Evidence of meeting #128 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was yazidis.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Let me rephrase it. What do we need to do to get the international community re-engaged in this issue so that they will show some responsibility for redevelopment of this area?
As an Individual
The international community wants to give money to pre-existing entities, like UN agencies, that have a limited capacity to do the kind of thing I'm recommending. They don't want to get involved in internal Iraqi politics, because they call that state building and then they say that this is colonialism, that we don't belong there.
The irony is that western governments didn't have a problem signing up with the U.S. coalition to effect regime change in Iraq and invade and occupy the country. That created the instability that led to ISIS. Now that we need to rebuild it, suddenly it's colonialism to be involved.
What I'm suggesting is that a coalition go to Baghdad, propose a working relationship—not impose themselves on the country—and say to them, “Look, you have a problem with this genocide. The whole world is looking at Iraq. Iraq now has its first Nobel Peace Prize winner who is from the Yazidi population. You need to do something about this, so let us help you.” They would say that's great, that they can't really deal with Sinjar, that they don't have the capacity and that corruption is a big problem. This commission could then go to Sinjar, work with local Yazidis and create a real election, a fair election—it's never happened—to create a leadership system there. That would make it possible to start bringing in reconstruction groups.
Mike Pence now has said they're going to give a lot of money for Iraqi minorities. The problem I have with it is that you don't have a system in place on the ground that can use that money responsibly. Most Yazidis are still unable to get back to Sinjar, and there are all the problems that we've been talking about. Everything is “cart before the horse” right now. We need security administration there. It needs to be local people.
It's not about creating a new Kurdistan region for the Assyrians in Nineveh or for the Yazidis. All you have to do is create a governorate in Sinjar. It will have the same governor, just like Mosul has a governor and just like Kirkuk has a governor. Every directorate has a governor. Create that and let local people fill those offices instead of a political party with an army.
Ms. Anita Vandenbeld (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.)
We're over your time, Mr. Anderson, and we do have some committee business at the end, so we'll go to Mr. Tabbara.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you very much, all of you, for your testimony.
Actually, Mr. Barber, this is a good segue. I'll let you finish your statement. You mentioned that governments need to be held to account and that actors must be responsible. In a conference in Kuwait not too long ago, they pledged $30 billion to reconstruct Iraq, but Iraq has issues with corruption. I think this is what you were just talking about.
If we are pledging this many billions of dollars, how can we ensure that it's going to the right areas, that it's not going to just the central government but is actually widespread throughout all of Iraq so that everyone is rebuilding, ensuring that they are going back to their homes and they have security and safety? How do we ensure that corruption doesn't get in the way?
As an Individual
Iraq is a big country, and I can't offer solutions for the whole thing. The corruption there is a tremendous problem.
What I can say regarding these areas that are minority populated, like Sinjar and Nineveh, is that if you had these commissions where, say, several representatives of a few western governments were included in a small body that was present on the ground and monitoring the implementation of reconstruction and humanitarian work while working on the political side simultaneously, they could be coupled together: humanitarian work reconstruction and administration and institution building.
These groups would be on the ground watching how the money is used, supervising it, basically. I think that would be a tremendous boon. They could be interfacing with the Iraqi government, giving respect to them and making their officials feel involved, but also policing it in a soft way.
Liberal
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Barber, you raised a very interesting point. I want to build on that, because I think some of what you've said is amenable to what I'm thinking.
In the geopolitical struggle that's happening in Iraq right now, you know that there are two types of governance structures. There's one on the ground and one internationally. This is just a proposal, but should we somehow get the geopolitical actors who have influence in Iraq but are not Iraqi to come to some conclusion, to conclude some sort of agreement which would put pressure on their surrogates on the ground? To me, it seems like a fractured sort of mishmash there, where different people are taking orders from different parts, different people or different entities, yet if we can get the entities on the top and say that this is the agreement we've come to and now please implement it....
Also, and I know this is a really quick question, one of the things that Oxfam and some of the other human rights organizations have done when it comes to aid is that rather than give it through an organization or a middle person, they give it directly to the people. They would fund whatever purchases they need to fund, either through a debit card or a direct cash transfer. That way, you're eliminating the middle person, or the middleman, and you're providing aid directly to the people rather than having it go through another organization where it could be lost there or lost to corruption.
As an Individual
Quickly for the last point, when I was director of Yazda in Iraq for a period of one year, some of our staff created that very program specifically for Yazidi women who had been enslaved and had survived. It wasn't the whole community, but it was done with the Baghdad government through their directorate of women's protection and ministry of social affairs. It's a special card that gives them a monthly stipend for the rest of their lives; even if they leave the country and come back they will continue to get it. Any woman who was enslaved qualified for that.
Those kinds of programs could be expanded. What's bigger is that Yazidis don't just need continual handouts. We can rebuild the Yazidi economy. We did this by taking chickens and sheep and other things to Sinjar for families who had returned. They will start to survive and rebuild their homes. We should focus on reconstruction, not these indefinite cash handouts. We can help them build their lives.
For the geopolitical question, here's the problem: It is a fractured country with many players. Turkey has 20 military bases inside the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq right now. The KDP is a proxy of Turkey. The other side of the KRG alone, the PUK in Sulaymaniyah, is an ally of Iran. Iran also has influence in Baghdad. A lot of the small proxy militias that are active in these disputed territories are loyal to one of those different sides. The alignments get very complex. I've written diagrams and mappings of that in the past.
The U.S. relationship with Turkey is very poor right now. The relationship with Iran doesn't exist, and our President has made sure it will get worse. That seems like a no-go area right now. I don't think we can create stability in Iraq by asking other regional partners to change their approach. Those regional partners are themselves competitors with each other.
I think we should exploit the relationships Canadian, U.S. and European governments have with Baghdad and the Kurdistan region to promote our own policy; the policy being saving these minorities.
I'm not talking about a major geopolitical strategy that has to do with interests for our countries that would look like neo-imperialism or colonialism. I'm talking about the need to help this tapestry of diversity survive in Iraq, so when it comes to making sure Yazidis can stay in their homeland instead of continuing to migrate to Germany and Canada and elsewhere, we can work directly with those partners and push that agenda, which is our agenda.
Ms. Anita Vandenbeld (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.)
Thank you.
We'll move to Ms. Hardcastle for seven minutes.
NDP
Cheryl Hardcastle NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Thank you.
Thank you very much, everyone, for your comments. This is a really intriguing discussion, and I'm still trying to get my head around this idea that we need to be supporting local governments and not using the international community. I'm not fleshing it out, just because of time.
I think we need to be using more of our international structures, especially to bring people to criminal court, because what I see as the biggest problem that isn't talked about enough in all of this, in the power struggle and in the geopolitical relationships, is this horrendous and brute concept of power.
It is not community-based, and there is the huge gender equality issue. Why are we, or should we be, supporting a process that more clearly and decisively brings people to criminal court for sexual violence and the rape of women, or is it too premature? Should that be happening in tandem with all this? That's the only way I can see these other things working.
Maybe you've been thinking about it a lot longer so you can give me some of your insights.
Abid, please join in with your comments too.
You may use the rest of my time, so the chair will cut you off.
November 20th, 2018 / 1:50 p.m.
As an Individual
Thank you so much.
These are important issues, and if I had more than eight minutes I would have loved to include them in the things I talk about.
These are the things on the mind of the Yazidi community; they're talked about a lot. Amal Clooney is working on the issue of justice. Iraq is summarily executing a lot of people they accuse of being with ISIS with these fast trials that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been criticizing. When they execute them they never mention the crimes against Yazidis. I think that might have happened once. This is very frustrating to the community.
Suddenly they have the terrorists; they're killing them, and yet there's no justice for us because they're not being tried for the genocide or for the sexual enslavement; however, all of this has nothing to do with the survival of Yazidis in the country in the future.
It's a very important moral issue. It will help the spirit of the community. But to me it is secondary in importance to the political problems and administrative vacuum that I talked about, because those issues are inhibiting reconstruction and the return of families to their homes.
For me, that's pre-eminent; the other is secondary.
I also think about the international community. We are the international community.
As an Individual
I don't think there's any problem with involving the UN in the kind of commission I mentioned. The problem is that the UN on its own just will not pursue a project to create this kind of political change. We as financial supporters of Iraq and the Kurds, we who provide the weapons that they depend on for their armies, have influence to effect this kind of change that the UN does not have.
Executive Co-Director, Nadia's Initiative
Yes, of course, we want to involve the international community, and this is part of our work, Nadia Murad's work with Amal Clooney for the past almost three years to get the UN Security Council to pass the resolution to investigate ISIS crimes. The problem is that the process is super slow; it does not move.
As I mentioned, in September of last year, the resolution was passed and since then we have tried to push the team to go and collect the evidence from these mass graves. But the team is not ready. It's not deployed. It's not on the ground to do the work. Iraq decided to open the mass graves themselves without any international oversight, and so we contacted the Iraqi government through the U.S. government and we made sure they stopped the process for now until further notice. Hopefully the UN team can join them to at least observe the process.
This is part of what we do, but with regard to what we were mentioning in terms of local government and reconstruction, we just want to make sure that the community is part of the solution and is involved so they can rebuild their own areas by themselves, or be part of the process. For example, instead of taking those local officials who were controlling Sinjar prior to 2014 and during 2014 to court, or basically asking them questions about why they left and why they did not warn the Yazidi community that ISIS would attack it, they are now getting the same officials to go back and run Sinjar again without any accountability.
This is the problem. We Yazidis want to see ISIS criminals in court and in an international court, of course. This is what we would have preferred this whole time. In fact, I wish and we want to see something like the Nuremberg trials or the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa or something similar, at which ISIS members can confess to, especially, the sexual violence they committed against Yazidi women and children. We want to see that.
As Matthew mentioned, ISIS members who have been taken to court in Iraq are being charged with terrorism charges only. They have not mentioned—not in any case that I've seen—any of their involvement in the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women, and that is what we want to see. That's why we want the international community to be involved in this process.
Ms. Anita Vandenbeld (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.)
I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here and for their very knowledgeable testimony.
We are going to suspend now for just one minute and clear the room so that we can go in camera for some committee business.
[Proceedings continue in camera]