bill Fairbairn]

Maybe I'll talk about Sepur Zarco, because it's very fresh in my mind. I was with the women just recently.

I've met them a number of times over the years. In different circumstances, and sometimes when we were taking pictures of them, they would put veils over their faces because it was too dangerous for them to be seen to be involved in the case. When we met with them in the supreme court, their faces were veiled as well. We went into a corridor at one point to have a meeting with them and they took off their veils because they said that they felt that they were among people they could trust.

That process has been very long. The women, as I mentioned, were very traumatized, and sometimes with many problems in their own community, when the community members accused them of being responsible for their own rapes. Fifteen of the men were killed and 11 of the women were taken to the military base. Four women among the widows—because the men were disappeared and then murdered—went up into the mountains. They were hiding. They were trying to eke out an existence in a very difficult situation.

Ten years ago in this process, a group called the Breaking the Silence alliance brought together three Guatemalan organizations: one, UNAMG, which is the National Union of Guatemalan Women; another one, which provides psychosocial support, called ECAP; and another one called Women Transforming the World, which provides legal support.

The initial work with the women was just to meet with them, to start talking, to break them out of their silence, to find people who knew the communities very well—obviously, they were speaking Kekchi, so you needed those people—and to gradually bring the women together so they were able to share their stories and find consolation in the fact that they were sharing what happened to them. It was very long process. Finally, it was about talking with them about the litigation, because it's one thing to bring them together, but the other thing is that they're going to be going before the courts and they're going to have relive and tell the story over again.

I have to say that it's been a very long process. That's why I say that some of these things take decades to do. It's not a short-term process. The women now are very happy. They're very happy with the results. They feel that all of their sacrifices were worth it. One woman died in the last years before the process came about, but she gave advance testimony so that it could be included in the trial.

I think that enabling women to become, to have the transformation from being a victim to having their own agency, is a long process. It involves a lot of multidisciplinary actions at various levels. Yes, this was really an important experience.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Madame Laverdière.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for your excellent presentations. They were very interesting. I will not attempt to go over all the points in your presentations, but I have taken a lot of notes.

Mr. Fairbairn, you are working mainly in Latin America. Are you noticing specific challenges for women's rights activists working in oil, mining and other sectors? Are there specific challenges in those sectors?

[Bill Fairbairn]

Of course.

I apologize, Ms. Laverdière, but I will answer in English since my French is a bit shaky.

I would say that women are at the forefront of a lot of these struggles. Resource extraction increasingly is a real problem in the region.

I'm saying this from my personal experience too. To tell an anecdote that might get me into trouble, I first went to Latin America in the 1980s. I went to Guatemala and I was studying in a school in Guatemala. I was with people from the United States and they were afraid to tell anyone they were from the United States. They wore Canadian flags on their jackets because they were pretending to be Canadians because of the conflict.

A few years ago, I went back to Guatemala and I was in the region around El Estor where the case I'm talking about took place. Someone said to me when they found out there was a Canadian they suggested a lynching. I'm saying that because as a Canadian I find it increasingly difficult going to places in Latin America and hearing people talking about the actions of our mining companies. I say this with great concern for the impact of the communities when people are finding their rivers are contaminated or in the case of Guatemala that military bases are being set up in the same communities that have been traumatized by the military for so many years during a very brutal internal armed conflict.

Often women are on the front lines in these struggles, and it's really important to listen to their voices. That's where I come back to the point that we made about the need to support grassroots women's organizations so that conditions can exist for there to be free, prior, and informed consent, because currently in many of the countries that I'm visiting in Latin America, the conditions aren't there. People are frightened, they're still traumatized, and the women have experienced sexual violence as well when the military base comes in. So it's really important to support the women, to demilitarize, and to establish conditions where there can be free, prior, and informed consent.

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

That is why it would be desirable to have an ombudsman for corporate social responsibility, but that's another story.

Mr. Thomson, I was particularly interested in your comments about Sudan. I have to say that this issue concerns me a great deal. You talked about working

across tribal lines. I remember seeing situations that were using a woman's group to work across actual conflict lines by talking about common problems and common issues that women on both sides of the line had. Then indeed they go back to their community and they talk to their husband, their father, their sons, whatever, and there's a great impact.

I also heard that you were working on the West Bank and I was wondering if anything like that can be done in the region, and if possible I would also like to know more details about what you're doing in the West Bank.

[Ian Thomson]

I would be happy to put you in touch with our Middle East partnerships coordinator, who could give you a full briefing on that. I won't do it justice here today.

In South Sudan it has been a particularly effective strategy, the concern being that really, before you can even engage in it, there is such a great deal of counselling and support needed to bring people to the point that they can even engage at that level again. Our program has focused in the town of Malakal, which has been one of the hardest hit over the past year in the internal conflict in South Sudan. The atrocities committed—and there's no side whose hands are clean in this case—are just horrendous, so the challenge is even bringing women together who are able, as Bill was describing a moment ago, to work through their own experiences as the first step.

They are such powerful agents for peace, once they have received that support. In the Christian tradition we talk about conversion experiences. This is a conversion to being an agent for peace. Women have told me, “I literally thought my life was over after the sort of violence I experienced. I couldn't see what tomorrow would bring.” I meet with them after they have been through the program, and they are the most energized, committed, and passionate advocates for peace that you will ever meet.

This is where the promise lies, I think, in this agenda, that it is long-lasting and will sustain us through and create the sort of society that will not fall back into conflict. South Sudan, the newest newly independent nation on earth, realizes that this is their opportunity and that they have to build a society of peace.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

Before I go to the Liberal side, I would take the opportunity to ask Mr. Fairbairn a question related to his comments on page 3, at the very bottom, that very often what happens, once there's a formal peace agreement signed, is that international support moves elsewhere.

Is this anecdotal, or is it in fact easy to gather information and statistics about this tendency? It's an extremely important role of organizations. Having had some experience as a negotiator myself, I've had the opportunity to see people sign agreements. They're not always happy when they sign them; it doesn't mean it's over. It means that there's still a lot of work to go.

Could you give us some examples of this? Is there some information we could get to see how this has been happening, whether in Latin America or in other parts of the world? I'd be very interested in that matter, because it's an important exclusion of our role, if we're just there and then leave right after the agreement is signed. I'd be interested in that information.

[Bill Fairbairn]

I would be happy to give you more information about this. It was a general sense that we're getting from partners on the ground, that often when peace accords are signed, the attention span of the international media disappears.

We think about the wars in Central America. At the height of the Cold War you had the United States, the Soviet Union, and there were so many interests in the region. The international press was there. Every day they were reporting on the war in El Salvador and in Guatemala. It was in the news every night. Then the peace accords were signed and they disappeared, because peace had arrived.

What we find from our work is that it has not. People are saying, “Peace? What peace? We're still living in the same conditions as before, with racism and exclusion as high as it is.” The statistics I gave about land ownership in Guatemala.... That hasn't changed very much through all this time.

Obviously the peace accords are important, and they represent the will of civil society to bring an end to the armed conflict, but when we see the statistics today in countries like El Salvador, the number of killings is the same as during the height of the war. That's why I'm saying that often the international attention disappears and people think, the peace accords have been signed; it's time to move on.

In a country such as Colombia, people have been speaking for years about a post-conflict scenario, almost as if they're already in a post-conflict situation, and it's not the fact on the ground. The war is raging in Colombia, despite the very positive signs that there might be a possibility of bringing an end to the armed conflict.

It wasn't directed just at Canada, but in general, that we seem to have a short attention span and tend to move on far too quickly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

What I was also referring to, for the committee's thinking as it relates to this report, is the whole issue of when we sign these agreements, is it formally the case, then, that we're pulling our funding and moving elsewhere? In fact, if it can be shown that we're basically leaving a particular area and removing funding from grassroots and others who have a lot of work to do, that would be very useful for the committee I would think. That would be helpful to us.

Mr. Saini.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much for your testimony today.

The question I had was maybe for Bill. You expressed the work that you did in Guatemala. Are there any other countries where you have done the same work, and also what is the follow-up with these women, specifically in Sepur Zarco? Are you still following through with that? Is there any sort of support given to them afterwards in terms of health care and in terms of education and somehow trying to rebuild their lives? I know there was the legal process where there was support.

[Bill Fairbairn]

Personally, I've worked since the 1980s in a number of countries in Latin America, mainly on human rights issues. I've been working very closely with human rights defenders.

In terms of Inter Pares, right now we're working in five countries in Latin America: Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, and Peru. Those are the five countries where we have the focus.

In terms of the Sepur Zarco, out of the sentence there will be.... The women have asked for education, health care. They've asked for a number of things to support their community. What they kept telling us is that they're doing this because they don't want it to ever happen again to anyone else, and that's the real motivation. That's what you hear, whether it's Guatemala, Colombia, or Peru. When you talk to women who have experienced sexual violence in the way that these women have, they have the courage to come forward because they don't want it to ever happen again to anyone.

They want people to know the truth about what happened. Often I think about the work of many human rights organizations in past years, and I think violence against women has been absent. People would talk about torture and forced disappearance and summary executions, but violence against women did not always make it into the reports. I think that's changing, and it's because of women like these courageous women from Sepur Zarco, or another group of women from Manta.

Again, I think the Canadian government has supported some of our grassroots organizations. Right now there's a campaign going on in Peru because during the Fujimori dictatorship up to 300,000 women were forcibly sterilized. They were pressured into it. These are women in the Andes, in the departments of mainly Ayacucho and Huancavelica, and the government of the day wanted to reduce the population in the area. They forcibly sterilized up to 300,000 women and 20,000 men, forcing them to have the operation or else they would not be getting food supplies or they would have other things taken away from them. That's another area that we're extremely concerned about.

Human rights groups and women's organizations in Peru are at the front of this struggle to draw attention to this. Because of their work, last year the Peruvian government set up a national registry. Our partners right now in Peru are from the Andes region, and they're working with local women to make sure that they register and that there are reparations to the women in particular who were affected by this policy.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

It seems that Fujimori's daughter might come back now.