Madam Chair and subcommittee members, thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.
I join with my fellow witness and with other Canadian organizations in congratulating you on taking on this important study on women human rights defenders. We also hope that you will include attention to LGBTIQ defenders in your deliberations.
My colleague Rachel, from the Nobel Women's Initiative, has presented an excellent introduction outlining the specific challenges faced by women human rights defenders. This gives a context for the study and reinforces why it is important to hear from and understand the specific challenges these women human rights defenders face.
The MATCH International Women's Fund works with women human rights defenders and LGBTIQ defenders in a number of countries, providing core support to their organizations and accompanying them in their brave work.
In my time, I'd like to scope out briefly three key areas that we hope you will explore in your study. First is global good practice so that Canada can learn from what other governments are doing and build on these successes. Second are the good practices and gaps in Canada's current approach to women human rights defenders, and third are the concrete steps Canada can take to better support women human rights defenders.
Let me look at each of these in turn. First, we suggest you investigate cutting-edge practices by other governments that Canada can learn from. If we are to be a leader in this field, then we must not only know what others are doing but also go beyond and do better. One practice that merits greater understanding is swift assistance to support emergency visas and temporary shelter for human rights defenders. This is an element in the European Union's guidelines on human rights defenders at risk. For example, the Netherlands action plan for human rights defenders commits to facilitating the temporary relocation of defenders at risk. In addition, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has established a network of shelter cities where human rights defenders can stay for three months.
Second, we urge you to investigate what Canada is currently doing well and where there are gaps. For example, what can we learn from the support given to the Canadian organization Rainbow Railroad, which helped gay and bisexual men and women leave Chechnya in mid-2017? Awareness is growing on the specific needs and situations of women human rights defenders, but clearly, much more needs to be done to make our diplomats and policy-makers aware of the wide range of issues Rachel has outlined. As Rachel mentioned, Global Affairs Canada is currently updating its guidelines for human rights defenders, entitled “Voices at risk”. We're told that the new guidelines will be released this spring. During this revision process, Canadian civil society organizations have urged that greater and more specific attention be paid to women human rights defenders as well as LGBTIQ defenders. We have urged Global Affairs Canada to hear directly from front-line defenders.
Once the new guidelines are released, the subcommittee could hear from witnesses on how the updated guidelines will be rolled out and how they will be supported by training and funding. It would also be interesting to ask how women human rights defenders will be made aware of these guidelines so they know what support they can ask for and expect from Canada. We also hope the subcommittee will hear from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to better understand how emergency visas can be issued to women human rights defenders at risk and can include their families.
The third area we hope the subcommittee will look at is to investigate concrete recommendations on how Canada can better respond to the situation and needs of women human rights defenders and LGBTIQ defenders. We have a number of issues that we suggest you look at.
First is raising awareness of the specific challenges faced by women human rights defenders. We congratulate the committee on its intention to listen directly to women human rights defenders and LGBTIQ defenders as it will be clear that they face particular challenges that deserve more attention. It is crucial that Canadian diplomats and policy-makers become more familiar with the diverse situations of different groups of human rights defenders. General policies, initiatives and guidelines that do not highlight the specific situations of women human rights defenders will actually fail these defenders. In order for Canada to support women human rights defenders, their work and their challenges must be visible and understood.
A second set of recommendations could look at the whole-of-government approach. Strategies to support women human rights defenders go beyond Global Affairs Canada. In particular, we urge the subcommittee to look at how Canada can develop temporary and permanent relocation mechanisms for women human rights defenders at risk and their families.
The first choice of many defenders is not to leave their country and their home. However, there are times when it is just too dangerous to stay. This is where Canada could play a role with a rapid process to get women human rights defenders out of their countries and into Canada for either a respite stay or permanent relocation.
The third area for recommendations is funding for women's rights organizations and feminist movements. We have heard over and over again from front-line defenders that their best protection is a strong movement behind them. Long-term predictable core funding for women rights organizations and feminist movements is key. When they are part of strong organizations, women human rights defenders have support, they can develop and implement self-care strategies, they can incubate leaders, they develop effective strategies and they work with others to hold governments accountable.
Women human rights defenders around the world have developed integrated feminist protection strategies. These strategies highlight the importance of organizational resilience, collective models of self-care and integrated approaches to security. Key to this model is funding and support for their organizations, yet the data shows that very little of Canada's international assistance finds its way to the brave organizations working on the ground on issues related to the human rights of women and girls. The latest figure we have is that in 2013-14 only 0.3% of Canada's gender-focused aid going to civil society—not of our total aid budget, but just of this one subset—ended up in the hands of women rights organizations. We know this percentage will increase once two new funding initiatives get on track: the women's voice and leadership initiative and the gender equality partnership. However, still more can be done to fund these organizations.
In addition, it is important to develop mechanisms to support displaced defenders. Many women human rights defenders have fled their homes and countries. It is important that we find ways to support them as well, even though they are no longer eligible for funding via traditional development channels.
The fourth area for recommendations is policy consistency and coherence. In order to be effective, specific approaches to women human rights defenders will work best when these are part of a broad overall strategy to make it safer for women activists to organize and speak out.
It is important to ensure that all lines of Canadian policy and all international actions create and expand the space for civil society activists to operate. This includes building attention to human rights, including women's rights, into our trade deals. It includes speaking out for civil society spaces, including urging governments to lift restrictions on funding, respect political and civil rights and promote gender equality. It involves ensuring Canadian businesses respect human rights and environmental standards.
Last September, I had the honour to meet Anielle Franco, from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Anielle's sister, Marielle Franco, was an outspoken advocate for young people, poor black communities and LGBTIQ people. She also spoke out against police violence. She was murdered last year, yet Anielle continues to speak out for the same causes as her sister and push for justice. When I listen to brave women like Anielle, I know that Canada can and should do more.
We thank the subcommittee for taking up this theme and for inviting us here today. There is a community of Canadian organizations eager to see Canada take a more effective and determined stand to support women human rights defenders and LGBTIQ defenders. In a world of increasing uncertainty and danger for women and sexual minorities who speak out, Canada's leadership is needed now more than ever.
We welcome the questions from the subcommittee members and remain willing to support this critical study and positive steps to support women human rights defenders in any way possible.
Thank you.