First of all, I want to thank the committee very much for inviting me to appear before you, and I'm sorry I'm not there with you in person. I'm very pleased to appear before you to talk about this very important issue. I'm going to focus on women's human rights defenders.
In April 2015, I attended the Ottawa-based Nobel women's initiative conference “Defending the Defenders! Building Global Support for Women's Human Rights Defenders”, which discussed concrete actions, some of which I'm going to include in my submission.
Who are women's human rights defenders? Yesterday Azza Soliman, a human rights lawyer and founder of the Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance, was arrested in Cairo. She has worked tirelessly for women's access to justice and in defending women's human rights. We know that Canadian professor Homa Hoodfar was recently released after many months in an Iranian prison. She is an academic researcher who would not call herself a women's human rights defender, but according to the Women's Human Rights Defenders International Coalition, the term encompasses both women active in human rights defence who are targeted for who they are as well as all those active in the defence of women's rights who are targeted for what they do.
Every day, more women individually and collectively undertake actions in pursuit of justice, equality, peace, and human rights for all. They are targets for violence and intimidation by state and non-state actors who see their work to promote human rights, gender equality, environmental justice, and democracy as a threat to traditional social structures and gender roles. They are murdered; they face gender-specific threats, including sexist verbal abuse, rape, and other forms of sexual violence; they experience attacks on their family members, often their children; they are unjustly imprisoned and held without trial; and their rights are continually violated.
Despite these risks, women activists continue to fight on the front line. They are community leaders, teachers, mothers, union members, and LGBTI activists who defend social and economic rights. They are indigenous women, lawyers, journalists, and academics who advance political and civil rights.
Among those at highest risk are women resisting mining and other extractive industry and large-scale developments in their communities, especially indigenous women, and women facing new threats from extremist groups such as ISIS and other fundamentalists.
CEDAW, the women's convention, broadly defines discrimination against women as a “distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex”, and this discrimination can be expressed against defenders in multiple forms.
The first form is misogynistic attacks. Women who decide to break away from traditional gender roles and demand their rights and the rights of their communities are often stigmatized and attacked.
Another is gender-based violence. Sexual assaults or threats of rape and attacks against a woman's family are committed both by the male authorities and institutions of the state and by private actors, including private companies, especially extractive industries, their own families, and their own communities and organizations.
Another form of discrimination is a lack of protection and access to justice. When a woman attempts to file a judicial complaint for this abuse, she is likely to face revictimization when the validity of her testimony and the facts are often questioned. Many of these women also do not have the resources to pursue legal proceedings. Existing protection mechanisms do not have a gender perspective, and there is no recognition of the inequality of power between men and women.
Finally, there is the lack of resources for women's organizations. Women's organizations have less access to resources and less political support for the conduct of their work.
What is the scale of these attacks?
In September, I attended the AWID forum in Brazil, with 2,000 women's rights activists from around the world, and I learned more about the increasing backlash against women's human rights defenders. The Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders initiative recorded that in one year alone, between 2012 and 2013, there were 1,294 attacks in Mexico and Central America.
Honduran environmental activist and indigenous leader Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 for “a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world's largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca dam”. She was assassinated in her home by armed intruders. No one has been charged with her murder. Her daughter Bertha has taken up her mother's fight. We remember her especially on November 29, which is the day that the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition commemorates activism, advocacy, and courageous acts of resistance.
We are going to see an exponential increase in these attacks on women protecting natural resources, especially water, like the women at Standing Rock and in Bella Bella, and the women in Tanzania and Guatemala protesting against Canadian mining companies Barrick Gold and Hudbay Minerals, both for their mining practices and for their human rights abuses.
What needs to be done? In 2013, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on women human rights defenders that requires member states, which include Canada,
to take concrete measures to eliminate discrimination against women, including:
Stop criminalizing women for their work in transforming society and defending human rights and, on the contrary generate internal legislative and administrative provisions that facilitate their work.
Develop measures to modify social and cultural patterns that are at the roots of violence against women and recognize that the achievement of democracy and development depend on women and on the improvement of their political, social, legal and economic situation.
Develop measures necessary to ensure the protection of defenders which systematically integrate a gender perspective in order to create a safe and supportive environment for the defence of human rights.
These recommendations have also been endorsed by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Michel Forst.
Now, what can Canada do?
First and foremost, it starts with us. We need to address the attacks on indigenous women as attacks also on women human rights defenders. The Human Rights Watch report “Those Who Take Us Away” documented abusive policing in northern B.C. We now know about this policing against aboriginal women in Val-d'Or, Quebec, and there was the Amnesty International report “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” on increased violence against women related to the extractive industries in northern B.C.
We can ensure that the national inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women is transparent, accountable, and solutions-based, with meaningful long-term funding attached to solutions.
This is a most opportune time for Canada to take leadership on strengthening ways to protect and support defenders at a global level. The GAC international assistance review report “What We Heard”, which was just released this week, states
Place gender equality and women’s empowerment at the core of Canada’s international assistance...as a high-level policy directive.... Increase engagement and action on eliminating sexual and gender-based violence.... help civil society organizations, including women...organizations, to better influence policy processes.... [Increase] access to justice and the rule of law [and increase] women’s civic and political participation
Further, Canada needs to implement all of CEDAW's concluding observations, which were just released a few weeks ago, in November—I refer you to the entire document—and hold Canadian companies accountable for their role and complicity in these attacks through their non-state actors globally and at home. Canada must increase support for long-term, sustainable funding for operational costs of local grassroots women's organizations at home and abroad. These are the organizations that undertake advocacy and protection of women's human rights.
There is an incredible opportunity for Canada to take the lead and announce a signature initiative when we host the G7 in 2018—$2.2 billion would be similar to the Muskoka initiative funding, which was also announced at one of these historic meetings. We could be the global leader in funding women's human rights organizations—front-line, autonomous, and grassroots organizations, both at home and abroad, like those that partner with the unique Ottawa-based MATCH international women's fund, and the Women's Human Rights Education Institute based in Costa Rica and Toronto.
Now, why support women's NGOs? A 2012 study examined 40 years of data on violence against women in 70 countries and found that the mobilization of strong, autonomous feminist groups was the key factor in driving policy change, eclipsing other considerations, such as the number of women in parliament, national economic conditions, or the political leanings of the government.
A recent OECD review of financial support given by major donor countries found that “Only 8% of the funds earmarked for civil society went directly to groups in developing countries, and only a fraction...to...women’s groups”. To put this into perspective, AWID found that “740 women's organisations worldwide in 2010 had a combined income of only $106 million—less than the cost of one F-35 fighter plane”.
We need to fund women's NGOs so that they can address the underlying causes of women's human rights violations, increase their local and global work to end discrimination against women, and promote collaboration of human rights organizations at the international level in order to strengthen protection responses and accountability for women at risk.
I hope that my remarks will assist the committee. I thank you for your time and look forward to your questions.