Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 23rd, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Good afternoon, everyone. I call to order this meeting for the Subcommittee on International Human Rights as we continue our study on the human rights situation in South Sudan.

I would like to welcome our two witnesses today who are coming to us by video conference. David Morley has been the president and CEO of UNICEF Canada since 2011, before which he was the president of Save the Children Canada. From 1998 to 2006, Mr. Morley served as the executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders Canada, and during his tenure at Médecins Sans Frontières he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I would also like to welcome Jonathan Pedneault, from Human Rights Watch. Mr. Pedneault is the South Sudan researcher with the African division at Human Rights Watch. Since January 2016, he has investigated international human rights and humanitarian law violations committed by government and rebel forces in the country. In 2013 and 2014, he trained South Sudanese and central African radio reporters in conflict-sensitive journalism.

With that, if you can take about seven minutes each to provide some opening remarks, then we can go right into questions.

Why don't we start with you, Mr. Morley? Thank you very much.

[David Morley, President and Chief Executive Officer, UNICEF Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Levitt.

Thank you for addressing this issue that is extremely important for children and families in South Sudan and important for us as Canadians, of course, because of all the support that Canada has given and continues to give to the people of South Sudan.

Certainly, for us as UNICEF, we are playing a leadership role in coordinating the global humanitarian response for children in this country. We're leading relief efforts in nutrition, education, and child protection, and in water, sanitation, and hygiene. We take on this role in order to try to avoid the duplication of services among the agencies that are working in South Sudan, and I must take this time to thank Global Affairs Canada for the commitment announced last week towards our work in a number of countries, including South Sudan.

Before the conflict began in South Sudan, the children of the country suffered from some of the worst indicators facing any children, and the ongoing violence has made things even worse. We see that more than four million children are now in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. We know that about 3.5 million South Sudanese have been displaced by the fighting and that more than 1.6 million of those have fled to other countries. That's more than 10% of the population.

In February, famine was officially declared in parts of Unity state in South Sudan. This is the first time in six years that a famine has been declared anywhere in the world, and only the second time in the last more than 30 years. The main reason for this famine has to do with the economic crisis that's been brought about by this horrific conflict that goes on. What we are fearful about is that by May to July of this year we may find almost half of the population at risk and suffering from food insecurity. Right now, we have almost a million children in the country who are estimated to be acutely malnourished.

I want to show you something that defines better than any numbers, I think, what “acutely malnourished” means. What I have here with me is a MUAC bracelet—a mid-upper arm circumference bracelet—which you put around a child's arm at their biceps. You pull on it, and when you get to the yellow part, that's acute malnutrition. The circle of the bracelet is about the size of a toonie, and for a child between the ages of six months and five years, that's how big the arm is of a child who has acute malnutrition. That's what we're seeing countless times in South Sudan today.

Because of this, UNICEF has been conducting massive relief operations. Along with the World Food Programme, we undertake rapid response mechanisms that get food, supplies, and vaccinations into the areas that are hard to reach. We often have to go in by helicopter because it's impossible to get access by ground.

In this atmosphere of escalating violence, we see the needs getting greater of the children and the families who are caught in the violence. Aid workers—our colleagues and those of other agencies—are continuing to face multiple obstacles to the delivery of their humanitarian assistance. That's not only due to the conflict itself. We're having access denied and we're facing bureaucratic impediments. Even our aid workers themselves have to be relocated because of the insecurity of escalating tensions or the directives that we get from authorities.

Despite this, we're doing everything we can, but because of this, we are calling on all parties to the conflict to end violations against aid workers. Also, they must end violations against children. All parties must adhere to international human rights and humanitarian law and ensure that civilians, particularly children, are protected from harm.

We're seeing that the child protection networks are under strain. We're seeing girls and women who are highly vulnerable to sexual violence and rape, and it's being perpetrated by all parties to the conflict. We've also seen that schools and hospitals have come under attack, and by all parties to the conflict. Both state and non-state armed actors are responsible for these grave violations.

We are doing what we can in this to try to reunite families. We have family tracing and reunification for unaccompanied and separated children. We also provide them with psychosocial support.

We also know that more than 17,000 children remain associated with armed groups. We are working with the warring parties to prevent the recruitment of children into these armed groups, and despite commitments by both the government and opposition forces to end and prevent the use of children in the conflict, the number of children who are involved in the conflict continues to rise.

At UNICEF, we've been able to help more than 19,000 children be released from these armed groups, and they're in the process of being reintegrated into society. We are providing those children with livelihoods and education opportunities to help them reintegrate back into their communities, but many of those children have missed years of school. Many of them have suffered physical, emotional, social, and psychological abuse. Returning them to their communities and to their families is difficult, and it is the main priority.

Another human rights issue of great concern to us is that of gender-based violence. Gender-based violence has been greatly intensified by the current crisis, and is being perpetrated by all parties to the conflict. To prevent gender-based violence and support survivors, UNICEF works to train doctors, health workers, and social workers so that they can respond to the needs of survivors.

In the states of Central Equatoria and Unity, we've reached close to 19,000 women, girls, boys, and men with gender-based violence response and prevention messages, referrals, and response services. In Juba, in collaboration with humanitarian partners, we have been working to train humanitarian workers in gender-based violence risk mitigation, and to improve security for women and girls inside and outside of the IDP camps.

In other parts of the country, including Bor and Jonglei, UNICEF is supporting gender violence reduction through community engagement, by training groups of community decision-makers, both men and women, to address harmful social norms and to promote positive change.

This conflict, right now, makes South Sudan the worst place in the world to be a child. Both the humanitarian and the human rights situations are horrific, and we at UNICEF are doing everything we can to try to provide some relief to the suffering for those children and families.

Thank you for the part that Canada is playing to try to make positive change in this desperate country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, Mr. Morley.

We're going to move right to Mr. Pedneault.

Please begin your testimony.

[Jonathan Pedneault, Researcher, Africa Division, Human Rights Watch]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I have just returned from South Sudan a few days ago. I've had the chance to spend three weeks in the field interviewing people with disabilities and elderly people in IDP locations located in Unity state, but also in Malakal and in Juba. This was my sixth trip to South Sudan since I began my work with Human Rights Watch early in 2016. As you probably know, we have been documenting the conflict and the human rights violations that have been taking place in the country since the beginning of the war in December 2013.

As you know, this began as a political conflict between President Kiir, and then vice-president Riek Machar, and quickly escalated to an ethnic conflict with fighting moving north to the Greater Upper Nile region, which used to comprise the former states of Upper Nile, Jonglei, and Unity. What we saw in 2014 was extreme violence on the part of both perpetrators. You clearly had patterns of conventional warfare, with towns being taken over by soldiers and then by opposition fighters, and depending on who would be in control of those towns you would find various ethnicities being targeted as a result. That led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people to POC sites, protection of civilian sites, that are found in UN-protected bases.

In the case of Malakal, for instance, a town that has changed hands a good dozen times, you would see various influxes of people depending on who was in charge. If you had Dinka soldiers controlling the town, you would see mainly Shilluk and Nuer people fleeing to the POC sites, and the reverse was true when the town was taken over by the opposition.

In 2015, we documented horrific offences in the former state of Unity, which used to be controlled in large part by the opposition. Riek Machar, the IO leader, the opposition leader, comes from the town called Leer, which is in central Unity state, and that county is now one of the famine-afflicted counties in South Sudan. We have documented horrible cases of abuses against civilians by soldiers and government-allied militias in 2015, horrible scorched earth campaigns, with tanks and tribal militias being used to steal cattle from people, to destroy villages, destroy livelihoods in a very systematic manner, forcing the displacement of tens of thousands of people, who were then left without livelihoods. The famine that we see today is a direct result of those operations that took place in 2015, and which led to few consequences against commanders and the people responsible for these operations in the first place.

Following this horrific offensive, a peace agreement was signed, as you probably know, in August 2015. There was a power-sharing agreement, which was coupled with accountability measures, including the proposed establishment of a hybrid court that would be responsible for investigating and trying the crimes that have been committed in this conflict by the two parties. Unfortunately, as we have documented later on, the provisions of the peace agreement actually provided an incentive for new groups to appear in the Equatoria and in the western parts of the country, claiming an affiliation to the opposition, which then brought upon those regions counter-insurgencies by the government and an expansion of the human rights abuses throughout the country.

In 2016, I had the opportunity to travel to places like Yambio, and Wau and Yei, and see how the government has been waging extremely abusive counter-insurgencies in those areas, targeting youth, imprisoning them for long periods of time, torturing them in trying to obtain information about the whereabouts of the rebels, going on those road-cleaning operations around towns, destroying villages, forcing the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians who we now see crossing into Uganda at a horrendous daily rate of about 4,000 a day during a certain period.

There have been lots of cases of rapes, lots of cases of abductions, lots of cases of enforced disappearances by military and state actors. This expansion of the conflicts has been our focus since last year, and clearly this demonstrates not only that the peace agreement has failed to put human rights violations to an end, but that both parties, the opposition and the government, are still very much intent on abusing civilians as part of their strategy to win this war.

The international community has unfortunately failed at imposing an arms embargo and other punitive measures that would have sent the right signal to the government of South Sudan and to the opposition that those abuses are unacceptable. Unfortunately as a result of this failure, as you probably know, in December of last year, an attempt at passing a resolution imposing an arms embargo failed to gather enough votes, and that was seen as a clear victory by the Government of South Sudan and has emboldened perpetrators.

Now that the famine has been declared, you still have attacks on villages in Mayendit and Leer, which are the two counties that have been affected, or where the famine has been declared. I had the chance to meet with a number of civilians who fled in recent weeks from their villages. Those are people who have been fleeing their homes twice, or thrice, over the past couple of years, people who have had to walk through swamps to get to safety, people who are facing a horrendous food security situation, but on top of that are forced to do that under the bullets and with the constant threat of being either raped or killed, or seeing their children abducted by army groups.

The cynicism with which the government has responded to the famine declaration, by declaring that it would impose a $10,000 U.S. fee on humanitarians, the fact that it has continued to obstruct humanitarian access to those two famine-afflicted counties in central Unity, and the fact that its forces have continued to attack civilians and civilian goods, clearly demonstrate that in the case of South Sudan we are in the presence of a government that has repeatedly shown its lack of respect for fundamental human rights. The attitude with which the international community has been engaging and continuing to engage with the government of South Sudan—the first vice-president was recently in Germany at the Munich security forum discussing with statesmen as though he were a legitimate and democratically elected and human rights abiding—

I'm sorry. There's a light problem, apparently. Can you still see me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Don't worry; we can hear.

There you go. It's a motion sensor.

[Jonathan Pedneault]

I'm sorry. I'm not used to using these facilities.

The fact that the vice-president was in Munich recently and the fact that there have been no sanctions against the main commanders and the top commanders of both the government and the opposition have unfortunately emboldened the parties in South Sudan.

As much as money can be spent on saving lives, right now all we are doing is putting a plaster on very deep wounds, wounds that date back to a lack of accountability following the independence, as well as the current lack of accountability. We are urging the Canadian government to continue to pressure other states such as the United States now, but also areas in Africa to insist on the need for the hybrid court to be put in place and investigations to begin.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much to both of you gentlemen for your disturbing but insightful testimony. I know we want to get straight to questions, because I know there will be a number of them.

We will begin with MP Anderson, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you gentlemen for being with us today.

I just wanted to follow up on the UN Security Council resolution. I'm just wondering perhaps if both of you, you and Mr. Morley, have something to say on this. I'm not sure.

Mr. Pedneault, what needs to happen for that resolution to pass, or do you think it is possible to get a resolution like that passed at the UN at this point?

[Jonathan Pedneault]

The UN unfortunately has lost a lot of its credibility in the eyes of a lot of the actors on the ground. Its failure to pass the arms embargo despite hanging this threat over the heads of all the parties for a period of time has emboldened perpetrators.

For UNMISS, under the new leadership that's been assumed by David Shearer, there is a need now to have a more outward-looking posture. There's a need for the mission to be more assertive in protecting its mandate and enforcing its mandate, but also in showing its presence in areas that are less protected by international presence. As you probably know, the UN has been concentrating its presence in a number of places. Its patrolling has been consistently hampered by government troops and opposition fighters. The mission needs to be more assertive in protecting civilians and to show force when needed. It has the mandate to do that and it should probably make use of it when need be.

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

Do you have any thoughts on why they're not doing that?

[Jonathan Pedneault]

I think the mission has been stuck in a mode of trying to create a working relationship with a government that had no intention of working with the mission in the first place. By allowing the government to impose a number of restrictions over the years on the mission, the mission has lost its capacity to actually forge events on the ground or to try to be an actor rather than a passive reactor to events. There is a need to have a shift in the way the mission reacts to changing dynamics on the ground.

It's starting to do that. Recently we had peacekeepers rescue a number of humanitarian workers in Yei. For UN workers in Yei, that was a very good development. We need to see more of that and we need to see peacekeepers actually protecting lives more actively.

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

Mr. Morley, do you have anything to say to those questions?

[David Morley]

We also need to see that what has been happening in South Sudan has been hiding in plain sight, and that can embolden perpetrators. I think that events like this and the interest that the Canadian government shows.... I think the declaration of the famine raises the profile. It's not why you do it. There's a technical reason for the declaration of the famine, but as that starts to shine a light on the situation, that can, one hopes, build a greater awareness among the public and a bit more political pressure so that something can happen. Otherwise, as Monsieur Pedneault has been saying, it will go on because nobody from the outside is choosing to look.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Pedneault, you talked about documenting and preserving evidence. In each of these situations that we examine it's always a critical component, but I'm just wondering if you are satisfied that you are doing that at an adequate level. Do you see others doing that as well, and is it going to be enough when this is over to be able to use that material?

[Jonathan Pedneault]

Clearly, we do not preserve evidence. We collect evidence through testimony. We're not an investigating body of the likes of the commission for human rights. As you may have seen, the UN Commission on Human Rights was renewed in Geneva. There is a commission that was established last year to look at mechanisms for accountability in the context of South Sudan, with three commissioners. We're pleased to see that the commission was renewed with an extended mandate. I think the vote is actually happening today, but we're quite hopeful that the commission will be provided with additional resources to do just that, to investigate and preserve evidence.

Now what we need is not only for that to happen but also for those who are documenting those human rights abuses to be more vocal about it. The mission of the United Nations in South Sudan has a human rights division, a human rights component, with a lot of investigators doing exactly that. Unfortunately they have not been publishing their findings too much through fear of alienating the Government of South Sudan, and that's a dynamic that needs to change once again.

We're hopeful for that evidence and that testimony to eventually perhaps be used in the courts, if the hybrid court ever sees the light of day.

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

I'm not sure I have much time left.

We've heard from several witnesses that basically the famine is man-made. It has been created by the conditions on the ground. As you see this famine developing, are regional powers playing a positive or a negative role in being able to respond to it and deal with it? What are we going to be looking at six months from now in terms of the regional powers' involvement in South Sudan?

[Jonathan Pedneault]

I think the Government of South Sudan has been quite clever in using Ethiopia and Egypt recently to avoid any consequences at the United Nations Security Council. They've found allies in both of those governments. IGAD, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, as you know, and the community of east African states have been quite active in the peace agreement and in monitoring that peace agreement.

Unfortunately, as we see right now, divergent regional interests or national interests are preventing IGAD from finding a common ground and the needed pressure to put on the Government of South Sudan to stop the abuses. As such, for now I would say that the region has not played an extremely positive role in halting those human rights violations that are sustaining this famine.

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

Mr. Morley...?

[David Morley]

No.

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

Is the famine going to be enough to bring those people together to realize that something needs to be done here or not?

[Jonathan Pedneault]

Without external pressure from states such as Canada, I don't think that will be the case.

[David Morley]

I think that is true, the declaration of the famine. We've been talking about a pre-famine as well, to try to raise awareness. If it gets worse, I think it's true that we're going to need broader outside support to make the difference that's needed in South Sudan.

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

It's usually those pictures that we see before western governments really get interested and involved in these kinds of issues, so hopefully that doesn't come about.

[David Morley]

That's true. We saw it in the last famine in the Horn of Africa, where there wasn't as much involvement until we saw some of those horrific photographs. We're trying to make sure we don't get that far on a broad scale, but it's difficult.

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

Thank you.