Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on June 20th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Good afternoon.

I call to order this meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights as we continue our study on sex trafficking in South Asia.

Our only witness today, David Matas, has testified before this committee already. I know that he certainly was a frequent guest at the Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the previous Parliament. Mr. Matas is an international human rights and refugee lawyer based in Winnipeg. He was awarded the Order of Canada in 2009 for his international human rights advocacy. Within Beyond Borders ECPAT Canada, he is a member of the board of directors and also provides legal counsel to the organization.

Beyond Borders ECPAT Canada is the Canadian representative of ECPAT International, a global network of 95 organizations in 86 countries committed to ending the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Mr. Matas chaired the international meetings of ECPAT International in Bangkok in 2002 and in Rio de Janeiro in 2005 and 2008.

Once again, Mr. Matas, thank you for joining us here today. If you would begin your testimony, that would be greatly appreciated.

[David Matas, Counsel, Beyond Borders ECPAT Canada]

Thank you very much for inviting me.

ECPAT is headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand. It is committed to combatting sexual exploitation of children. The name ECPAT is an acronym and stands for the phrase End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.

In addition to the activities that you kindly mentioned, I would point out that I was also a member of the international board of directors of ECPAT from 2012 to 2014, representing North America.

The focus of ECPAT in combatting child sexual exploitation in South Asia has been to promote the participation of children. This has been done through its youth partnership project. The involvement of children in promoting respect for the rights of children and in combatting the violation of these rights is embedded in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Article 12 of the convention obligates states parties to the convention, including Canada, to:

assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.

I point out that this convention, perhaps uniquely amongst all the conventions that have been drafted for signature, has been signed by every single country in the world. The only country that hasn't signed it is Somalia because it didn't have a functioning government, but other than that, every other country has signed and ratified it except for the United States.

Article 14 of the convention obligates:

States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Article 15 of the convention obligates:

States Parties recognize the rights of the child to freedom of association and to freedom of peaceful assembly.

The youth partnership project of ECPAT is directed to child survivors of commercial sexual exploitation in South Asia. It's designed to help formerly exploited children to take the lead in the effort against sexual exploitation of children.

Some of the youth partnership projects include the following. One is training youth in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. These trained youth have set up peer support programs in schools located in high-risk areas to share information and provide individual support to prevent their peers from becoming trapped in commercial sexual exploitation.

Another project trains youth to use media and advocacy skills to reach out to local communities. Through awareness campaigns they aim to reduce the numbers of trafficked children.

A third project works with trained caregivers and local organizations to help them provide psychosocial care for child survivors.

In a fourth project, youth have worked both to improve the lives of child survivors and to persuade adults to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children. So their work isn't directed only to children but also to adults. The project engages in consultations with children about its aims and activities. Youth themselves are invited to make project proposals for microprojects. Adult youth motivators monitor and support these projects.

I can give you one example, although there are many, of one such microproject in India, a library and recreation room for girls residing at a shelter home in West Bengal, India. Many of the girls at the home had been rescued from red light areas in West Bengal. Some were victims of trafficking. This group of 32 girls were attending a mainstream government school. The girls proposed, and the project funded, a purchase of books and games for a shelter library and recreation room. The books purchased included books about human trafficking, health and hygiene, sexual abuse, as well as charts and diagrams on parts of the body. Management of the library and recreation room was the responsibility of the youth.

Here's a quote from the project proposal:

We have experienced the bitter realities of life in red light areas as victims of sexual abuse. We are therefore keen to develop our knowledge in order to help protect other children in similar situations. We would also like to use this knowledge to improve our lives.

The cost of the project was $215 U.S.

This effort to involve youth in South Asia to combat sexual exploitation has encountered some problems, so let me present to you some of the difficulties that have been encountered.

One of them was simply a difficulty in gaining access or entry to government shelter homes. There was a bureaucracy, and the process often proved to be long and arduous. A second difficulty was that concepts of youth participation were new to the region and were sometimes perceived as disruptive. Third, teaching children that they have a voice and rights can sometimes lead them to express dissatisfaction with their current environment and care, which, as you can imagine, sometimes was not well received by the host organizations.

The caregivers training project was the first time that many caregivers of child victims of sexual exploitation had ever received any type of training on this matter. This made it necessary to build a basic review of these concepts into all training activities and outreach efforts, starting from zero, which required additional time and resources. The lack of prior training motivated training participants to request additional follow-up training on basic sexual exploitation issues and principles of psychosocial rehabilitation, yet the project wasn't funded for this subsequent follow-up training.

The project team experienced difficulty identifying qualified consultants to lead the peer support and media and advocacy training, especially in Bangladesh and Nepal. Lack of understanding of concepts of peer support and media and advocacy made it necessary for ECPAT to organize “train the trainer” sessions. Yet again, this was outside of the budget that was projected for the projects. More time and resources needed to be invested to develop partnerships with smaller, local organizations.

Finally, in terms of these difficulties, an integrated network of community-based organizations working with commercial sexual exploitation of children and trafficking issues needed to be developed.

All this, and more, can be found online. Details of projects funded and their evaluation are in publicly accessible documents. The general message I would convey to the subcommittee, when recommending what can be done to combat child sexual abuse in South Asia, is to involve the children. Do not just recommend what can be done for children; recommend what can be done in partnership with children.

Those were my prepared remarks. I appreciate the committee's looking into this issue, which from my perspective is a very serious one and deserves your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, Mr. Matas.

We will move straight into questions. I believe we will begin with MP Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Matas, thank you very much. It's good to see you again.

I want to thank you as well for your ongoing work in exposing organ harvesting, and the trafficking of those organs, of the Falun Gong. If it weren't for you and David Kilgour, that might still be very much underground, still going on and proliferating. You have done great work has and I just want to thank you again for it.

You mentioned project after project. How are your projects being funded now? Are there some governments helping you with funding, philanthropists, or a combination of both?

[David Matas]

Funding is an ongoing issue, and ECPAT looks for funds every which way it can. We will take government funding. There are some NGOs that won't, but we will. In fact, there is the Swedish Sida—it has a similar-sounding name to our own CIDA—which has given a lot of money to ECPAT. There is a private organization, The Body Shop, that has given a lot of money to ECPAT. Air France has been very helpful. Of course, there have been some private individuals who have made contributions as well.

It's a constant effort, because a lot of this money is project-directed. Very often, funders like to start things in the hope that they will develop a life of their own, and of course they do in some ways. You can see that what we are doing with South Asia is trying to establish some activities that would have a life of their own, and the amount of money involved is really small. What's important is getting the thing started, but money always helps.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Just for our recommendations, has any part of Global Affairs Canada funded any of your projects?

[David Matas]

Not that I can recall, no. As I said, Sweden has been important, but I don't recall money coming from Canada. Of course, that would be welcome.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

We had some interesting witnesses before by teleconference who have been running, for lack of a better term, “rescue operations” in India. One of the witnesses—I don't recall his name readily—mentioned that he is experiencing or witnessing significant attitude changes in India now. Those crimes used to be a low priority, but now there is a change in the conscience, so to speak, of government officials and police authorities.

Do you see that happening as well?

[David Matas]

Well, I've been to India on three different trips in the last year. One of the things I noticed was that the taxis—at least some of them in New Delhi, but nowhere else in the country—have signs saying that “this taxi is safe for women.” I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign because, obviously, it bespeaks of the problem, but it also shows that there is an awareness and a willingness to confront the problem.

I would say, yes, there is an attitude shift there, but there's still a big problem.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

In the efforts you've been making and the projects you developed, it was of course interesting to see that the children whom you're inquiring with in your projects are actually helping you to build what's needed for them.

What is the percentage, or are you aware of the percentage, of female versus male children who are trafficked and exploited?

[David Matas]

I don't recall seeing that. My sense is that it's predominantly women, but I couldn't give you a percentage. A lot of the material is directed to both types of victims, but the shelters we've been working with have been, from what I recall, pretty much all women.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

It sounds like most of your efforts are for rescue, recovery, and rehabilitation.

Are you working with any of the government officials to prevent trafficking and exploitation?

[David Matas]

As I mentioned, one of our projects uses past victims to help develop peer pressure to help prevent people who otherwise might be victims falling from into victimhood. So it's a combination of both. It has both a rehabilitative effect and a preventative effect. In a sense, the people who can sometimes do the most to help prevent this are those who know and can provide warnings, who have an experiential background as well as the same age range, culture, and so on. That's something we're definitely doing by way of prevention.

There are some forms of prevention that I've been involved in with ECPAT Beyond Borders that have to do with pornography over the Internet. That's more of, I would say, a Western, Canadian technological type of problem. The problem in India manifests itself differently.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

You led right into my next question. You find that the sophistication in India is much different from that in the Western world. Are most of these girls acquired and kept locally in brothels and exploited that way, or are there large ways of transiting and moving these girls around?

[David Matas]

Well, there is a combination. One of the problems is that the mothers of many of these girls are prostitutes. There is no real support at home to prevent this sort of activity. There are other abusive situations as well. Very often, when you're dealing with girls as opposed to adults, they're typically coming from a very bad home situation.

Of course, there are commercial networks making money out of this, but they find a willing market. Part of the problem, of course, is that when you're dealing with girls or young people, they don't necessarily know what they are getting into, and they are easily misled, hoodwinked, or painted a rosy picture. There is a lot of misinformation out there, which of course the exploiters take advantage of, and a lot of the prevention is simply getting the right information out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to MP Khalid.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Matas, for coming in today.

I want to continue with Mr. Sweet's line of questioning on how these traffickers operate. Do they function like a small business where there are a number of people who have local rings where women or young people are brought into the trafficking scheme, or is it more of a bigger corporate kind of status where different countries are involved and it is a more complex network of basically acquiring the product, unfortunately, and then selling it off or using that product?

[David Matas]

Well, of course, our information comes from the people who are trafficked and then escape and get out of it, and they don't necessarily see the organization from the top. They see it from the bottom, so they'll see the people they're interacting with, and they may not necessarily see the interaction between the people they know and other people.

My sense of it is, at least from the bit I know, that it's more your first option, that there are a lot of small traffickers rather than a multinational conglomerate business, which makes it harder to combat, of course, because you can't just sort of go after one kind of mafia chief and solve the problem.

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

In terms of the people who are rescued, does law enforcement have a big role to play in that? I know India has put in human trafficking laws now. With respect to enforcement of those laws, do you think there is a positive impact that these laws are being upheld and there is a movement to eradicating sex trafficking in South Asia?

[David Matas]

With some forms of sexual abuse, the police themselves can be a problem because, for instance, if sexual abuse is in the home, sometimes the police in South Asia will say this is a family matter. When it comes to this sort of abuse, which is outside the home, it's less of a problem. There are always potentially corrupt police, but that's less of a problem.

I would say with respect to relying on the police to deal with this, obviously, they should, but I think more needs to be done than that.

One of the things we've tried to do in Canada through Beyond Borders is the man-to-man campaign where we try to get men involved, because very often there is a kind of glorification of sexual hyperactivity within the male population. So peer pressure among men, not just among youths, that this is the wrong thing to do is helpful.

That's something we've been very active in doing in Canada, trying to get high-profile male figures, role models, to sort of come out against child sexual abuse, and that hasn't been happening in India. I think that could usefully be done in India. I didn't focus on that, because that's not something we've actually been doing, as ECPAT in India, but we've been doing it in Canada and I think it's a good model for South Asia as well.

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

Thank you.

When you spoke about recommendations as to what we can do, you mentioned we should involve the children, and you spoke a little about how we can do that. What can Canada do as a country to help with involving the children into raising awareness and taking those preventive measures?

[David Matas]

Well, I don't know if you've done it yet. I only looked at a couple of your hearings, but I think one of the things you could do is maybe have witnesses who are youth representatives. That would be one form of participation.

I know both locally and internationally, we have tried to involve youth in ECPAT itself and Beyond Borders. We have had youth representatives every year as part of Beyond Borders, and Canadian youth who are part of the international youth component of ECPAT. Of course, they grow up and new ones replace them, but it might be worthwhile talking to those people about their experience in youth involvement.

When they get involved in ECPAT, there is a youth component called EICYAC. They're really looking at this at a very systemic level, and a number of the youth have addressed this issue at a conceptual policy level and it's certainly worth talking to them. When you ask about youth involvement, I think that's the first step. I think youth should be involved from the ground up. You don't sort of put them in at the end; you put them in at the beginning.

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

When it comes to issues like child marriage, how can youth be used to help raise awareness against child marriage in poverty-stricken areas where we've learned that a lot of these young women are coming from, where parents are selling them?

[David Matas]

I think it's partly just about getting the message out. Many people who have already gone through child marriages have had horrible experiences. People there can tell what's wrong with child marriages because they know from having lived them. I think that's one very useful form of information.

Where there are laws, they should be enforced. Where there are no laws, they should be enacted. Simple advocacy for change in the laws to prevent child marriage or to enforce the laws where they do exist but they're not enforced helps not only in a legal sense, but also as a form of public education because advocacy about the laws and their enforcement tells people what's wrong with these marriages.

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

Thank you.