Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 17th, 2016

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for sharing your testimony with us and for some of the comments you've been giving the committee today.

I want to continue the flow of this conversation. One thing I'm interested in is that we're looking at some of the short-term solutions, which are critical, but I also want to talk about some of the long-term solutions. You mentioned in your opening statement mediation on the ground and local-level consideration. I want to try to relate this a little bit—I know it involves a totally different conflict zone—to what has been stable in the former Yugoslavia right now. We've seen a lot of distrust of neighbours—Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, etc.—and they're living alongside each other in relative peace, although there might be still some distrust.

As we see in northern Iraq, it was a region with a lot of different ethnic cultures. You mentioned that there's a lot of distrust. What can we learn from the former Yugoslavia and maybe implement in Iraq?

[Naomi Kikoler]

It's a really great question.

One of the things that we've tried to underscore in all of our reports and our work is that there are the immediate needs and then there are the long-term needs. What we often see in situations where atrocities have occurred, unfortunately, is a recurrence of them, and usually within a 10-year time frame. That's true for Iraq, and that's true for most conflicts around the world.

With the former Yugoslavia, I think there have been a couple of things that played a critical role. One was the role of international justice. In that case it was the creation of an ad hoc tribunal and the fairly swift gathering of evidence to allow for cases to come forward. I think it's also important in the Yugoslavia case that in some cases people waited 20 years for justice. There was also a great investment in local reconciliation.

Each of the options are going to differ based on the context, the cultures, and the societies that you are working with. It depends on which country you're looking at, but in Bosnia and elsewhere, there was a real emphasis on trying to ensure the inclusion of minority communities into the political life of the various states.

I think in Iraq that's really critical to underscore. As I mentioned before, many of these communities are living in a contested area. For many of the Yazidi, when you talk to them, they feel a lot of distrust against the Kurdish regional government because they feel as though their political interests were never taken to heart and they were marginalized and excluded in the political life in the area around Sinjar, which had been de facto annexed by the KRG. When you speak to Christians from Karkush, they'll also talk about frustration with the local election, and we're talking local elections for mayors, because they felt that their voices were not being heard.

So ensuring in a very swift way not just the provision of security for these communities but also their inclusion in the political administration of the areas in which they live will be very important. That's where I think the voice of the international community to urge all sides to include minorities in that political process will help build more trust.

As I mentioned at the start, one of the reasons why people are self-arming is not just for physical protection; it's to be able to assert greater influence in the political and economic life of Nineveh going forward. We need to be reassuring minorities that they will have a voice. I think there are things that were done in the former Yugoslavia and in each of the countries that helped to create that space that we can use potentially as a model going forward.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I'm going to share my time with my colleague Ms. Khalid.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Tabbara.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Very quickly.

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

Yes, I'll be very quick. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I really appreciated what you said today, specifically with respect to accountability and looking forward as to how we go post-Daesh and try to bring all these communities together. I really liked the question that MP Tabbara asked. I was wondering if you could talk a bit further on the very specific role that Canada, as a country, can play in trying to establish a post-Daesh Iraq and the inclusion of minority communities.

[Naomi Kikoler]

Thank you for that.

I do want to underscore, too, that in our report we highlight the risk to Sunni Arabs in Nineveh, the challenges they will face, and why a focus on accountability and reconciliation is so important to also ensure their protection in a very uncertain time going forward. I think Canada has an important role to give voice to some of their concerns and the concerns of religious minorities.

When we think about the four categories that I talked about, security, stabilization, addressing the political dispute, and accountability, I think Canada has a unique role to play in each. First and foremost on the security side, there has been a lot of discussion about the training of security forces, training of the military. I think what we need to be focusing a lot on is the training of police. At the end of the day, the job of maintaining peace and security in areas where religious minorities are living, be it Sinjar, or be it Nineveh plains or Mosul, will at some stage fall on the shoulders of police, and we simply do not have enough trained police to be deployed to those areas.

If we were able to invest in ensuring that there was a multi-ethnic representative police force that could be deployed to some of these areas, a force that knows how to respond to the local threats and challenges in a way that's in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law standards, that would be a real value-add. The Canadians with some of the European partners could prioritize that. It has to happen fairly swiftly. There are already efforts under way, but that's one key way in which Canada can contribute in that first part around physical protection.

Second, in terms of stabilization, this is going to be an enduring challenge. The idea that once we defeat ISIS the problem has gone away has to be countered on a daily basis, and it's going to take actors like Canada constantly reiterating the need for long-term investment in Iraq to ensure that this happens.

I think Canada already, though its support for efforts undertaken by the UNDP and supporting some of the initiatives focused on reconstruction.... That's a role that we're going to need to continue to engage in and redouble efforts on. Finding a way to financially support some of these targeted reconciliation projects I think should be a critical component of a strategy going forward. Doing the mapping to identify where the at-risk communities are, as I mentioned, is one particular thing that needs to be undertaken fairly swiftly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

I need to cut you off there, because I want to give MP Anderson a chance for a short question. I know he had a couple.

[Naomi Kikoler]

I'm so sorry about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

No, no, don't worry.

MP Anderson, please go ahead.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I just have two questions.

I was going to talk about whether there's potential for an endless cycle of sectarian violence. You seem to think that can be broken. In other conflict areas, we've had court systems and justice systems which, once the conflict was over, people had already had some exposure to and gave credibility to. When you're talking about the frustrations that the minorities have had in this system, do you think those structures can be set up so that they will actually have the confidence of the people? That's one question.

Second, what would early detection have done in terms of stopping what happened here? This issue arose, and it took from 2005; with the Iraqi government alienating its people, there were a lot of different things developing over the years. We probably should have had a good idea of what was going to happen. It was that sudden rise of ISIS that really was the surprise, and it swept across that area so quickly. I'm just wondering what early detection would have accomplished, because there still doesn't seem to be a coordinated international response to what has happened there.

[Naomi Kikoler]

That's a great question. I couldn't agree with you more on that one.

I think when we talk about justice, and when I talk about the local conflict and the need for a local response, it has to be backed up by international community support, a sense that the international community is following and is supporting efforts that are being undertaken at the local level, be it justice or reconciliation. If these initiatives are seen as strictly Iraqi- or KRG-led, they won't necessarily have the credibility for local communities because there is that high level of distrust.

What that can mean in a very tangible sense is deploying Canadian or Danish constitutional law experts or criminal law experts to help advise and stand up local processes. There are lots of different iterations by which the international community can show that it remains concerned and engaged. One reason for an international independent investigation, created ideally by the Security Council so it has a chapter VII kind of mandate, which calls for co-operation between both Baghdad and Erbil, is that it shows the international community is taking it seriously and is concerned about justice and accountability. You need that to help shore up the credibility of a process. There needs to be that hand-in-hand of the international community and local efforts for the initial period of time.

In terms of early detection, it's a really good question, because the question is when do you start looking at this scenario? We saw a drawdown for many years, not just in the military presence in Nineveh but also even development funding from across the board. I spoke with many different government officials who were involved in a response, really from 2011 on, who said that the attitude and the orientation was, at the time, that, well, Iraq's on its road to recovery, and it has the capacity to protect minorities. As a result, we saw a disengagement, even just on the diplomatic side, from raising concerns about the protection of minorities and creating programming that would have addressed some of the grievances in Nineveh and elsewhere.

To get to an earlier question, Canada putting more of a focus on addressing the political dispute between Baghdad and Erbil, there has to be a voice or multiple voices from within the international community stressing the need to resolve this particular problem. I'm very concerned that we keep punting it year after year to some situation when we think that Iraq is going to be better and more stable. For communities that are trapped there, the reality is that the uncertainty continues to create inherent vulnerabilities, and those who suffer the most are vulnerable minorities. It could be an area where Canada could have a unique role to play. Given our own history, I think we might perhaps have more credibility on that issue in trying to deal with it than many others.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much for your testimony before this committee today. It was valuable to hear your perspective.

[Naomi Kikoler]

Thank you very much for the opportunity. I wish you all the best of luck.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.