Foreign Affairs Committee on April 14th, 2016

[The Chair (Hon. Robert Nault (Kenora, Lib.)), Liberal, Bob Nault]

I'll bring this committee to order, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), for our study on women, peace, and security.

Before us this afternoon are the Institute for Inclusive Security, and Jacqueline O'Neill, the director; and by video conference from New York, Human Rights Watch, with Sarah Taylor.

We're going to start with Jacqueline O'Neill, and then after her presentation we'll go to Sarah Taylor in New York.

Jacqueline.

[Jacqueline O'Neill, Director, Institute for Inclusive Security]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the committee for this invitation.

Thank you for giving this critical issue the attention it deserves. You mentioned that I direct the Institute for Inclusive Security. We're a Washington, D.C.-based NGO, and for more than 15 years we've increased the inclusion of women in peace and security processes around the world.

We work on current conflicts, including in Sudan, South Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, Syria, Afghanistan, and others. We work with policy-makers in the United States and other governments and at NATO, the United Nations, and elsewhere around the world. We're specialists on national action plans. So we've worked with about 20 countries, always with government and civil society, to either create new plans or strengthen their existing ones.

We are the organization that wrote the independent mid-term assessment of Canada's national action plan in 2014, which was subsequently tabled in Parliament, and I'm hoping today that I can share with you a mere eight recommendations for Canada's next plan.

Before I shift to the policy proposal aspect, however, I am wondering if I can speak on a somewhat personal note. I've been based in Washington, D.C. for about a decade, but I'm Canadian. I'm from Alberta. While I focus on this issue around the world, it is never closer to my heart than when we interact and engage and intersect with Canadians and Canadian government policy.

At Inclusive Security we work directly with women who have experienced almost unspeakable trauma as a result of war. We work with South Sudanese women, for example, who a few months ago told me that their relatives have now started eating grass because there is simply no food to be had. We work with other South Sudanese women who talk about their relatives and family members who make a deliberate choice to leave their camp to seek food, knowing they're going to be raped, but make that choice anyway because they see it that they have no other options.

We work with Afghan women like the ones that Beth Woroniuk discussed and mentioned a few days ago, who are witnessing militants recruiting young men in their communities and who, when they travel at great risk to their own personal safety to report it to government ministers, are effectively laughed out of the room.

The women we work with summon enormous strength and enormous courage to get to the table and to have a say in the decisions that affect their own lives. You can imagine then what it's like for me as a Canadian when I see them engage with Canadians here and abroad, who essentially tell them that their work matters. I've had a number of experiences along those lines.

I understand that the committee has heard a lot about Deb Lyons, Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan. She told those same women who were laughed out of the room by an Afghan minister that they were welcome in Canada's embassy. She invited them for several days, rolled up her sleeves, facilitated a workshop with them, and about a month ago they identified a top priority list of qualified women from their networks who could serve and sit in peace negotiations.

It makes me enormously proud when I see people like Kerry Buck, Canada's ambassador to NATO, the first-ever female ambassador to NATO, who has put this topic squarely on the alliance's agenda, including last month, for example, when she hosted the first-ever high-level panel discussion about women, peace, and security at NATO, and even invited civil society to participate.

I'm really proud to see the work of our RCMP internationally and see the modelling collaboration at home. I was there this morning and heard great reports about their inviting Canadian civil society to observe their pre-deployment training and then provide substantive input and assessment on how to strengthen it.

I was blown away by the Chief of the Defence Staff's directive on implementing the tenets of the Security Council resolutions in the Canadian Forces' planning and operations. It is an amazing document. I'll come back to that later, but I was truly blown away when I read that.

One last point, if I might, I would like to relate to your a story that Hillary Clinton often tells in the United States, including when she announced the United States national action plan in 2011. It relates to peace negotiations in Darfur around 2007; at one point things were especially tense. The negotiations had ground to a halt. Talks were at an impasse over one specific issue. So the parties to the talks, almost all men at the time, couldn't agree over who would have control over a certain river. There was a deadlock. That evening, the mediator met with a group of Darfuri women who were assigned to be technical advisers at the negotiations and said that the talks were stalled because of that river and he pointed to the map. He said they couldn't get past this, that each wanted control. The women asked, “That river right there?” The men said yes. They women said, “That river dried up two years ago. It's been dry for years.”

I love this story because it was Canadian Senator Mobina Jaffer, at the time Canada's special envoy to Sudan, who convinced the mediator to bring women to the talks and to facilitate their participation, to actually pay for them to be there. That's the type of on-the-ground, real inclusion that matters at these peace negotiations.

All of these are examples of Canadian leadership. They are Canada leading by example, and they are things that make me enormously proud.

How do we have even more of that? How do we systematize this? A high-impact national action plan is key. Let me offer eight suggestions for the next version.

First, simplify monitoring and evaluation. Have far fewer indicators overall and reduce the focus on counting, increasing the number of qualitative indicators. Focus on outcomes, meaning look at effects, not just performance. As we start the process of creating a new NAP, ask ourselves, what difference do we want to see? What difference do we want to make over the period of this plan? It's usually about four to six years. Identify a handful of key outcomes at an outcome level, and then work backwards from there.

Canada's in a rare and really great position of actually now having a fair amount of baseline data for a number of indicators. That means we can also set targets, which is something we couldn't do in the first plan. Of course, simplifying monitoring and evaluation also involves releasing shorter and much more digestible reports against performance and implementation of the plan itself. Those reports, if they're simpler, shorter, easier to follow, and perhaps have more visual representative of the indicators over time will lead to more reflection, more learning, and more assessment of how the plan is being implemented. We can course-correct as opposed to just tracking performance.

The second thing I propose to do is take the time to hold authentic consultations to create the next NAP, especially to get input on those handful of key outcomes that both civil society and the government think we should be pursuing. In a lot of countries, our experience has been that the national action plan is no more than a document or a piece of paper that sits on a shelf. Canada has an opportunity right now to really bring it alive and to get a lot of buy-in. I would suggest and urge strongly that you consult heavily with civil society here and directly with women most affected by conflict around the world, as well as consult with Canadian diplomats, civil service, police, and military.

I'll note that just based on experiences elsewhere, and not Canada, authentic consultation isn't just creating a first draft and then giving people a few weeks to respond. It's getting people together and identifying these outcome-level indicators on what it is we want to achieve, and working backwards.

Third, once there is a plan, make the expectations for implementation across the departments exceedingly clear. That means having department and agency-specific implementation plans. We want to take away as much guesswork as possible from the thousands of really well-intentioned people who really want to understand what it means for their day-to-day life to bring this national action plan alive. Two months ago, General Vance did this with the CDS directive. It lays out what he wants to achieve, who's responsible for doing it, and by when they need to do so. Our diplomats at Global Affairs will tell you the best format for doing it there, but I think something similar at Global Affairs could be especially useful.

Of course, for expectations to be meaningful, people need to be held accountable. My fourth recommendation is to institute genuine accountability measures. That means creating a culture of accountability around this plan, getting it essentially into the capillaries or the DNA of each of those organizations. That means putting it in job descriptions, having references to it in performance evaluations, putting references in mandate letters, and then asking questions as it relates to those mandate letters, etc.

The fifth recommendation is to make sure to resource this work. This issue of women, peace, and security is one that suffers from the “budgetless add-on syndrome”, as I call it, where people think we can just add on to people's existing responsibilities and not resource it. Strengthening civil society here and abroad means core funding. Consultations take time and money. Training takes time and money. Reporting takes time and money. If this is an authentic priority, it needs to be resourced. Of course this is some funding, but not an enormous amount. It is truly a pittance compared with the return on the investment.

Six, keep up this parliamentary oversight. I think it's fantastic that you're holding this series of hearings. The Canadian Senate human rights committee had a number of hearings on this topic, but to my knowledge it's the first in the House of Commons.

So having the hearings is essential, as is also asking questions of people who appear before you on other topics, including the ministers who appear before the committee.

My seventh recommendation is to make Canada's commitment even more visible, and I think the Prime Minister is doing his part in raising attention to this issue around the world. It includes having more ministers speaking about this—that means talking about women not only as victims of conflict, but as agents of change—assigning an influential, authentic, and high-level champion within different ministries, and appointing more female heads of mission.

Finally, I would urge us all to embrace this issue and topic as part of Canada's brand and to do so very strategically. Embracing it is the right thing to do. It's also the strategic thing to do, especially as we're talking about a bid for the UN Security Council.

Canada is in a solid place right now and we're positioned to be even better on this issue. We have a Prime Minister who's announced himself to the world to be a feminist. We have great diplomats on the front lines. We have a Chief of the Defence Staff who authentically gets this. We have a vibrant civil society.

At the UN, we've chaired a group of friends on this topic for years. We have police advisers and military advisers who are of the highest calibre. We're already exceeding the percentage of female police officers serving in UN missions. We're at about 25% in the UN target, which the UN itself has not met; it's at about 20%. We also talk about children's rights and vulnerable populations and other language that really makes this brand authentic and genuine for us.

So while we're not perfect, we can certainly be committed. There's a lot of momentum around this issue and a lot of space for Canada to make a visible and powerful contribution, not only for our own interests but to make the world a safer place for men, women, boys, and girls all around the world.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you, Jacqueline O'Neill.

Now we'll go to Sarah Taylor in New York.

[Sarah Taylor, Women, Peace and Security Advocate, Women's Rights Division, Human Rights Watch]

Thank you so much to the committee for holding these hearings, receiving these presentations from a range of civil society representatives, and, of course, for inviting Human Rights Watch to present.

Human Rights Watch is an independent non-governmental organization that monitors and reports on compliance with international human rights standards in more than 90 countries around the world. For over 20 years we have investigated and documented violations of women's rights in conflict and post-conflict settings, in communities and countries as diverse as the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Somalia, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, and the list goes on.

Before proceeding with my presentation, I'd like to flag that Human Rights Watch is a member of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security in New York, which will be presenting to you as well, and that we work closely with the Institute for Inclusive Security and many of the other NGO colleagues who will be providing you with information throughout this hearing process.

I'd like to make today a few points specifically on Canada's international leadership on women, peace, and security, and why it is important for your national action plan and for all of your international engagement on this issue to support women's rights globally. These recommendations include the necessity of accountability for violations of women’s rights; the importance of services, medical and psychosocial, for survivors of sexual violence and other rights violations; the key importance of women's participation in peace and security decision-making, as Jackie has flagged; the necessary reforms to international peacekeeping, including tackling sexual exploitation and abuse; and, finally, support to women human rights defenders, particularly in situations of conflict and post-conflict.

As Jackie has noted, Canada is in a particularly good position to champion women’s rights internationally. This includes, as she has said, its role of chairing the group of friends of Women, Peace and Security in New York, a leadership role that many of us appreciate here. Canada should put women’s rights at the centre of its campaign for the UN Security Council and its work in other international fora. You'll hear a briefing from the executive coordinator of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security next week, but I just want to flag some of the research and what it's shown, which is that the UN Security Council, amongst other international bodies such as the G-8, remains committed on paper, committed in rhetoric, but does not necessarily adhere to their own obligations on women's rights in their daily work. In the UN Security Council alone, briefings on country situations are often absent any information or analysis, let alone recommendations, on women's rights violations and what the UN and other international actors can do.

So what should Canada be doing in the international stage?

First, promote accountability for sexual violence and other rights violations. As a member of the International Criminal Court and a supporter of international and national justice, Canada is well placed to help tackle the scourge of impunity and to secure justice for the victims of these crimes. Human Rights Watch has documented the impunity for sexual violence in many conflicts around the world, with the case of DRC being illustrated. Horrific levels of rape and other forms of sexual violence in that country have plagued eastern DRC for almost two decades.

At the international level, the International Criminal Court's conviction of the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo indeed a victory for sexual violence victims and a stark warning to senior commanders who turn a blind eye while their troops rape and commit other atrocities. Congolese authorities at the national level have carried out an increasing number of arrests and prosecutions for rape; however, the vast majority of perpetrators remain unpunished. Our recent research on the so-called Minova trials shows that, despite international attention, there's often a failure to deliver justice for either the victims or the accused in these cases.

Canada should press for survivors of sexual violence and other forms of gender-based violence to have full access to the range of essential medical and psychosocial care, which includes economic and social support. Canada can support this both at the forthcoming World Humanitarian Summit and can heighten the work of CIDA in this issue.

Our research has documented many examples of sexual and gender-based violence in conflict and emergency situations around the world and just how stark and dire their need for these services are. This includes women with disabilities in conflict situations, who also face discrimination and additional risk and vulnerability because of those disabilities.

Sexual and gender-based violence has acute and long-term physical, psychological, and social consequences. We've seen that with a great number of reports, including our own research on the attacks on Yazidi women. Unfortunately, to date, the necessary medical and psychosocial service provision for the survivors of these crimes is inconsistent, if forthcoming at all. Our recent research on Kenya and the political and electoral violence in that country in 2007 and 2008 shows just how long term the effects of these attacks can be.

Canada should press for greatly increased investment to address the health needs for survivors of sexual violence in conflict, and press governments to invest in comprehensive emergency health services, including medical treatment for injuries, emergency contraception, safe and legal abortion, and trauma counselling.

The next recommendation, as Jackie has highlighted, is that Canada should champion the participation of women in peace and security decision-making, including in the leadership of centres for those who have been displaced, for refugees, for those making conflict-resolution efforts, and in post-conflict reform efforts. Again, this is one of the areas in which we've seen a great deal of rhetoric and not sufficient action by international actors.

Women are often subject to hostile work environments. Women human rights defenders often face grave risks when trying to heighten and support the work and voice of women and raise controversial issues around women's rights in conflict. Canada should press for women's full participation in all these efforts to create and maintain peace, and support efforts to safeguard women's security in post-conflict elections, in referendums, constitutional drafting, and reform processes. This includes promotion and protection of women candidates, voters, election workers, and women's human rights defenders.

The next recommendation is regarding international peacekeeping. Canada has a particular role to play here, particularly when the UN and other actors in the international community are making an effort to tackle the scourge of sexual exploitation and abuse. Over the past decade there have been many allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse in the missions in Central African Republic, Haiti, Somalia, and the DRC. In 2014 we published a detailed report on sexual exploitation and abuse by African Union peacekeeping forces in Somalia, and more recently we documented cases of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers in the Central African Republic.

In all efforts to address this scourge, priority must be given to the security and well-being of survivors, including through promoting best practices as basic as maintaining confidentiality, minimizing repeated trauma from multiple interviews and, again, providing and ensuring rapid access to medical and psychosocial care. Canada and other governments should be pressing for a major overhaul to boost accountability mechanisms, ensuring that there are clear policies and training in this area, and for independent investigative mechanisms in an effort to bring judicial redress for those who have had these crimes committed against them.

Finally, Canada should push for better support for human rights defenders, those on the front line in dealing with sexual and gender-based violence and those who are promoting national legal reforms to address and adhere to women's rights obligations. Human rights defenders assist survivors of sexual violence, expose abuse and impunity, and press their own governments to tackle these problems more effectively. Many do this at great risk to themselves.

Human Rights Watch works with many remarkable human rights defenders around the world, and our recent work on women human rights defenders in Sudan documents the efforts by Sudanese authorities to silence women who are involved in protests, involved in rights campaigns and other public action, and who provide social services and legal aid. Women engaged in these efforts are targeted with a range of abuses, from rape and rape threats to deliberate efforts to tar their reputations. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender and inter-sex people are often at particular threat of sexual violence in conflict, as our research has indicated in Iraq and in Syria.

On this point, I really hope that Canada will press for greater international support for women human rights defenders and for human rights defenders writ large. This includes more emergency and quick-impact funding to support efforts to document violations in the middle of conflict, and more support to local lawyers to help secure local justice for crimes of sexual violence. Canada can also press for measures to protect human rights defenders from threats, intimidation, and violence.

On that point, I would like to thank you once again and I'm looking forward to our discussion here today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much, Ms. Taylor.

With that, we'll go right to questions, and Mr. Allison for six minutes.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, ladies, for coming today to discuss this very important topic.

Ms. O'Neill, you talked about the fact that you know of 20 countries that have plans. Could you just spend a little time telling us how effective those have been, and if some have been better than others? That's one of the questions I've been asking, because sometimes we hear that you must have a plan, but sometimes the plan is not very good. Are there any models out there or countries are doing a really good job? Tell us why you think they're doing a good job.

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

There are about 51 countries in the world now that have national action plans. Those include countries that are directly experiencing conflict and countries like Canada that perceive this from the perspective of primarily a foreign policy development and security assistance point of view.

Our organization has identified criteria that we call “criteria for a high-impact national action plan”. We've always said there are four things that go into having a high-impact national action plan: one is genuine political will; two is actually ensuring that the plan was a result of consultation, including with civil society; three is a strong monitoring and evaluation framework; and four is resourcing.

We'd say that right now in the world there is one, possibly two, plans that meet all those criteria and are what we'd consider high impact. Probably about a third of them, about a quarter of them, are close to being high impact; and there are several, as I mentioned in my presentation, that really were not worth the paper they're written on. They're done for show demonstrate that countries are taking action, primarily for and funded by an international audience, and have very little political will at home.

We're often cautious about saying this country's model is ideal and that country's model is not. A lot of things are to be learned from different countries, and I've spoken a fair amount with colleagues here in civil society in Canada who have also participated in exchanges and sessions with governments in civil society around the world, looking at different models that do work.

There is a range of models. For example, the last version of the Netherlands map had 56 civil society organizations sign on to the national action plan and commit to holding themselves accountable for taking certain steps. You heard about Norway's national action plan a couple of days ago that has an implementation strategy associated with it. There are ranges of different national action plans, each of which, I would say, has at least something that Canada can draw from in terms of lessons and models, but there isn't one model that I would hold out.

That said, there are now 51 countries with national action plans. Most of them have been created in the last three to four years, so we're all learning these lessons as we go. Canada has an opportunity to create something tailored, recognizing that national action plans aren't entirely different from every other national government strategy that you create, whereas, as you all know, you want accountability measures, political will, resourcing, and you want some type of authentic collaboration to create it.

I hope that at least partly answers your question.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

That's great, thank you very much.

Both of you talked about accountability measures, so I'm going to ask you, Ms. Taylor, first, and then Ms. O'Neill.

We push for accountability measures. Obviously we can talk about it, which is important, as I think we should always push for this. Is there any big stick? How do we ensure that accountability measures are set into other plans? Do we threaten funding? What are the things, other than talking about it? We should always be talking about it, but is there anything else we can do to help ensure those accountability measures?

[Sarah Taylor]

I'll leave it to Jacqueline as the expert on other national action plans, to speak specifically to accountability in national action plans.

I think that one of the points we see over and over again is the necessary support for civil society organizations at the national level, recognizing that when we're talking about rights violations, particularly in the context of conflict, when we're talking about violations of women's rights, you're not doing an investigation that is disaggregated from or separate from service provision.

So you want to be making sure that you are supporting national level service providers, training local and national level actors on information gathering and evidence gathering, making sure that you're supporting the strengthening and reform of judicial systems. That includes the training of police, judges, and lawyers to make sure that when cases do go to trial, they are held to an appropriate standard.

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

On a few levels, one area is accountability internally for the actual implementation of the plan within Canada's own government.

Then there are accountability measures in the way we engage and interact with our partners.

Funding is one thing, and the idea of making some funding conditional upon achieving certain objectives I think is a really reasonable thing to do. If we're saying that we know this yields a positive outcome, we're putting our money behind it, and we expect you to do the same thing. I think implementing some level of accountability and conditionality in the assistance that we give is very reasonable.

In terms of the United Nations—and I know you've been talking a lot about sexual exploitation and abuse and accountability there—I think several things must happen.

One is significantly greater transparency, which leads to greater accountability of national forces at a national level.

In some cases criminal accountability for violations is something we have to press for, completely. The idea of repatriating people, that they get sent back home and that's the end of the deal, is completely unacceptable. Canada needs to be at the forefront of saying that people need to be prosecuted when they arrive back home. Simply losing your job on an international mission is not enough.

Then there are also financial incentives for many countries to send their troops on peacekeeping missions, for the police and military in particular. If we start to get serious about the idea that you will not be invited, you will not be asked or permitted to send troops if you do not deal with this idea of consequences and accountability for those who commit offences, we will start getting a lot more attention in capitals around the world, I predict.

Finally, to echo Sarah's point, women in civil society organizations are at the core of this. Canada's policy never will be, or be able to be, or should be the primary driver of change in a country. It's always going to be people within that country itself. The best we can do from a long-term perspective will always be to build the capacity of women in that country to hold their own government accountable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you, Mr. Allison.

We'll now go to Mr. Miller.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Thank you both for your presentations. They were very compelling.

Permit me one small observation: when I read a number of the reports focused on these issues they obviously include very compelling stories, with concrete proposals, and initiatives, but the concept of male buy-in is often completely absent. I don't know if it's because of the history of the study behind these initiatives, but they seem to it allow people to abscond from responsibility and avoid the elephant in the room, which is male buy-in.

We have a Prime Minister who, in terms of feminism, epitomizes male buy-in.

I think it's unfortunate that women are singled out based on gender and that men are often referred to in these reports in the passive voice. The best way to obscure something is to refer to it in the passive voice. That's my observation about a number of these reports.

I think it's important to call things out. To give people, and men specifically, the responsibility of taking action, not for the sake of taking action, but because it's the right thing to do.

That said, I'd like to give my remaining time to Karina Gould. Her question is actually better than mine.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

To both of you, thank you so much for excellent participation and intervention and remarks on this topic.

The question I'm interested in, which I asked last session as well, is the following.

Ms. O'Neill, you mentioned this question of moving women in conflict situations and in peace-building scenarios from the status of victim to the status of change agent. As we move forward and reflect on our national action plan and move into the future, how can Canada work to assist ourselves here at home, but also abroad in making sure this is working toward an inclusive peace-building process where women are included?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

That's a good question indeed.

First of all, I do want to comment on the male buy-in point. I think you're absolutely right. Something that the Chief of the Defence Staff's directive has done, that the national action plan outlines, and that I think is really important to keep doing and also relates to your point, is to keep emphasizing that attention to this agenda is not something that we do for women. It's not something that we're doing either as a favour to them or because we want to protect them; it's something that we're doing for all of us.

A study from Harvard a couple of years ago said that the single biggest predictor of whether a country goes to war, either with itself or with its neighbours, is not its GDP or its ethno-religious affiliation: it's how its women are treated. When we look at the relationship between men and women in a community as the blueprint for interaction in the society at large—which does get amplified—getting this right is something that we need to do for all of us. We need to reinforce this point in all of our documentation and in the rationale we provide for why we're doing this in terms of our language—which I agree matters completely—and emphasize that we're doing this not to protect the vulnerable populations of the world but to take advantage of and to capitalize on what they know and what they can contribute. That's something that I think is really important.

Something we also see, I think in a troubling way, is a default to the protection element of this agenda. As you've heard many times, I think, the women, peace, and security agenda has various pillars. We call them the “four Ps”: participation, protection, prevention, and then recovery. That's three Ps and an R. But there's often a default to focusing only on protection, on the things that we will do to secure an environment or to punish people who take action against women or who assault women, etc. By doing so, we're quite subtly undermining their agency as well and saying that they're people who are passive respondents in this process, as opposed to being people who need to be around the table shaping the policy, making the decision, and being consulted, etc. That kind of thing I think adds up in both subtle and overt ways, and it sort of contradicts the idea that women are powerful agents of change and not just, as I say, victims of conflict.

I'd say that it's about watching the rhetoric and also keeping at this outcome level that I was talking about. The reason we're doing these things—and the reasons identified through our process—is not simply for 50% of the population but for all of us, and then that trickles down into a broader range of thinking.

Sarah, would you like to add something?

[Sarah Taylor]

Yes, I completely agree. We do talk about these Ps, about these pillars, about differentiating and disaggregating various parts of the women, peace, and security agenda, but you can't actually fulfill the agenda or address any of those individual areas without looking at the whole picture.

You cannot talk about truly protecting women in displacement camps without their participation in decision-making about how and where you set up the toilets so that women can actually utilize these services safely in a insecure displacement setting. You can't talk about women's participation and “meaningful participation”, as that phrase often trips off the tongue, in peace processes without addressing the fact that women often face security barriers in trying to get to where talks are being held. We put out a short piece a couple of months ago about Yemen, the nascent peace talks there, and the barriers that women from Yemen face in trying to meet with other Yemeni women to come together and talk about what it is they need out of a sustainable peace process.

Understanding that all of these pieces are integrally tied together is really important here, I think.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

We'll go to Madam Laverdière.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We feel that Canada’s current action plan focuses a great deal on protection and on women as victims. We are not here to get all worked up or to attack anyone.

That said, ladies, do you think Canada’s action plan could be improved in that regard?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

When I read it and assessed it, it didn't strike me as disproportionately focused on protection. A lot of Canada's advocacy and the work it does around the participation element and getting people to negotiations and talking about getting organizations such as NATO and others to prioritize this, I think is not tracked and not set forward necessarily as a policy priority within the plan. I think Canada actually is doing a lot on the participation agenda, but it's not necessarily either called for or tracked in the plan.

It didn't strike me when I read it as significantly out of proportion, but to your question on whether we can do better and do more, yes, I'll always emphasize participation, as Sarah said, as being integral to the other elements.

[Sarah Taylor]

[Inaudible--Editor] which is not specifically to the national action plan. Much of that work, particularly when you start talking about the formal peace processes—track one, or track one and a half—is work that takes place behind closed doors. It's work that doesn't often get seen.

It's really important for Canada to continue to throw its weight behind women's participation and gender expertise, and to ensure that core components of these peace talks, such as not bargaining away women's rights and giving amnesties for violations of them, and the work done done behind the scenes make up an explicit part of a national approach on women, peace, and security.

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

My question is again for the two of you.

It follows on Ms. O’Neill’s comment about simplifying the follow-up of cases and the need for core funding.

Could you tell us about the impact of all that, specifically on women’s organizations in developing countries, and tell us how important that is for those organizations?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

I'll speak to the simplification, first of all. Something that we consistently see in the second and third iterations of national action plans around the world is a reduction in the number of indicators. Canada was in a rare position, along with only a few other countries at the time it announced its national action plan, of also having a monitoring and evaluation framework. It just wasn't a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework.

For example, we've worked with Bosnia over the last several years. Their original plan had some 250-plus indicators. The revised version had between 50 and 75. That's the type of scale of reduction that I suggest.

Again, it's not to oversimplify or to say that complexity doesn't factor into it. But as I'm sure you've all done in trying to digest the progress reports, even in the very helpful civil society shadow reports, it's really difficult to see progress over time, to understand what's really a priority in there, to understand what the target is. Are we making incremental change but still not getting anywhere close to where we need to be?

Simplifying, simplifying, simplifying the number of indicators in the reporting makes everybody happier, because our diplomats, our civil servants, aren't spending all their time reporting and not actually implementing the agenda. I think that will actually help this committee and other organizations or other bodies make better decisions.

Your second point was related to core funding. It's just something that I think is essential to organizations, both in Canada and around the world. Part of the way our governments work, and governments around the world need to work, is through a relationship between civil society and government. It's when civil society has the ability to meet....

As Sarah was saying, sometimes even just meeting is a challenge. Money for gas is a challenge for many of the women in the countries that we work with. It's not like they're asking for an exorbitant salary or to be spending money in fancy hotels and capitals around the world. They're talking about money to rent a room and maybe have coffee or tea for some type of consultation, to have staff who can actually track a government's progress.

It will be these civil society organizations that hold our partners and our allies and those who are not our allies accountable, and really push for change within. I think perhaps the single most important value of having a national action plan is that it gives civil society a tool to holds its government accountable, as opposed to a government just saying, “Yes, this is a priority for us, and we'll take action”, especially in countries where processes are far more opaque.

Having well-funded and well-resourced civil society organizations, paired with national plans that lay out clear priorities, really enables that process, which is so fundamental to the democracy we're all pursuing.

[Sarah Taylor]

I really agree, and I'd like to speak to that issue of core funding.

I think we often talk about the importance of funding and don't realize just how tenuous the existence of some of these organizations and really at-risk situations are. Providing one year of funding to a group that is focusing on women's human rights isn't enough. These groups and human rights, as our research shows in far too many places, are subject to particular forms of violence, oppression, and shame. Ensuring that they have the financial and political resources to go about their important work requires long-term, consistent, and reliable funding, not unrealistic one year, outcome-based project funding.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Levitt.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Good afternoon, and thank you for your testimony here today.

I want to begin with a question for Ms. O'Neill. You laid out for us eight recommendations, which are a pretty superb business plan in any context. Sometimes we make things more complicated. This is really simple, straightforward, and to the point, and I think there are many things in terms of accountability. From our point of view as parliamentarians, the oversight piece is really interesting because that is something we often don't see enough, and it's something that, hopefully, can be taken back and built in.

I want to come particularly to your first point, which was improved indicators. In terms of progress indicators, Inclusive Security's midterm assessment of C-NAP implementation pointed out quite clearly the difficulty in reporting on its indicators and how well or whether at all they measure success.

On Tuesday, we heard that one of the problems with the current C-NAP is that there are a number of indicators but there is no analysis of progress, of how they relate to what we are trying to do.

I'd like to ask you specifically how these indicators should be improved, or what new indicators you would like to see in the new C-NAP.

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

In terms of new indicators, as I mentioned, one is an umbrella level of outcome indicators that say, “Within the period of this plan, we want to achieve the following”. I leave this entirely to the consultations you have with Canadian civil society and women around the world to tell you what should be in the plan. An example of that type of indicator would be something like, “Over the period of this plan we want to see a significant improvement in the attention to this agenda, in multilateral organizations of which we are a part, and in our partner nations' security forces.”

We want this firmer on the agenda of those organizations. Then we'll work backwards to determine how we are going to do that.

There is a whole other range of potential outcome-level indicators that you could say.... One is related to the topic we were just talking about. We want to see a significant improvement in the strength of local women's civil society networks and organizations and a targeted list of priority countries—determine how you are going to measure that and what your target is, and move backwards.

I was privileged to be here on Tuesday and hear some of the comments as well, and it's reflected in our report. It's what I mention in my remarks. There is a lot of focus on what we are doing on progress towards the plan in terms of the activities we are creating and not the difference it's making.

For example, the RCMP is working with the United Nations to contribute to and, in many cases, lead training, in many cases now for women only, in police forces abroad who are focused on and want to increase the number of women they send on UN missions. They were finding that the women in those police forces—for a whole range of reasons, in part because they were not exposed to training opportunities, promotion opportunities, etc.—were not passing these pre-selection classes at a high enough rate.

The RCMP was delivering training. They were saying, essentially, let's raise the standard of these police officers so they will be eligible to serve on international missions. They are tracking things like the changes in the pass rate of those classes. Instead of the national action plan calling for, “How many times did we advise the United Nations on this course?”, let's start tracking what difference it makes in the pass rate of the people we are working with. That's the type of outcome-level indicator I am thinking about.

There is a myth in this field that because it relates to advocacy or because things are so long-term or so focused on policy shifts, we can't track them or change them, but that is just not true.

There are a broad range of indicators we can choose from, from plans that measure this type of outcome behaviour that are not just the number of people trained, the number of classes held, etc. I think you all know training can be horrible, and then you get credit for doing the training, whereas in some cases it actually brings everybody backwards and leaves them more confused than before.

Focusing on this midterm outcome and then ultimately the bigger-purpose type of indicator is really going to be motivating for people, and it's actually going to give oversight bodies like yours a chance to assess whether or not we are making progress.