Evidence of meeting #33 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was schools.
A video is available from Parliament.
As an Individual
No. It's just from the people in the villages who talk about it. All my staff is from the area. They have checkpoints.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
All right.
One of your answers—and I concur with you—was that obviously creating initially a cultural habit, a tradition, of going to school is an important one, but there are mechanisms on the ground to make sure, or to at least begin the process of trying to improve the education on a progressive basis. Is my assumption correct?
As an Individual
Yes. One of the challenges of how much aid is going into Afghanistan is that there are a lot of action plans. There are a lot of strategic plans. There is a beautifully written 87-page paper by the Afghan Ministry of Education, funded by UNESCO, on improving literacy. It's just that a lot of this stuff happens in Kabul, and it doesn't always feed well to the people who need it most.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
How many international partners fund your programming?
As an Individual
Well, I'm no longer there, but my old program was funded by USAID.
Conservative
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
So USAID and Canada are obviously there. Are there still other international partners that are on the ground and funding this kind of work?
As an Individual
Yes. The Australians are still there. My understanding is that the larger NGOs that get this kind of work, like the IRC or the IRG, are all still working there.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Are they to a great degree exercising the accountability you were talking about in terms of pushing for results and pushing for women to be involved, or do you see a general malaise around that?
As an Individual
I'm a little hesitant to speak to other programs.
I know that even I initially got a bit of pushback when hiring women in my own program. I think there is this tendency to be overly cautious in terms of this being against the culture, when instead there are plenty of women who want this. As I said earlier, we're respecting half of the culture when we exclude the women. There are a lot of educated, bright women in Afghanistan who want to participate but feel intimidated or threatened. I think one thing the international community can do is to do their best to seek out those women and ask for their participation in these programs.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
I would concur with you that being overly cautious is usually epidemic in foreign affairs. In fairness, there are some good reasons for that. But sometimes we all understand that case all too intimately.
Thank you very much, Chair.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Scott Reid
Thank you.
What we should do at this point is thank you, Ms. Haag, for your testimony. We very much appreciate the fact that you were able to come before us and were able to provide as thorough a testimony as you did. It's appreciated by all of us, so thank you very much.
As an Individual
Thank you very much for your time. I appreciated the opportunity.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Scott Reid
It was a real pleasure.
Colleagues, we are going to deal now with another item of business. Let's suspend, go in camera, and then return in camera.
Thank you.
[Proceedings continue in camera]