Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2018

[Jerome Elie]

Okay.

In conclusion, NGOs have occasionally questioned some elements of the compact—for example, the lack of consideration for internally displaced persons—but overall we see this as a major achievement that can help reshape refugee responses. This will not happen overnight. It will require political will and engagement from all stakeholders.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Axworthy now.

You might want to enrol in our frequent witness loyalty program. We give points. It's very good to have you back again.

Thank you very much.

[Lloyd Axworthy, Chair, World Refugee Council]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here on behalf of the World Refugee Council, and to begin by simply saying I think we as a council strongly endorse the importance of the compact. We underline that it is a very critical piece of architecture to be able to begin mobilizing support, accountability, direct participation and certainly financing, all of which are really crucial elements of a functioning refugee system.

Even in the broadest sense, the compact does represent a continued commitment to find international, multilateral, collaborative, co-operative solutions, as opposed to the kind of distemper that's affecting so much of our world during these times, which is to go it alone, to simply to revert back to a form of 19th century nationalism in which everybody can solve their own problems. That's simply, as we know, impossible when we're dealing with a global-wide phenomenon.

Now, at the latest count, it's 26 to 27 million refugees, with almost an equal number of internally displaced persons—which, by the way, is something that it is essential to incorporate into any reform process. There are millions of stateless people who have been denied any kind of anchorage, credibility or legitimacy.

What we're saying is that we support the compact. As a previous speaker said, it's a beginning. It's a framework that now has to be developed in terms of the working tools that go into place. I guess it's the transition from the architects to the plumbers and the carpenters, who now have to start building, or rebuilding, a refugee system that is in really quite serious straits.

Let's begin with one very clear example, which is the financing system. It is a totally voluntary donation system. The compact negotiations were not allowed to include that as part of their negotiations; that was not their mandate. As a result, the very important proposals around a comprehensive refugee framework are going to be dependent on, still, the good will and charity of other countries and donors. As we know, that's a shrinking constituency.

One of the things that I think we want to emphasize as a council is that we now have to begin looking at a much more specific set of tool kits. In the financial area, we've really been looking at how to apply some of the best practices of trade preferences to provide economic development jointly for people in the host countries and the refugees who join them. We will begin looking at capitalization through a form of refugee bond, a sort of social impact bond. I will give full disclosure on that, and we'll have it in our report.

Certainly there's the whole question of holding accountable the thugs and the dictators and all the people who are causing the conflicts that create the refugees. They become the victims of this kind of wanton period when money and greed are so much driving where we want to go.

That's one reason that we're very strong in bringing in and having countries endorse the idea of setting up a reallocation of frozen assets so that there is no impunity in terms of being able to protect your ill-gotten treasures, when in fact they can be attached through a proper legal process and be returned to help support the serious gaps in funding that refugee groups now have. We're now reaching a stage where the pledging conferences may be only getting pledges up to 30%, 40%, 50%, and even those are not being delivered.

It's not only about holding countries accountable that are the cause of the conflicts, that create the refugees. It's also about holding accountable the people who make pledges and don't live up to them at the other end of the pipeline. There has to be an accountability system. That's one thing that was very difficult to negotiate through the compact process.

Another clear example of that is a leadership system. There is a serious void of women involved in refugee activity leadership, both at the local community levels as well as through the organizations. There's also, I think, this dichotomy that was established between the international role and the national role. I think there's also a very significant role for regional organizations to have more involvement and more authority to begin taking on issues.

I'll use an example. Our council was in Colombia just two months ago, looking at the surge coming out of Venezuela. Right now there isn't a regional answer, even though the impact is 5,000 people a day who are crossing from Venezuela and going to Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil. Right now, one of the efforts we have been making is on how to reformulate a regional answer to that.

Similar to the kind of migrant issues we're seeing in central America is the return of the Rohingya in Asia. As a council, we actually went to the front lines. We were right where the refugee problems were most apparent and met with the people who were able to discuss that situation. I think what we're talking about is a next step, a second round of action organized through networks of like-minded committed governments, the private sector, NGOs and universities.

This is the kind of reform initiative that some of you in the Canadian Parliament will know we did in the past, things like the R2P issue and the land mines. You can pull together active networks that can consolidate and combine around very specific targets and accomplish those. I think our view at the council was that once you begin getting some direct solutions that make a real difference to individual refugee communities or people, then you're going to start rebuilding trust and confidence.

You can talk about it and you can ask for it, but you have to win it and you have to earn it. You earn it by showing that governments can collaborate and work together to actually find solutions, as we did back in the 1980s on the boat people when I was the immigration minister in Canada. It's that lack of performance and that lack of being able to manage the system, both at the border level and then the larger level, that I think is really creating a problem.

I would say that I hope the committee will strongly support the compacts themselves, but also indicate that there are a lot of very specific commitments that will have to be made by governments like our own, by private sector and non-governmental sources, to start actually developing very specific initiatives around which we can begin making a real change in the protection and the promotion of refugees.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much for that.

We're going to go to Mr. McArthur and Ms. Singh. Ms. Singh will speak.

[Simran Singh, Senior Humanitarian and Gender Advisor, CARE Canada]

CARE Canada is honoured to contribute to the committee's deliberations today.

CARE is a rights-based international NGO. We support life-saving humanitarian assistance and peace-building, as well as longer-term development work with a specific focus on women and girls. Last year, our work reached nearly 60 million people in 95 countries, including in refugee-hosting countries such as Jordan, Bangladesh and Kenya.

1 will begin by sharing an example of the way we work with refugees and host communities in such contexts. My colleague will then provide our perspectives on the global compact on refugees.

CARE has been in Jordan since 1949. ln recent years, Jordan has absorbed almost 700,000 Syrian refugees, over 85% of whom live below the poverty line. This has placed significant strain on government services and on the communities where the refugees are trying to eke out a new living. We have set up four urban refugee hubs across Jordan. These are essentially community centres, like you would find in any city in Canada, with children singing off-key and a flurry of activity. The urban refugee hubs are innovative in that they provide services and assistance to refugees and vulnerable Jordanians alike through immediate cash assistance, psychosocial support and skills training.

This accomplishes a number of things. First, it helps supplement services provided by the Jordanian government. Second, the hubs relieve pressure on the current humanitarian system by building women and men's capacities to generate income and become self-reliant. Third, the hubs foster social cohesion, providing services that otherwise would not be available to the local Jordanian population. Finally, urban refugee hubs provide a safe space for refugees to speak to other refugees, to share their experiences and to recover a sense of normalcy and dignity.

As you will have seen in Uganda, amazing things happen when we help refugees help themselves. Our most recent annual assessment noted that refugees in Jordan are becoming more self-sufficient and less reliant on aid. ln an era of unprecedented humanitarian need, more protracted conflicts, and increasingly scarce resources, solutions like these help us stretch our aid dollars and foster longer-term, more sustainable impacts.

[Shaughn McArthur, Policy and Influence Lead, CARE Canada]

This is why states, NGOs and multilateral agencies came together in 2016 to ensure that the complementary implementation of best practices would no longer be left to chance but rather woven into the fabric of the global refugee system. At the end of the day, the global refugee challenge is entirely manageable.

Consider that refugees make up just 0.3% of the global population. The problem, as I think you've heard previously, is rather that 88% of the world's refugees are concentrated in a handful of front-line states. These are largely low- and middle-income countries already grappling with poverty, poor infrastructure, food insecurity and political instability. These are countries that have, to a great extent, been left to shoulder the responsibility of hosting refugees alone, oftentimes over decades.

That is why, in the New York declaration, world leaders expressed their determination to save lives, protect rights and share responsibility for the highest number of refugees since World War II. CARE was actively involved in the articulation of the New York declaration, and we have remained engaged through the two years of intensive consultations towards the strongest possible global compact on refugees. I am confident that this is what we have achieved.

By no means is the global compact on refugees perfect, but it is a document that recognizes that the global forced displacement challenge is inherently political, that countries of first asylum provide a vast public good, that women and girls experience particular gender-related barriers and bring unique capacities and contributions, that labour policies that support refugees' self-sufficiency help them become a net benefit to host communities, and that more must be done to tackle root causes such as conflict, abuse of human rights and international humanitarian law, exploitation, discrimination, and poverty.

I'm here to tell you today that CARE supports the global compact on refugees, which we believe can help bring about a more predictable, consistent, coherent and efficient international response to large flows of refugees.

What the global compact on refugees lacks is legal teeth or a clear way of holding states and other stakeholders accountable for its implementation. Paragraph 4 of the compact states that it will be “operationalized through voluntary contributions to achieve collective outcomes and progress towards its objectives”. This is where the world needs more Canada.

CARE recommends two key ways in which Canada can help the global compact for refugees set a new standard in the way the world responds to refugee crises.

First, Canada should offer to co-host the first global refugee forum. The global refugee forum, as established under the GCR, represents a critical opportunity to calibrate progress, share best practices and pledge contributions towards the objectives of the global compact on refugees. Canada is regarded as an honest broker and is uniquely positioned among countries to help co-host the first global refugee forum.

Second, Canada should support a comprehensive, gender-responsive response to a specific large-scale or protracted refugee situation. This would be done in partnership with a refugee-hosting country and in collaboration with UNHCR and local civil society organizations. It should involve the activation of the support platform conceived in the global compact for refugees, including efforts to galvanize political commitment; mobilize financial, material and technical assistance; facilitate coherence between humanitarian and development responses; and support policy initiatives that can help ease pressure on host countries, build resilience and self-reliance and find solutions.

The global compact on refugees offers a blueprint for a more consistent, predictable and efficient global refugee response system, a system capable of restoring trust and co-operation among countries. CARE firmly believes that the compact's operationalization and our ability as an international community to report on its progress in the coming years is a key migration opportunity for Canada in the 21st century.

With that, we look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you. Thank you all very much.

Mr. Sarai, you have seven minutes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

I want to thank you all for your great insight.

I'll start with Mr. Axworthy, if you can begin.

You've been in government and with NGOs for several decades, particularly with respect to foreign affairs, and you've seen immigration and refugee challenges.

What are the primary reasons for the increase in IDPs and large-scale refugees? Is this a pattern that's always been there, or is this worse in the last decade than it was before?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

I think there have always been displaced persons. We've made, however, some legal distinctions, so a refugee has to be somebody who crosses a border in search of protection against persecution.

Internally displaced people are affected by exactly the same conditions—conflicts, starvation, extermination, police brutality, whatever the case may be—but they don't get as far as the border. That's why we think it's really important that the reform process, for which the compact will hopefully be a catalyst, will begin to incorporate these questions of internally displaced persons.

You would be interested to know that the first time I heard the notion of responsibility to protect was when Francis Deng was the UN special representative for displaced persons back in the mid-1990s. He put forward the idea that if countries are not able or willing to protect citizens with their proper rights, then there is an international community responsibility that goes with it.

Interestingly enough, we were able to take that concept and sort of fast-forward it into something that now is entrenched in the UN system, if not always applied, and it simply shows that the problem of displaced people goes back until certainly the thing that Envoy Deng identified for me when I was in foreign affairs as something that really had to be done.

Unfortunately, with the way the negotiating process goes around the compact, that wasn't really allowed to come in as one of the central agenda points. That's why we're saying, now that we've got a platform, which the compact can provide, that we have to build on it and build the more tailored responses to the very specific and concrete issues that are found throughout the world but that are also very different in their impacts.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Is there a place in the compact for political will to prevent events that cause the large-scale movement of people when a dispute or famine or issues erupt, perhaps where the world intervenes earlier to prevent forced migration in situations?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

Unfortunately, the Security Council, which under the charter had the prime responsibility for maintaining peace and security, is becoming very dysfunctional because of the great power disputes and the exercise of the veto. As a result, a lot of conflict situations are simply bypassed or subject to kind of a rhetorical flourish of another resolution or a statement of goodwill, but not a concrete action.

Let me give you an indication of a news report that came out this week about the Central African Republic. Who reads reports on Central African Republic? Well, some of us do.

It was a story about how one of the armed groups.... There's a civil war going on, and there's a UN presence, but the UN security presence is limited, so as a result one of the warring groups went into the capital city and attacked people in a displaced persons camp. Some 20,000 people were under attack, with hundreds of fatalities and injuries.

Now, why aren't we geared up to respond to that? It goes back to, I think, what one of the previous interlocutors said: Dealing with refugees is more than a humanitarian issue and is very much a political issue. It's very much a security issue. That's where I think we have to broaden the discussion and the examination of what needs to be done to bring the objectives—the goals of the compact—forward for implementation.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

How would you take the fact that some countries have not opted to be in it, particularly one of the larger refugee intake countries in past history, the United States? Without them, do you think it's quite weakened, or do you think there's room to have them added in in the future, if they so wish?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

It would always be great to have full unity around these issues, but to get unity of 193 governments is not so easy. As a result, I think what we've learned in the last decade or two is that we can mobilize reform and international action without having a full court press.

We've had initiatives in which maybe eight or nine countries have participated. They bring in partners from the NGO community and partners from the private sector and from the international institutions. They tackle an Ebola problem through the WHO. In our case we did the land mines treaty, which was done outside the circumstance of the UN but brought back into the UN, because there was no way that the negotiating mandates of the UN were going to allow a real solution to that problem.

I think we have to begin to learn how to think away from the hierarchies and the top-down kinds of systems and begin looking at how you develop a network system for active implementation of very specific solutions.

I guess if I were making the case to you as a committee, I would provide a ringing endorsement for the compact and then suggest getting on with looking at the more specific solutions, of which Canada can be a major promoter or interpreter.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

My next question would be for Jerome Elie from Switzerland.

You mentioned something that I didn't quite get the full gist of, and maybe you can elaborate.

You said there would be “increased radicalization” if refugee regimes are not modernized. Am I correct? Can you explain what would cause increased radicalization in this refugee process? I want to hear that from you.

[Jerome Elie]

Well, that's getting to the—

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to have you answer the question. I'm sorry about that.

Go ahead, Ms. Rempel.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Axworthy, could you tell us if the World Refugee Council provides any programming services for refugees?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

We provide a number of interesting sorts of things that have grown out of our existence. One example is that Eduardo Stein, the former vice president of Guatemala, was just appointed as the UN envoy for Venezuela. That was based upon an inquiry that we did into Venezuela and Colombia just two months ago.

At the same time, we're working very actively now with refugee organizations to determine how they become involved in actually making the decisions—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

You know how this works. You've been in these chairs and you know I don't have a lot of time. I mean, does the World Refugee Council actually provide any services for refugees?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

No.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

No practical reintegration services or language training or—

[Lloyd Axworthy]

No, we're not a service organization. I think there are a lot of those.

What we are trying to do, however, is to take a step behind that, which is to begin looking at a way that we can develop the serious financing for those programs.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Can I ask how much the Government of Canada provides in annual funding to your organization?

[Lloyd Axworthy]

I don't think it's an annual thing. It was a one-time funding of I think about $800,000. That was accompanied by about three or four times that from American foundations as well as from our own think tanks.

It's been a composite contribution that comes from a number of sources.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Is that ongoing, or are you self-sufficient?