Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Dec. 7th, 2010

[Sophie Toupin]

In terms of the action plan, I think we have to build on the fact that it exists and ensure that it is implemented. In order to do so, we could create a working group of NGOs, academics and researchers who, together with officials from departments, agencies and organizations that have responsibilities under this action plan, would monitor the process and make recommendations. So a working group might be one solution.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

We talked about deploying more women to the police force. We gave some statistics, but I feel it's unrealistic to think that they reflect the number of victims. Generally, women do not disclose the sexual abuse they've experienced. They lie low and hide. We know the consequences that these situations can have in countries in conflict. Being a victim of sexual assault is much more than that: families and villages are destroyed. Hiring more women may help us to see things in a different light. A woman who was raped has a hard time trusting a male officer in terms of being reassured and getting support.

[Sophie Toupin]

Yes, absolutely. I have recently spent a number of weeks in Haiti. During that time, I followed the female police officers who were on patrol in IDP camps. I saw the role and the impact they had, and how they established a relationship of trust with women who were victims of any form of violence.

The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre made a short documentary on the role and impact of these policewomen. It is available on our website. I urge you to watch it. It really pinpoints the importance of these women's role and it shows that a woman who is a victim of violence opens up more—as difficult as it may be—to a woman than to a man.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We will now go to Mr. Marston.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We've had a number of witnesses before us here. One of the things that seem to comes through in the testimony we have received is that in conflict or wars where sexual assaults are a tool of war, they also seem to spread into society. In many of the societies we've heard about, women in particular are demeaned in those societies prior to any of this.

It sounds, too, as if in some of the conflicts, the military leadership is at least ignoring if not encouraging this activity, because of the stain it puts on another tribe or group. It was noted at a previous meeting how women were targeted.

Well, I would suggest that it's the men who are actually targeted and it's the women who are the vehicle through which others can get to the men in a community. If you have a society where the women are shunned following an attack on them that's no fault of their own, there is nobody is there to catch them.... Listening to the testimony here today about the efforts made to help them at that point, I'm really quite curious as to the other side.

What efforts are being made to change the thinking, both at the military level and at the societal level, to, first of all, valuing women? I would suggest to you that putting women into positions as you're referring to is certainly a part of that process, but it sounds to me like it has to be a much broader educational process.

Would anybody like to comment?

[Peter Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Marston, for your comments.

Many of these abuses, you rightly point out, occur even before the conflict, obviously during the conflict, and also after the conflict. Quite often this type of behaviour seems almost like a declaration of open season on women.

We have to do something about that. A lot of it is education. It starts in the schools. It's also in the department of health, as well. NGOs can also be of tremendous assistance, and also the justice system, including the training of police officers and the hiring of women. It has to be attacked on many different fronts.

What you need is a national strategy, similar to what some countries are doing in trying to combat corruption, for example. It has to be attacked on many different fronts if you want to be successful. It's not just about putting more police women officers on the street. That will make a little bit of a dent, but it goes far beyond that.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Tougas, you talked about the victims. One of the things we heard in testimony recently was that the victims have reached the point where they don't want to deal with this anymore. They're tired of being paraded as victims with nothing following that up. Do you know of anything specific that's happening to address that?

[Denis Tougas]

Other programs have been implemented. These programs resulted in the victims playing a crucial role in bringing the community together. I will not hide the fact that these projects were submitted to CIDA in 1996-1997, but were rejected on the grounds that no scientist had shown the usefulness of something like that.

However, recent projects have shown the merits of working not only with victims, but rather with a group of women. The final project I am referring to was carried out by the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace of the Catholic Church in three territories. This project has been very successful. Women have not been cast aside; they have participated in education, literacy and economic activities.

I would like to go back to the first question you asked. In Congo, rape was not common practice before 1996. There was violence, but never of this magnitude. It was not pressure but the moral convictions of leaders and tradition that prevented it. In a village, there was no such thing as someone being raped.

Then the war came and the militia enlisted young people. They became armed and rich, and they defied the authority of the churches. They defied traditional authorities and mocked them. Everything fell apart.

As you have heard, the acts we are now talking about are not acts of sexual desire. When women are being raped in front of their husbands and their children, the goal is to break something. Unfortunately, it works very well.

In the Congo, there is now starting to be a new type of reaction. When there are mass rapes, like in Walikale in September when 300 women were raped in seven villages, the husbands, instead of sending their wives away, got together and said it was an attack against them as men with wives.

I think that's the type of approach we should take.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I agree with you. My point was the fact it is an attack on the men. It certainly is the total abuse and humiliation of the women, but the goal was to disrupt the society, to disrupt the community, and to leave ongoing damage after they left.

Have any of you had any dealings with Afghanistan? We had testimony at the last meeting in our hearings about a particularly nasty thing that's occurring there, which they call “boy dancing”. The young men are paraded dressed as girls. They dance for a few hours and then are sold off to the highest bidder. That's occurring in police stations. But if you haven't heard of that, I'll just pass on it.

Do I have much more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You have one more minute, Mr. Marston. Use it wisely.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

That works.

How effective overall would you say that Security Council Resolution 1325 is? Are we seeing results at the United Nations?

[Peter Miller]

Well, Mr. Marston, we are seeing results. I think resolution 1325 was the first of, I believe, four Security Council resolutions, and each of the subsequent ones was built on the first one. We are seeing progress, but it is painfully slow, unfortunately. We need more of an international response to this.

Canada has stepped forward and funded the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre to do some work in some of these countries to educate police officers and give them the tools to investigate. But when we're out there and are doing that, we're not bumping into a lot of other countries that are also involved in trying to deal with the issue as well. I think we need a greater international response.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I just have one point, Mr. Chair. We've heard that funding for this by the Canadian government is ending in 2012 . Perhaps we might consider recommending that the funding continue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Right. Hopefully, colleagues will take that into account.

We will now move to Mr. Sweet, and then Mr. Hiebert. They are going to split their time, so they will have three and a half minutes each.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll be brief due to the fact we have some other business to take care of, although this business is crucially important as well.

Madame Toupin, you mentioned a video that's on the site. Of course, we will access that, but in what country were the camps where the policemen were patrolling?

[Sophie Toupin]

In the video, you can actually see policewomen, currently involved in MINUSTAH, in Haiti, on foot patrol in the camps. However, the video also focuses on the status of women in the UNMIS in Sudan. Sudan and Haiti are the case studies used in the video and you can really see the role and impact of these women.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I asked you because I know that in some of these countries we're dealing with, just the fact that a woman is wearing a uniform would also be a serious issue in some of these cultural circumstances, and you'd need to provide added protection for them.

Mr. Miller, I certainly laud the goal of having women make up 20% of the security and police forces by 2014. But I don't know of any police force right now or any military that has a 20% ratio of women. Are there some significant strategies in the plan to make sure that this capacity is built up in local police establishments and in the UN forces?

[Peter Miller]

There are. Just in terms of Canada, we're working in 25 countries in Africa right now, through funding from the Government of Canada and the Government of Germany.

One of our top priorities when we go in to speak to the minister of foreign affairs, the minister of the interior responsible for the police, and in fact, the head of the police forces, is to talk to them about increasing their participation in peacekeeping. In particular, we encourage the participation of women in peacekeeping. In several of these countries we went to in Africa, it's a big issue. It's a big problem, because they don't even have women in their organizations. So how can they deploy them on peacekeeping operations?

We have been successful, in several cases, in having police institutions change their regulations and start hiring women for the first time in over 100 years. So that's a step in the right direction. We continue to pursue that and to work with countries to try to encourage that and to in fact increase their participation.

There are some tremendous examples out there of countries that are contributing close to 30% of women. I think of Nigeria. I think of Ghana. They come to mind. These are significant contributors. South Africa is another one. But I'll tell you that for the most part, the numbers are very, very poor. They are the exceptions. There are not very many that in fact are contributing over 20%.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much. Thank you for your expertise and for your care as well.

I was just going to say, finally, Mr. Chair, because of the time, that Mr. Tougas mentioned that he had other proposals. Also, he mentioned some NGOs that were contracted and then didn't deliver the services. I understand that there may be some confidentiality in the communications he got from the localities that expressed their concerns about that, but I would hope that he had some names of those NGOs. Because if there are countries making investments in them and they're not doing the work, then we need to know that. If he would table those with the clerk, that would be great.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

If that's possible, Mr. Tougas, we would very much appreciate that. If there are any confidentiality concerns, we can treat those as documents that will only be looked at in camera.

[Denis Tougas]

I was not talking about Canadian NGOs or the like. You'd be surprised to see the methods used in Congolese villages to “de-traumatize” people, so to speak.

In some villages, I met with representatives from international American and German NGOs that were using the eye movement technique from California. You make the eyes move in a certain way. It is a method that works in the U.S. to “de-traumatize” people who have gone through a major traumatic experience.

In the Congo, that has no meaning. The Americans are heavily funded. That's the type of example I was talking about. The victims and villages accept these NGOs because they receive no other support. But they are actually like Martians to them; nothing really makes sense.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

That used up a bit more time.

Mr. Hiebert, you have a minute and a half.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

No, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay. You'll pass.

In that case, I have one last question myself that was suggested to me by our analyst, Melissa Radford.

Mr. Miller, as a former RCMP officer, do you have any knowledge of the number of female officers that the RCMP is deploying abroad? I gather that there are about 100 officers deployed abroad at any given time. Do you have any idea of what percentage of them are women?

[Peter Miller]

I wouldn't be able to give you an accurate figure because there are so many rotations of police officers in and out. I do know for a fact that when I was serving in mission myself, the RCMP tried to keep their numbers up to a good level. At any given time it was usually around 10%. That goes back several years ago. They are making efforts and trying to recruit more women.

The problem is that women police officers are also needed here in Canada. It's sometimes difficult to get them released by their commanding officers. The same problem exists in other countries as well. They're a very valued asset within your police force, and therefore you might be a little reluctant to release them.