Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 12th, 2020

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

No problem.

I am wondering what kind of verification is done in terms of the distribution. We sometimes hear about food being diverted and money stolen by corrupt groups.

How do you make sure that those who are really in need receive and can use the money and, above all, the supplies?

[David Beasley]

I understand your question.

In Yemen, there's a classic example of a catastrophe, in terms of monitoring and assessment. In places where we have the authority, the independence and the neutrality to operate, we can pretty much guarantee all of our food and assistance goes to the right people. One reason we use digitization and biometrics today is so we can assure taxpayers that their money is going to the intended beneficiaries. That's why monitoring and assessments are so important, which is why Yemen is such a disaster.

The Houthis have been a disaster to work with. It's the food diversion and not giving us the access we need for monitoring and assessment. This is one of the reasons we are pushing biometrics hard in Yemen right now. I don't want to say we're at a standstill, but the next few weeks are going to be critical as we negotiate this impasse. Why do you think they don't want us to have access? Why do you think they don't want us to have the assessment? Why do you think they don't want us to have the monitoring? It's because they're diverting food aid for a war effort or the underground economy. It's just deplorable what's taking place there.

We feed about 12.8 million out of the 29 million people there. It's all commodities. We've been moving cash into the government-controlled areas in the south using biometrics and digitization, but if we can get it into the Houthi-controlled areas.... The other 16 million people are buying in the commercial market, which is very difficult. They have very limited money and commodity prices have been going up and up. If we can bring in cash and know the cash is getting into the hands of the beneficiaries, it's putting liquidity into the market. Then the commodity pricing for those who we don't support will come down, which means we can benefit all the people.

Some of these Houthis and hardliners and Ansarullah don't care one single bit about their people. There are some Houthi leaders, though, who do. We are in a fight right now with regard to this issue. In fact, the United States is talking about suspending aid—not just food aid, but all aid—into Yemen until the Houthis agree to the basic fundamental humanitarian principles.

Quite frankly, if we can't push them forward to do the right thing, you could argue we're aiding and abetting in the violation of the most fundamental humanitarian principles.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

Thirty seconds remain.

[David Beasley]

Last September, when I did a suspension in the Houthi-controlled areas, it was mean. It took about a week or two, and they came around, but it was tough. It's a hard decision to make. It is. It's hard.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

With that, we're going to turn it over to Ms. McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Beasley. It has been lovely listening to you. I'm a newly elected parliamentarian and my career prior to this was in humanitarian assistance and international development, so a lot of this is very much resonating with me.

I will encourage you to be blunt. I'm from the opposition side, so I'm allowed to be blunt, but I'm quite enjoying the fact that I now can be partisan in my efforts. I couldn't do that as an international development person.

Could you talk about what the World Food Programme needs from Canada right now? Perhaps, if you wouldn't mind, you could touch on not just the dollar number, but the funding mechanisms that we have, the length of the contracts you'd like, the leadership you'd like to see in terms of what that looks like regarding the coronavirus and other challenges that we're facing. Maybe you could tie it in a little bit with some of the things that my colleague Mr. Sweet brought up in terms of security and how that support will assist with security in different regions.

[David Beasley]

Thank you.

One of the things that helps us in long-term planning is multi-year flexible funding. As you can imagine, if you're running any kind of program anywhere and you know you only have money for a year, you wonder how you can have long-term planning. How do you develop the programs and put the people and the systems you need in place? It is with more long-term, flexible funding. Canada has been a great advocate in the UN system globally in this regard.

We break down the silos, whether for school funding, school meals for children, nutrition programs or general food distribution programs. We could always use a little bit more money in each of these categories. Canada has a very important voice to be heard because they are one of our top donors, and I think Canada is given tremendous respect around the world.

The third thing is probably more important than anything. Everybody seems to be distracted. If you turned on the news in the last two years, what was it? It was Brexit, Brexit, Brexit, Brexit, and Trump, Trump, Trump Trump. Only in the last couple of weeks has it been coronavirus, coronavirus, coronavirus, and it's still Trump, Trump, Trump. People don't know what's going on around the world, how bad the calamities and catastrophes are—what we're talking about—in the places I've mentioned.

I do believe that people in Canada care, just like people in America do, but the leaders of the free world have become so distracted with so many things. I want to tell everybody to slow down a little bit. Let's bring the leaders of power together and solve South Sudan. Let's solve Yemen. Let's solve Syria. If we could just solve two or three of those, I believe we could end hunger by 2030—I really do—but it seems like we're all taking a piecemeal approach.

Let me say this, and it's one of the things for which I've been kind of hard on our friends, including the United States and the donors. Take any country—this would be the geographical location—and the United States will come in to do a little program here; Germany will come in to do a little program there; the U.K. will do a little program over here, and Canada will.... It's all good stuff, but I think we have to come together more strategically and comprehensively.

I have been pushing that. Nations need to come together and think things through with a more comprehensive approach. Some of these nations probably need more of a Marshall plan approach, quite frankly. I've been in some of these countries, and—I don't want to say who—one of my friends at one of the agencies said proudly that they had been there for 30 years. I asked, “Are you proud of that?”

In certain contexts you do need to be in place for 30 or 40 years, but sometimes, like in a humanitarian dynamic or a development dynamic, if you're still there after 30 years, you might want to back up and consider doing something a little differently. Our goal is to put ourselves out of business so that we're no longer needed. These are fundamental questions that need to be asked.

One of the greatest problems I see in the Sahel region and some of the sub-Saharan African countries is the lack of scalability. I could show you anecdotal evidence from, for example, Niger. When we come in with food rations, rehabilitate the land, and complement that with a school meal program, holy mackerel, migration by necessity drops off the chart; the marriage rate for 12-year-olds drops off the chart; teen pregnancy drops off the chart; recruitment by ISIS drops off the chart, and conflict between the herders and the farmers drops off the chart. You can quantify each one of those economically, and when you do that, you start to see that it's a lot cheaper to come in with a comprehensive program than it is to not address the root cause.

I'll give you an analogy. I'm a country boy, and I'd say it's like being at the old home when you have four or five water lines in the ceiling that are leaking. Well, one is leaking over there, and the carpet's now getting messed up, and the furniture's ruining, and the chair's ruining. Sometimes our political leaders are all fighting over where to put the buckets. We need to get up there and fix the leaks.

We need to fix the root cause. It's a lot cheaper to address the root cause, and this is where I call upon our allies, our friends, because Canada does a fantastic job. When I meet with the leaders here, they really listen, and I think everybody's trying to adjust to a new era of conflict, destabilization and protracted dynamics with what we're facing, with new climate extremes that are quite unprecedented as well as protracted conflict with ISIS and al Qaeda and these extremist groups and non-state rebel forces that you see from country to country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

You have 30 seconds.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I have 30 seconds. I would just finish by saying thank you very much. Certainly you alluded to the 2030 agenda and the SDGs, and that's something I hope we can work together on. I hope we get there.

[David Beasley]

Yes, thank you.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I will be pushing to get a little bit more money out the door.

[David Beasley]

Well, we appreciate that more than you know. I think it's a very delicate time right now. I'm very worried about the next six months.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

With that, we'll move to Madam Vandenbeld for cinq minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much. It's good to see you once again. Thank you for your previous appearance before the committee.

I, too, before politics did a lot of work with UNDP and UN Women, and I think that what you're saying about the costs up front versus how much it costs at the end by not investing is absolutely accurate.

I'd like to focus on what you said about the second-largest cause of food insecurity, which you said was climate change. To what extent can governments like Canada help countries with mitigation and adaptation and the kinds of measures that are going to be needed? I think I saw a statistic that climate change alone could push as many as three billion people into hunger. What is it that we could be doing to help mitigate that?

[David Beasley]

We're actually looking at several hundred million people displaced over the next 30 years. I have those specific numbers in terms of our analysis with the climate extremes that are continuing to take place on a much more routine basis than they were before.

I've explained to some of my friends who have questions about the climate changing. They said that the average temperature and average rainfall didn't change in that country. I said that the average rainfall didn't change and the average temperature didn't change, but let us look at it by season. By season it did change. The average rainfall was quite different that season and the average drought was quite different that season. In certain countries it still averaged out the same. In other countries it doesn't average out.

We push several things with donor countries. One, whether it's a humanitarian dollar or a development dollar, give us the flexibility to come in and rehabilitate land to help people survive. Last year, beneficiaries rehabilitated over half a million acres of land. That means they can survive. It's really that simple.

Give us the tools and the flexibility to not just provide cash, not just to provide a commodity but also allow the people with that same dollar to leverage that dollar so they can become more food secure, more resilient and more sustainable.

The other thing—and this is a decision that's particularly going to be difficult in the next year or two—is that there's not enough money for everything right now. I think you're going to have to prioritize. Quite frankly, I'm not saying this because I'm at the World Food Programme, but food security is fundamental to every family and nation on earth.

Development dollars—we don't get a lot of development dollars. No one impacts development on food security more than we do. So, we have to get the development dollars, because we are, in my opinion.... We can scale up and I say develop, but we're not building buildings and things like that. We're talking about water systems, irrigation systems, holding ponds, reservoirs and these types of simple building blocks, but they stabilize communities where water is an issue.

Let me give you an example of something we just did in Afghanistan. In the Mazar-e Sharif area, we would historically just bring in commodities. Well, okay, great; we were keeping people alive, but were we going to do that for 50 years? So, we went to the other side and asked our donor to give us flexibility and give us the cash. We went and met with the farmers in the stable area of Afghanistan and said we would buy from them, but we needed this quality and this quantity. Well, guess what happened. They hired more workers and bought more trucks and more equipment. Then, the milling operations needed to buy more equipment, buy more trucks and hire more people. It was the same dollar. Then, we bought it from them and took that commodity over to Mazar-e Sharif where, in the valley, they have droughts and flooding from the mountains. If they have a good crop it gets wiped out by the flood or the drought.

We met with the leaders and said we would provide this food to them with these conditions. Let's rehabilitate the mountainside. We began re-landscaping the foothills, and water was diverted into holding ponds and reservoirs with diversionary canals and small dams. The water was diverted such that, when a flash flood came, it didn't wipe out the crops in the valley. Then, when there was a drought—guess what—we had irrigation lines coming from the holding ponds.

I had this tribal leader stand there and proudly say that their children are no longer leaving; their children are no longer joining the Taliban or the anti-government rebel forces. They proudly are showing their friends from other tribal areas what it means to be in a beautiful land again. It was a remarkable success story.

We're no longer needed there, or we can now move on and do something else. This is what we want to do more of, because it really dramatically dynamically changes the fate of an area.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

You have two more minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I would like to go into something that you started talking about in terms of gender. You said that when you give money to the women, they reinvest that into the community and into the children. You used the term “leverage that dollar”. When women are part of the design, the development and implementation of programs—not just recipients—how does that then impact?

[David Beasley]

That's extremely important. When I arrived at the United Nations, one of the first meetings of the first week was one of these drawn out, long meetings, and my first experience. I actually walked out after about six hours and told the Secretary-General, “You have to fire me. I'm not sitting through any more of that kind of stuff again.” It was just talk, talk, talk. Anyway, forgive me for saying that.

The end of the meeting was on gender equality and hiring more women. I was blown away. Of course, I was new, and they were like, “Is this a Trump guy? Is he going to be...? What's he going to say? What are his views on women?” There were all these kinds of perceptions and stuff. I was just listening. I had been quiet all day because I was new at the table, but finally, I said, “I can't believe you're talking about this.” The women didn't know what to think, “What's he going to say next?” I said, “How long have you been talking about this, 20 years? Why don't you just do it? It's not that complicated. Hire more women.” Then the women were like, “Ah, he's on our side.”

The point is that in the UN and in the corporate world, they focused on hiring just one or two women at the top and totally failed to understand the impact when you hire women all throughout the organization for a variety of reasons. The most important reason, as to your question, is that, when women are in the designing of systems, women have a different perspective, and it allows men and women to come up with better solutions, because women see things that men just don't. In the World Food Programme, we're more productive and we're more effective when women are in that decision-making process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

Thank you, Mr. Beasley. Unfortunately, we have to go to Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

What do you mean, “Unfortunately, we have to go to Mr. Genuis”?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

It was a great topic, but....

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

It's great to have you here with us today. I appreciate your comments. I want to ask two specific questions to jump off things you said.

The first is, can you dig in a bit further on the situation in Sudan? There's an amazing political transformation happening, a great source of potential hope, but obviously there are a lot of challenges ahead. What's your perception of what's happening there on the ground and the next steps for the future? It seems that a lot of this political change has happened with very little western engagement. What can we do to be more supportive of the forces of change and democracy there?

[David Beasley]

I've been in Sudan and South Sudan at least three times in the last couple of months, and it is a very delicate situation, but a remarkable opportunity. I contact Hamdok through WhatsApp literally several times per week to help him and leadership work through a maze of issues that have compounded the future because of the past. The state-sponsored terrorism list, in my opinion, has to be resolved quickly, immediately.

There are a lot of people around the world, especially in Washington, who wanted to think that this new government is nothing but the old government in new clothing. I can tell you quite frankly it's the farthest thing from reality. Hamdok is truly committed to the future.

I've met with Hemeti and Burhan on many occasions and had very frank, hard conversations with the doors shut and everybody out and literally getting down to the past, present and future. The government there has given us access and support in every location where we did not have it before, so we've been bringing people together. We brought Abdelaziz, the leader of the SPLM-N down in the south, and Hamdok together. We used that WFP equipment and helicopters and brought them together. People said that just can't happen. I have found when you don't negotiate through the press but bring people heart to heart.... It's just a great tradition when people will sit down heart to heart and face to face and run out everybody; it's amazing what happens.

The progress has been remarkable, but the extremist groups wait. They're waiting for the magic moments to come in, and if the west—I say the west, but if international donors, and they'll be primarily the west—do not come in with safety net programs.... We're there now in a substantive way, but you've got fuel subsidies, bread subsidies, and when the IMF....

First, we have to get the state-sponsored terrorism list off and that needs to happen quickly. I can spend a good bit of time talking about that, because I've been spending a lot of time in Washington meeting with staffers, meeting with senators, meeting at the White House, meeting with Pompeo and the state department going through these issues. I think many of those who were more hesitant to think there was a bright future have now come into the reality that this is a great opportunity.

The amount of finances that are going to be required will be significant, because you've got fuel lines now. I talked to Mohammed bin Zayed, the head of the UAE, about this last week. We talked for quite some time. I think you will see the gulf countries step up. One of the things I've been pushing is that the gulf countries must step up more, particularly in their part of the world, and not depend just on the western dollar. There are too many problems for just the West alone.

I could keep going on on this issue.