Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Feb. 10th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

Mr. Marston, please.

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

Thank you.

Thank you, Madame. I'm very pleased to be able to take part in this discussion with you. I've been an admirer of your work for a long time. I'm very proud that we have a Canadian carrying our flag around the world in the manner that you have done.

You said early in your testimony that the international intervention in Afghanistan had not succeeded in the area of justice or building the rule-of-law institutions. My party has been supportive of our troops in Afghanistan but very concerned about the intervention and how it's been managed. I, for one, believe the failures are not the failures of Canadians, but the failures of an international community there.

At this committee we've heard very disturbing testimony about a practice called “boy dance”. A young child dances for a period of time and then is awarded as a sexual prize to one or more of the men in the room. We've heard that this has actually occurred at police stations and places like that. It seems to match up with what you've said in your testimony regarding military and police power.

It appears that allowing sexual assaults of this nature--and, more broadly, the attacking of women as well--is in a way a transferral of power from whoever is the government of the day, either by benign neglect or impunity, to the military and to the police to ensure their future support. Sadly, tragically, taking the power away from others by these acts is, in a way, empowerment for them.

I would be curious to hear your opinion: are the police and military sexual assaults more prevalent than actual civilian-to-civilian assaults?

That's one question. I'll go through a couple of things, and then you can answer as you feel.

I have to wonder, from your testimony, if there's broad-based support on the ground for the establishment of the rule of law in the supporting institutions. Our forces, the international forces, can do as much as possible, but there has to be that need within the community, within the peoples of a country, for it to be truly successful. There has to be a foundation. There have to be the bricks to build with, so to speak. I'd like your view on that. We all knew that the Taliban ruled with tyranny when they were there, but what were the cases of assaults and cases of that nature under their reign?

On resolution 1325, you've indicated that there has not been complete and enthusiastic support from the international community. I would suggest that's probably the reason--that it's not had the outcomes that we've wanted right along--but that's more of a comment on your comments.

Perhaps you'd like to respond to the first part.

Thank you.

[Louise Arbour]

Thank you very much.

On your first question, the victimization of boys in particular in Afghanistan was well known to agencies working on the ground for a long time--UNICEF, for instance--but it had not penetrated mass media. It just started to surface in recent years, and it's clearly very much part of the concerns we have to address in terms of the welfare of children generally.

You asked whether assaults, particularly sexual assaults, tended to be perpetrated more by security forces, such as the military or the police, or by civilians. I think that in virtually all the societies from Afghanistan to the Congo, for instance, where we see massive sexual violence, it was not all invented by the conflict. A lot of violence was quite prevalent. In Haiti it is the same thing. It is very prevalent in societies in which impunity is rampant. Discrimination against women and neglect of children are very prevalent, and therefore these practices are largely entrenched and extremely difficult to reverse.

Certainly the studies I've seen suggest that in Afghanistan almost 80% to 85% of sexual violence against women is perpetrated by family members, so in answer to your question, this would be very much a civilian-based form of sexual violence, which is not to say that security forces don't do it as a form of retaliation, particularly when opportunities present themselves when they have people in detention. We see it in these kinds of environments. I think it depends largely....

I don't know the breakdown of the statistics. For instance, in the Congo there's been a lot of attention to the question of sexual violence. It's usually portrayed as being primarily caused by militias and armed forces, including the armed forces of the government of the DRC and a whole range of militias on all sides. They're usually described as the main perpetrators of sexual violence. I don't know the extent. It's also very prevalent in civilian societies and within family units, and I suspect it's just as unpunished when it comes from these sources.

Finally, you mentioned what life was like and what justice was like under the Taliban. I think we have a pretty good sense of that. What's very alarming now is the lack of official justice infrastructure in Afghanistan, which we have documented. We've published a series of reports. In particular, deficiencies of the justice system in Afghanistan are very alarming in part because it has fed into the insurgency, appalling as it may seem, and we, the International Crisis Group, have people on the ground who could document that. Some people who despair of getting any form of non-corrupt, reliable justice from their government will turn to the Taliban for their resolution. It starts with land disputes and neighbour disputes and redress after an assault. They will turn to the Taliban, which, everything else being equal, would not necessarily be their first choice to dispense justice, but there's no alternative. The state is so profoundly absent.

After almost a decade of international efforts in Afghanistan, it's quite alarming to see how little institution-building will have been left behind by the time international public interest fades for the pursuance of not only of the combat operations, but of an international development presence in Afghanistan. That is particularly alarming.

I think the World Bank, which is in the process of finishing a report on the relationship between development and conflict, will come out endorsing exactly that: investment. Long-term investment in institution-building is the only way to leave behind a set of functioning institutions in the justice sector after conflict.

Until that is in place, I think everything else will fail at addressing these issues, particularly the issues of sexual violence and discrimination against women.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you. Unfortunately, that uses up your time, Mr. Marston.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I turn now to Mr. Sweet.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Madame Arbour, for the great work you've done as well as for your testimony today.

I'll pick up right where my colleague left off. I'll begin with the first question on my list.

Mr. Marston was just asking about how we inculcate the dedication, the commitment, the idea of democratic institutions--democracy, very much in and of itself--into states that heretofore have really not known that. They don't have the habits of democracy. They don't have the institutions.

Do I oversimplify it by saying it's just a raw exercise in education in order for that to stick? You make the case very well that it's very difficult to have police with some kind of integrity if you don't have the democratic institutions behind them and the right framework in which to operate.

[Louise Arbour]

I think a lot of people are asking themselves that question, the question of whether we have rushed into the exporting of democracy in a fashion that, in my view, was maybe just a little too focused on the holding of elections. There's a lot more to democracy than a series of periodic elections. There's the building, first of all, of elections that yield parliaments, not just a strong executive and not just a nominal parliament. There's the culture of a loyal opposition: the idea that if you lose, first of all you'll get another chance, and you have to work in the interests of the state even though you don't have to be on the side of the government. The culture of opposition is very absent in a lot of environments in which we rush to elections and then are surprised at the result.

Finally, and having in mind particularly Afghanistan, I would say that we're not going to go very far in promoting democracy, and certainly not by celebrating fraudulent elections. Tolerating would be bad enough, but celebrating, frankly, is a bit rich, and I think we've done too much of that--tolerating for others what we would never accept for ourselves and exporting a really impoverished version of democracy that has been reduced not only to electoral mechanisms, but to second-rate electoral mechanisms at that.

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

By the way, I just wanted to let you know that the spirit of opposition is quite alive and well here in Canada, and I know my colleagues are happy that I mentioned that.

One of the points you made was very interesting, and I'm wondering if there are some measures governments can take to help NGOs to bridge.... You mentioned, from Mr. Marston's question, that this whole issue of the prevalence of boy dancing is just beginning to get out in the mainstream media right now. They've been victimizing these young boys for generations. Is there a way for governments to help NGOs bridge that gap?

There is boy dancing, and we've heard lately about the ubiquitous nature of the persecution and slavery of Christians in these third world countries. Right now we're talking about violence against women, and particularly the way rape is used as an instrument of violence and control. I don't think that has made the mainstream media internationally, at least to the degree that the victimization has. Is there a way we can help in that regard to get the word out in the free world to individual people?

[Louise Arbour]

Well, that speaks about the international and national media and the choices they make in their reporting. Frankly, as an international NGO, essentially, that works on the ground, we see to a large extent the poverty of international reporting from the ground up. The media are extremely concentrated.

In terms of helping national NGOs, which I think is the starting point if we deal with these kinds of issues, on the one hand, as I said before, NGOs can build clinics but they can't build courts, so we should never abandon the government-to-government assistance to build state-based institutions. There is no substitute for that. NGOs can't run prisons. The entire justice sector cannot, one hopes, entirely be privatized. I think there are some who believe parts of it could be privatized, but we all understand that it's essentially state-owned.

In other sectors, support for national local NGOs is really critical. If I could leave you with one thought when it comes to international assistance, it would be that many countries, as you may know, have passed legislation preventing their own national NGOs from receiving foreign funding, or in some cases limiting their budget to no more than, say, 10% of foreign funding. This is a very pervasive way for governments to shelter themselves particularly from human rights organizations who would challenge them, although they're very happy to receive lots of money and assistance for their own programs.

This is something that I think should be government-to-government and in international forums. Certainly Canada could champion the issue that international aid and international assistance should flow not only to state institutions but to civil society actors. That's what democracies are about. Again, it's about the empowerment of people to advance their own interests.

That blockage, I think, is really alarming, and it's quite widespread--

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

Good point.

[Louise Arbour]

--even in countries that otherwise deserve and receive a tremendous amount of western-based donor assistance.

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

Yes. That's a very good point.

Lastly--I know that the time always ticks on here--you mentioned that you were concerned about the international commitment, for lack of a better word, regarding resolution 1325. I always considered the UN special rapporteurs as being almost auditors general out there, highlighting and reporting on the seriousness of situations.

I'm wondering if there's been any dialogue in the United Nations or if anybody has raised the idea that having a.... I know there is a UN special rapporteur on human trafficking in general, but if there were a special rapporteur assigned particularly around this resolution 1325 and sexual violence, would that not raise the alarm bells and bring much more transparency to it? Maybe there would be more pickup internationally.

[Louise Arbour]

Actually, I had that in my original text. I didn't want to put you to sleep by reading for too long, so I skipped the part in my text that would have answered your question.

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

I feel flattered that we were actually thinking of the same thing.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Louise Arbour]

The Security Council enacted two subsequent resolutions. In one of these resolutions, it established--it's a Security Council-based post, and therefore quite potent--a special representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict and a group of rule-of-law experts who are supposed to come and assist states, so I think initiatives have been put in place to try to document issues and to assist states. I'm just not sure....

In the same way, I should also mention that there is a lot more dedicated effort to increasing the number of women in peacekeeping missions through contributing countries in both the police and military sectors, again on the assumption that if you have more than 2% or 3% women as peacekeepers, they will be more attentive to the need to protect women, and women who are victimized will be more forthcoming in talking to them.

I don't want to suggest that no initiatives have been taken, but I would reiterate that there is a whole form of empowerment of women that I think escapes the reach of this resolution, which is very focused on victims and on peace talks.

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

Has that rapporteur been assigned, or is that simply a resolution that hasn't been filled yet?

[Louise Arbour]

No, it's fully operational. Margot Wallstrom is the special representative of the Secretary-General. She's been on the ground in the DRC.That's fully in place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

That concludes the questions.

Before we let our witness go, perhaps I'll just ask, Madame Arbour, if there is anything else you wanted to add as a concluding remark.

[Louise Arbour]

I don't think so. I think the questions have given me a lot of opportunity to stress the points I made in my opening remarks.

I should simply say that I'm really delighted that you are looking at this issue. I think the whole question of the advancement and protection of women and of human rights generally in the context of the eradication of armed conflict itself is a very worthy enterprise, so I congratulate you for having taken on that issue.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much. That concludes the questions.

Thank you very much, everybody, for being here.

The meeting is adjourned.