Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on May 29th, 2018

[Rachel Pulfer]

I'll respond to the point about the role of women, because that's very close to my heart.

One of the points to stress in this is that Canada should also seriously consider a gendered approach to human rights work in the DRC, mindful that women and girls are often disproportionately at a disadvantage in any of these given societies. General Dallaire laid out the scenario of women who then have children who then rejoin these armies.

One of the tropes of JHR's work is that we prioritize training women to go into positions of leadership in newsrooms, into positions where they're anchoring newscasts, and into situations where it is normalized that women are leading a public conversation about a given issue.

This has been particularly valuable, as we have seen in South Sudan, in a scenario of conflict. Most recently we have worked with a woman named Anna Nimiriano. She is now editor-in-chief of the Juba Monitor, the most influential newspaper in the country, and she is setting the public agenda for all the radio stations in terms of how this dialogue is being discussed in the country. That is critical, because she is prioritizing issues over actors. She is making sure that the focus of the conversation around the conflict is, how do we resolve issues like the issue of child soldiers? How do we address and resolve these problems, as opposed to tracking the one up, one down, who's in, who's out, Paul Malong kinds of issues that the conflict has seen to date.

We have found that when we put women into those positions, that's what happens. They prioritize children's rights, the issues of child soldiers, concerns regarding girls' access to education, and even garbage collection—all the basic developmental needs that are neglected in a situation of conflict and fragility.

[Roméo Dallaire]

In 2005, I was Prime Minister Martin's lead into Darfur, and Senator Jaffer was with me. There was something called a comprehensive peace agreement between Sudan and Darfur that was trying to solve that problem. What we discovered in the peace agreement was that there was no mention of women or children—no women, no children—and not only not mentioned, but not even as part of the process.

Today, we're still facing significant elements where children or women are just not even part of the equation. When I speak of child rights up front, it comes down to what the priorities are to try to move a country to peace. How do you manage that process from conflict towards peace?

It's always been very much at the high level: men between men, big armies, and so on, and security, and diplomats and the like. Yet the nature of the conflict being civil wars, imploding nations, failing states, massive abuses of human rights of women and children and so on, those are the levels in which the conflicts are being played out and they are often not even part of the mandate, let alone the concept of solution or concept of operations. In so doing, you don't get a result. You just get a lot of administration, stalling, and holding it up at the high level.

We believe you can attrite these conflicts by going down into things like child rights, a peace and security agenda, a women's peace and security agenda, children's rights up front. You actually build your concept of operations for the security forces, as the military and so on, on this. Where would kids be that would make them vulnerable? How do we retrain those forces to be able to extract the kids and get at the kids without simply killing them? It goes on and on.

The more you are able to concentrate on that level, the more the mobilization base for those who want to keep the fight going, gets attrited and reduced. It's incredibly distressing that those who are the victims, and those who are being used as perpetrators, are actually never—or nearly never—mentioned in mandates and in concepts of operations, yet there's the source of your continued ability to sustain the conflicts.

I think that the liability side of child soldiers.... We, at the request of the chief prosecutor of the ICC, wrote her concept of how to prosecute people who recruit child soldiers. We've written it and presented it to the 100-odd countries that have joined in. It is now being used, and they're now prosecuting.

One of the new angles that are also being introduced is how you protect the children who are being interrogated, and how to protect them against the defence lawyers, of course. We're seeing cases where there isn't enough prosecution, of getting at the bad guys, because they can't get the sexual abuse side of the house defended enough to be able to be prosecuted. There's work to be done at the ICC in order to give it the tools to be able to protect the children and get the information.

One of the reasons for the Vancouver principles was to have security forces know what to look for. Soldiers and policemen don't necessarily report on children in a conflict zone. If you don't report on children and you don't report on abuses of children—it's just something that happens—you don't get the hard data you need to be able to prosecute the bad guy who's perpetrating that.

Educating the security forces to know what to look for and how to report it and how to make it stand for prosecution has been part of the Vancouver principles that we've been working on, and with significant enforcement.

I would like only to end on the women's side of the house. We've had women be able to communicate in the community and convince the men to stop recruiting children. We've had women who have been able to talk to women and have tea with them and converse with them—whereas men cannot even get close to that—and then they influence the men in the community to stop using child soldiers.

Here is an example. I was in South Sudan, and the governor there said, “I'm very proud because I'm stopping Joseph Kony from coming in and recruiting and stealing our kids because we've created local defence forces.” The Congo has just done that also. It has created community defence forces, He said, “We'll protect our children,” and so on.

When we went to see the makeup of the defence forces, more than half of the defence forces were kids. We said, “You have a willingness to stop the use of kids, yet you're using kids.” The response was, “Well, yeah, they're the ones available, you know,” and so on.

When the women start telling the men, “Hey, dummy, these are children. You don't use our children for this. Get the men out,” and so on, that can be a significant factor. That's why women are critical. They have a significant impact in the communities that men don't.

When people tell me that a male military observer for the UN and a female military observer for the UN are the same.... When you ask the men, that's the answer you get, but when you ask the women, you can see that there is a spectrum of new capabilities that they can bring to the conflict in these types of conflicts, which are civil wars, imploding nations, and abuses of human rights. These are human dimension exercises.

I think that Canada, as a leading middle power—and I'll get back to the point about the United States, you know, from earlier on—doesn't want the United States, necessarily, to lead. Canada should be leading, and Germany should be leading, and Sweden. We should be going in, not with the heavy boots of massive powers, but in fact, with the flexibility and the ability to adapt that countries like Canada have.

Canada's not having a seat and Canada's not being at the forefront of peacekeeping is taking a massive leadership role away from peacekeeping and innovative solutions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

I think we have time for one more question.

MP Fragiskatos.

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

We'll start with....

Did you have...?

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

I did.

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

Go ahead.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.

Thank you very much for your very compelling testimony today.

I have a short question, and hopefully we can find some time for MP Fragiskatos, as well.

In late March of this year, there was news that the Government of the DRC was refusing to accept international dollars for help with setting up its elections. We know that the elections have been delayed already. What I'm really wondering is whether you think there will be further delays in the elections. If there's no international intervention that is being allowed by the government at this point, how can Canada provide that assistance to have that peaceful transition of government?

[Roméo Dallaire]

My short answer is that I really don't believe that we take these conflicts and these frictions at the level of seriousness that they are. These are human beings like us, and they're being destroyed and abused by the hundreds of thousands and by the millions. We're seeing it. They're just like us. If a nation is imploding and we have the capability to influence it.... We have the responsibility to protect doctrine that we brought to the UN in 2005, and it says that if there are massive abuses of human rights in a country by the government, or if the government can't stop it, we have the responsibility to go in and protect the civilians—not change the regime, but protect the civilians.

Our fear of operationalizing and of committing to humanitarian missions—be it fear of casualties or fear of making a mistake—is holding back the ability to move these countries forward. They're screaming to move forward, but there's no way they can do it alone, unless countries like ours—middle powers—can take a leadership role, and I mean a real leadership role, not just going in with a couple of diplomats. Get in there with big guns.

I don't literally mean big guns. I mean ministers. Gee, I have to watch it. I'm an ex-soldier.

Thank you.

[Rachel Pulfer]

Just to pick up on that, one of the things we've seen in South Sudan that I discussed prior to our intervention there with Nicholas Coghlan, our ambassador there—fabulous guy— was media development. This is one of the ways we can effectively create internal pressure loops on those authorities and internal feedback loops to ensure that some of the individuals in authority in the Congo actually move on these different files.

What we saw in South Sudan was a hopeless situation when we went in. It looked like every NGO was initially going to be taxed with a $10,000 tax just operate in the country. We went in, and the president was on record calling for people to shoot journalists for reporting against the state. A day later a journalist was shot in the back.

Fast forward three years. The media authority committed at a forum organized by the Canadian government and Journalists for Human Rights to uphold the media laws and ensure that media and journalists could practice their craft safely and securely. That's Canadian action and leadership in South Sudan.

In DRC when we convened that forum, that was Canadian leadership leading media development in the Congo. The following week I met with the head of the volet, the French attaché who coordinates millions of dollars of media development in the DRC.

He said, “I don't get it. You've organized this forum, you have coverage across the country as well as internationally. There's a national commitment now amongst journalists to support one another against situations of threat, and we weren't even involved.” I said, “Yes, well, you were invited.” He said that this puts Canada in a unique leadership position because we're not regarded in that environment as an imperial presence. We are regarded as a middle power, an honest broker who can form these coalitions and create action.

When governments say that they're not going to accept aid or assistance in order to facilitate elections, that's a bluff. It's up to us to call that bluff.

[Roméo Dallaire]

We don't even come close to achieving or overstepping the bounds of our potential. We're still shooting well below our potential and what the developing countries expect of us, particularly in Africa.

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

General Dallaire, in the little time that's remaining, I want to ask you—and it follows up with your previous comment—about paths to peace and how to best get there, whether in the Congo or in other conflict settings.

As far as the Congo is concerned, Canadian programming includes a component that focuses on democracy promotion, particularly in schools with young people. When we look at situations such as the Congo, six million deaths in the past 20 years or so, a situation that seems to be getting worse before it gets better, I wonder if there might not be a tendency, a fear within Canada, within the international community, in fact, to put democracy on the back seat, on the back burner, if you like.

Instead, if we're going to promote peace in such settings, we focus on economic security, we focus strong security forces and law and order, but I think a lot of the problems that we find in the Congo and in other places like it are the result of a lack of democracy.

Would you agree with the point that has been made by others who have testified at this committee, not in relation to the Congo but in other situations like it, that democracy has to be front and centre, and that the promotion of it has to be front and centre in Canadian foreign policy?

[Roméo Dallaire]

When you have imploding nations that are trying to pull themselves out of conflict and get into a reconstituting nation, I am not of the ilk that the first thing you want to do is have democratic elections. What it does is tear everybody apart. There's no consensus there. Everybody is trying to gain power. Be it in Rwanda or be it, as I've seen, in other countries, it's not necessarily the immediate democratic priority. The immediate democratic priority is to educate people on what democracy is.

When I was in Rwanda, the extremist majority could not understand that Jean Chrétien beat Brian Mulroney because Jean Chrétien was from a minority and was elected by a majority. It just could not happen.

With that depth of understanding, the fundamentals of democracy are not there, and the creation of artificial parties—because of power basis, friends, and so on—is divisive. There is a need to reassess whether that is your first priority. I can tell you that when my mandate said I had to bring in a democratic election in two years to a country that had a 100 years of colonial rule, that had 25 years of a dictator, that had three years of a civil war, and that didn't even have a multi-party system, there was no damn way. It only created more stress.

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

What you're saying is that the promotion of democracy remains important but it should be undertaken in an educative way?

[Roméo Dallaire]

Grassroots build it. Build the nature of it.

With journalism, it's the same thing. Some people were saying we should stop helping journalists in certain countries because we know we teach them the right way but they're getting arrested and they're getting killed, and so on. There will be martyrs. The last thing you should do is to not teach them the right way and not see them being martyrs. How do you think you're going to change the nature of the beast if you're not continuously going at it?

They are volunteering to be journalists. They want to say the right thing, but they're also facing risks because of that. It's up to us to help attenuate those risks, but those risks will exist. The worst thing to do is to back off and say, gee, we're setting them up to be killed. No, you're not. You're setting them up to build the campaign to bring free speech and democracy. That's the way you look at it. It's not for a short term: two or three years. You're looking at it 10 or 15 years down the road. In there, yes, you're going to have casualties on the way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

I see we're now quite a bit after two o'clock. We've had an exceptional discussion this afternoon. Thank you both for joining us and testifying before this committee.

The meeting is adjourned.