Thank you very much for having me here again to appear before this committee.
I'll give my presentation in English, but if you have any questions in French, I would be happy to answer them in French.
I am speaking today in my individual capacity, but I'm also drawing on my experience as editor-in-chief of Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, as well as my role as president of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, IASFM.
The global compact on refugees, or GCR, is a compromise document, but it is likely the best the international community can do in the current political climate. It is also important to note that while the document builds on commitments in the 1951 UN convention on refugees as well as its 1967 protocol, many hosting states are not party to these conventions. Therefore, their commitment to the GCR will be important in establishing international baselines for refugee protection and rights.
I would like to acknowledge Canada's strong leadership throughout the GCR process and Canadian officials' proactive, regular consultations with academics and civil society. Canada is well regarded as a key player in the multilateralism that will likely result in the adoption of the GCR in mid-December. Canada should continue to provide strong support to the GCR, however imperfect, and work to redress some of its shortcomings.
I would like to recommend five areas in which Canada can demonstrate this leadership.
First, I recommend that Canada co-organize the first global refugee forum, which will be held in late 2019 or early 2020. This will be a key meeting to operationalize the GCR. While the timing is challenging, given federal elections next year, I urge multipartisan support for Canada to co-organize the global refugee forum in partnership with a country that hosts large numbers of refugees.
Proactive efforts need to be made to facilitate the participation of people most affected by forced migration, including refugees and host communities. One of the critiques of the GCR process was it did not engage enough with these perspectives. Canadian partnership with host states in the global south could redress these shortcomings through the global refugee forum.
Second, the GCR is a political statement, not a legal document. In this absence of legal accountability mechanisms, there's a need for strong monitoring and evaluation. Unlike the sustainable development goals or the United Nations declaration on human rights, both of which are political documents that have had practical implications, there are no clear indicators in the GCR.
However, the GCR references early warning, and paragraph 43 provides for the establishment of a global academic network. I have just returned from a preliminary workshop in Geneva hosted by UNHCR, and a general consensus at that meeting and of the diverse IASFM membership that I represent is that this network should draw on existing research networks, many of which are led by Canadians. We need to develop GCR-specific indicators and mechanisms for data gathering. These indicators need to be sensitive to age, gender, ability, race and many other axes of difference.
Third, “expand access to third-country solutions” is one of the four GCR objectives. Canada's private sponsorship example is widely cited as one way to do so. The Canadian government and colleagues at uOttawa's Refugee Hub are helping other countries to adopt and adapt sponsorship models in other contexts. This work should continue.
As faculty adviser to the WUSC local committees that sponsor refugee students at both York and uOttawa, I can attest to the power of private sponsorship to change lives, both of sponsors and of refugees. I recommend that the Canadian government maintain the position of additionality, and that these privately sponsored refugees are in addition to continued resettlement of government-assisted refugees.
Fourth, Canada needs to strongly uphold the fundamental rights of people in situations of forced migration, including the right to claim asylum. This is one area in which the GCR falls short. Indeed, the GCR language is too often objectification of refugees. This is exemplified, for example, by the title: “Global Compact on Refugees”. It's not a global compact for refugees. People in situations of forced migration are primarily viewed as burdens rather than as human resources. My textual analysis of the GCR shows that refugees are only cited as active agents in 1.6% of the references in the text.
This compares with 41% of references where they are represented as objects and 33% using generic adjectives, such as “refugee protection”. Only one of the four GCR objectives is refugee-specific. It cites “refugee self-reliance”, rather than thinking more holistically about how refugees contribute to their host societies.
For example, Statistics Canada reports that children of immigrants, including refugees, are more likely to go to university than their Canadian-born counterparts. Many of our leaders, including the current minister of IRCC, colleagues here in Parliament, and past governors general, came to Canada as refugees. Language matters. It has real consequences for public opinion, policy-making and public servants' discretionary decision-making at borders and within the Immigration and Refugee Board, the IRB.
The right to claim asylum predates the UN convention and the creation of Canada as a settler state. For this right to be realized, states need to allow people access to their territories to make a claim. We do not have to approve all of these claims. This is the job of the IRB. In some cases, claims are found to be unfounded and people are sent back, but people need to be able to get here to Canada to exercise this right to claim asylum.
I recommend suspending the safe third country agreement. As Ms. Kwan has already referenced here today, the U.S. is currently using tear gas against unarmed people at its borders. It has deliberately detained children away from their parents as a policy of deterrence. By any measure of safety, the U.S. is clearly not a safe third country. We need to educate average Canadians about our international legal obligations to asylum, as well as our relative place in global displacement.
As I have already mentioned here in this committee, I've worked in the refugee context in Uganda, which is a country that ranks 163rd on the human development index and is tied with Pakistan as the second-largest refugee-hosting state in the world. There in one day, poor communities were receiving the number of refugee claimants that Canada has received in one whole year. The global compact is supposed to redress these global inequities. Our internationally recognized role in the GCR process will ring hollow if we are simultaneously pursuing policies that are preventing people from exercising their right to claim asylum.
Fifth and finally—
