Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 7th, 2017

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

Fair enough.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm sorry, I need to end there. We've come to the end of our first hour.

I want to thank the officials again for being with us. I want to especially thank Ms. Edlund, not only for today but for your ongoing work in these last many, many months in your role in operations. It has been a daunting task. We can tell that.

You will be back at the committee again. You go with our thanks and our respect for all your work, on this file and the other files. Thank you.

We'll take a brief pause as we break for our next witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Let us now continue the meeting.

We're beginning our second hour and I'm very pleased to welcome again to the committee, from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, Monsieur Jean-Nicolas Beuze, who is the representative in Canada.

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze, Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Honourable members of Parliament, I'm very pleased to be back at this committee to speak about the situation of the survivors of ISIS who have been relocated to Canada.

First, thank you to Canada for having offered this opportunity for UNHCR to work with the Iraqi authorities and the Canadian authorities on the relocation of the most vulnerable survivors of Daesh. In particular we have been working very closely in Iraq both with the central government in Baghdad and with the authorities in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and particularly three departments: the department of public health, which as you have heard is supported by another UN agency in providing support to victims of sexual violence; the directorate combatting violence against women, which is co-chairing with the UNHCR the protection working group in Kurdistan; and the directorate of labour and social affairs, which is primarily concerned with working with children.

We had a common objective with Canada, and as mentioned earlier, with Germany, which also provided a number of relocation spaces. The common objective was to identify the most vulnerable survivors of Daesh who could not survive or who needed specific treatment that was not available in Kurdistan where they were living. Therefore, we worked with all the partners to identify those survivors in a safe and dignified manner.

One key element of all those relocation and resettlement programs is really to ensure the dignity of the people concerned and their freedom of choice, for them to be informed about what relocation or resettlement entails. Ultimately, it's very much the decision of the individual to leave a country to be resettled or relocated to a country such as Canada.

It is outside our traditional legal mandate to do relocation of persons who are still within the boundaries of their own country, but we have done that in exceptional cases when we were not able to provide assistance and protection to the people concerned.

We focused primarily on survivors of sexual violence—women and girls, but as mentioned earlier, we also need to recognize that violence of a sexual nature has been exercised against men and boys as well—persons who had been held captive by Daesh for prolonged periods and subjected to forced religious conversion, physical and psychological torture and abuse, risk of trafficking, forced labour; and people who had been separated from their families.

In doing so, we also reached out to our partners on the ground to get referrals not only from the three directorates I mentioned, of public health, social affairs, and the directorate to combat violence against women, but also our NGOs, not only in Iraq but also in Canada. I personally met a number of NGOs that were showing interest in providing us with lists of names. As a result, four NGOs in Canada have submitted names. They are the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, Canadian Lutheran World Relief, and the office for refugees of the Archdiocese of Toronto. They have submitted altogether 34 names, out of which 18 were already in the database of the Kurdish authorities, and therefore, in the database of UNHCR. They provided altogether an additional 16 names, which were presented to the Canadian authorities.

I will make a point that is a little outside the purview of this study, but as you well know, the resettlement or relocation addresses only the most vulnerable cases and it is usually less than 1% of the refugee population.

I want to note our worries regarding the funding for the operation in Iraq. As we speak, at the end of our fiscal year, which is the end of December, we will have received less than 20% of the funding required to assist more than four million displaced, including among those displaced, a large number of people who have been subjected to abuse by Daesh.

I'm saying this because, while we do very much appreciate the opportunity to relocate the most vulnerable, we also need to be able to provide assistance and protection to the people who are still in Iraq, including in Kurdistan, including victims and survivors of Daesh. With only 18% of our budget, that makes our life extremely complicated, and that's our problem. It really makes the survival and the protection assistance that we can offer to the displaced extremely limited.

I will stop there, and I will be happy to answer questions from members of Parliament.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Anandasangaree will begin for seven minutes.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Mr. Beuze.

With respect to the role of the UNHCR, I know, as mentioned by our officials as well, that this is a unique scenario in which we're looking at IDPs, but this is not the first time that this has come up.

How does UNHCR manage an amendment to the mandate with respect to protection of the vulnerable where it doesn't necessarily meet the conventional definition under the convention of refugees?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

The relocation program, to distinguish them from resettlement, which is for refugees who are outside their country of origin, we very much need the approval and the collaboration of the authorities on the ground who have to allow their own citizens to be relocated for protective measures outside their own country, their country of origin.

As mentioned rightly, this has been done in the past. We did it recently with the survivors of Daesh. We have a program, for example, in Central America, where we are doing exactly the same thing for El Salvador, in particular for women and children subjected to sexual violence in El Salvador and Honduras, who are identified from within their own country, relocated temporarily to Costa Rica, and then sent mainly to the United States for their protection.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

You mentioned that the most vulnerable represent about 1% of the overall refugee population or the IDP population.

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

The most vulnerable represent 10% of the refugee population, but we are only able to relocate and resettle 10% of those 10%, which makes 1% of the total number of refugees.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

You're suggesting that there is a great number of people who are still highly vulnerable, but who we are unable to resettle.

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

Throughout the world, we have more than 22 million refugees. We have identified 1.2 million of them who are in need of resettlement, and out of them, we will be able this year to resettle less than 90,000, mainly to the United States, Canada, and Australia.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

I know you've spoken to some of the agencies in Canada. You've probably even met with some of the new arrivals. Can you give us a sense as to how their faring in integrating in the last few months since they've arrived?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

I'm pleased to do so, with a disclaimer that UNHCR is not involved in the services that are being provided upon relocation to Canada.

Having said that, I was at the airport in Winnipeg when I welcomed Emad, this child who had been separated for years from his mother, who had been relocated to Canada through this program. I was able, then, to see the support that settlement agencies were able to provide to the Yazidi community in particular, but also to other groups, in terms of integration, the psychosocial support they were receiving, and help with their daily lives in terms of navigating their new environment. It's positive.

As was mentioned by the IRCC previously—and we see that in all situations—there's a period of enthusiasm and of good and positive energy, which always at some point goes a little bit into kind of a low.... I don't know how you say that, but people, in the end—and we have all the statistics available here and elsewhere—after a certain period of time, catch up and become full members and productive members of society. We have no particular concern that this specific category will not thrive, like other refugees resettled to Canada.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

With respect to resettlement, right now it's Germany and Canada that are primarily the focus of resettlement. How do we get more countries engaged, especially on the Yazidi community resettlement? What does Canada need to do to have more of a multilateral engagement on this?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

I'm not sure that the prioritization of the need will be necessarily for the relocation of an additional number of survivors of Daesh. As I mentioned earlier on, our main concern is the fact that we have 4.2 million displaced persons in Iraq, we have more than 250,000 Syrian refugees in Iraq as we speak, and we have only one-fifth of the money required to help them. Resettlement and relocation, as was the case here, is only for a very small percentage of the population.

In addition, I will say that for UNHCR it is important that we do not focus on a particular country of origin or a particular ethnic group, but very much that we prioritize the needs of those 1.2 million people already identified in our database and who need resettlement, out of which 9,000 will come to Canada—9,000 out of 1.2 million. Therefore, what we need to keep is the space for all of the refugees whose need is a matter of survival. We have heard of the issue of cancer, medical treatment. We need this solution in Canada and elsewhere. I will not necessarily indicate a wish for further relocation of survivors of Daesh.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Just to conclude, with respect to those who have been referred, you mentioned 34 people have been referred through the different partners here, different organizations. What is their basis of connection with those 34? What is their rationale for the referral?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

Many were extended family members who they knew were in need of such a relocation program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Ms. Rempel.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Can you tell us how many Yazidi are currently residing in UNHCR-sponsored camps?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

We don't do a breakdown by ethnic group.

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

Okay.

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

We never do. We will be looking really at the vulnerabilities, such as persons with a disability, the elderly, children.

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

Thank you.

I'll be brief because I don't have a lot of time.

The motion that Parliament unanimously adopted focused on much more than resettlement. It focused on other recommendations that were developed in the June 2016 report, “They came to destroy”. One of the motions that we adopted to support was section 213. It recommended that “a clearly understood reporting system for harassment and crimes committed against the Yazidis in the camps” be established. Has this been done in UNHCR camps?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

In all UNHCR camps and outside the camps, because a number of displaced are living within the communities, we have mechanisms for not only the displaced and the refugees to complain, but also for all service providers to complain against any mismanagement and mishandling of the cases, and that's throughout the world. I had the pleasure to write to this committee not so long ago to explain in detail what are the mechanisms——

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

How many complaints have been made by Yazidis?