Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 25th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you.

Now we'll continue to our final two-minute round with Ms. McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, thank you to the witnesses.

Very quickly, Ms. Deif, should Canada be selling weapons to Saudi Arabia? Does that align with a feminist foreign policy?

[Farida Deif]

No, it doesn't. We've said repeatedly that Canada should no longer sell arms to Saudi Arabia and that there should be a total boycott, given the level of humanitarian law violations committed by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini, what would a real activated feminist foreign policy do to protect the women of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Afghanistan and all around the world?

[Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini]

That's a very big question. I think the starting point, though, is what we're seeing right now with the Human Rights Council and the resolution that was passed yesterday for an investigation mechanism.

We need to make our multilateral spaces have teeth. They need to use the strength that they have to engage non-violently and shine the light in all of these places. We also need to align our policies. As my colleague said, whether it's Canada or my own country, the United Kingdom, or the United States, why are we selling arms and supporting the war in Yemen that the Saudis are waging? They are killing children and women. Why did we do Libya? Why are we not doing an investigation into how we failed in the diplomacy on Afghanistan in Doha? What we did there, we are repeating elsewhere. We are stonewalling women out of these processes.

If we want to have a feminist foreign policy in Canada, Germany and other countries, it is a bit of a reflection reflecting backwards, but it's also putting some of these principles into practice.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

To be fair, we don't have a feminist foreign policy in Canada. We have a feminist international assistance policy, which is, as you mentioned, in some spaces, but certainly not in all the spaces where it needs to be.

[Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini]

We could share a lot more with you, in terms of what your assistance has done, at least through us. The impact is profound. I'm incredibly grateful for the support, and for the trust the Canadian government has had in us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you to all the witnesses today for being here—for coming in person and by Zoom.

We're going to continue on to our next panel.

I sincerely thank everybody who came here. Ms. O'Neill, Ms. Deif and Ms. Naraghi-Anderlini, thank you all so much for being here.

We're going to suspend for a moment while we flip to our second panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

I call the meeting back to order.

Welcome, everyone, to the second panel on this International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Welcome to our study on women, in particular women in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the rights and freedoms of women globally.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here.

With us in person, we have Julia Tétrault-Provencher, legal advisor with Lawyers without Borders Canada.

Remotely, from Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, we have Meghan Doherty, who is the director of global policy and advocacy. As an individual, we have Maître Sayeh Hassan.

Thank you both for joining virtually.

We're going to start now for five minutes with Maître Tétrault-Provencher.

[Julia Tétrault-Provencher, Legal Advisor, Lawyers without Borders Canada]

Thank you very much.

Esteemed members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, let me begin by thanking you, on behalf of Lawyers without Borders Canada, or LWBC, for your interest in the rights and freedoms of women and girls around the world.

LWBC is a non-governmental international cooperation organization that, for the past 20 years, has contributed to the implementation of human rights for women and girls by strengthening access to justice and legal representation.

A number of our projects funded by Global Affairs Canada are in fact designed to fight gender-based violence, which we call GBV, to promote and protect the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls, and to protect human rights defenders.

In the countries where LWBC is active, that is, in Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo, our work with human rights defence organizations has enabled us to identify certain trends which appear to be quite widespread, bearing in mind the different contexts. I would like to address five of those trends here in the time available to me.

First, discriminatory socio-cultural standards, practices and beliefs represent considerable obstacles to access to justice for women and girls. Women and girls must be able to access effective legal services and receive multisectoral assistance suited to their needs. For example, LWBC and its partners have strengthened legal assistance and legal aid services in Mali, providing support that is sensitive to the realities of women and girls who are the victims of GBV. More than 80 women who were victims of the conflict have received legal representation before national and international bodies.

Secondly, the erosion of civic and democratic space and the rise of various forms of extremism significantly undermine the work of civil society organizations, which can no longer defend and promote the rights of women and girls. We have witnessed three types of attacks on human rights defenders: the criminalization of their activities; threats and attacks on their physical integrity and lives; and defamation and public attacks. These attacks disproportionately affect women who defend human rights.

Third, women and girls are too often excluded from decision-making circles, and their specific experiences are not considered. Yet we have found that, to ensure the continuation of the peace process, specifically as regards transitional justice, they must be involved in political life, as well as economic and social life. They must have a place at negotiation tables, as provided for in the women, peace and security program.

Fourth, we are very concerned by the growing lack of respect for the sexual and reproductive autonomy of women and girls. We have in particular witnessed governments that have tried, sometimes successfully, to criminalize access to abortion under all circumstances, which is a violation of international standards on the issue. LWBC and its partners are actively working to protect access to sexual health and reproductive services, particularly in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, by reminding the countries of their legally binding international obligations.

Finally, women and girls who are vulnerable or marginalized, including those with a disability, living in rural areas or in poverty, those from a sexual or gender diverse community, as well as women from a minority group, are more susceptible to having their rights and freedoms violated and being the victims of GBV. We have seen cases of forced sterilization, obstetric violence and forced marriage involving these persons in particular. We can no longer remain silent about the shadow pandemic and the rise in femicide committed by intimate partners or family members since the start of the COVID‑19 pandemic.

In view our work to better protect the rights of women and girls, we consider it very important to have an international legal framework that is upheld at the national level. In this regard, our first recommendation to the sub-committee is to utilize international fora to call upon countries that have not already done so to immediately ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, including Iran, and to remind those who are already signatories, including Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, of their obligations under this convention. We are also asking for a more active contribution, for international cooperation in particular, to promote assistance programs focused on access to justice for women and girls. These programs should support the protection of local organizations that defend the human rights of women and girls, as well as lawyers who specialize in GBV issues.

With these brief remarks, I wanted to provide a general overview of our experience. I will be pleased to provide further details about certain issues during the question period.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you very much, Ms. Tétrault-Provencher.

We are now going to go to Zoom. For those who are online, I am just going to give you a signal at the one-minute mark and then at the 30-second mark, and then lean in.

Without further ado, we will now go to Ms. Doherty for five minutes, please.

[Meghan Doherty, Director, Global Policy and Advocacy, Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

At this moment, we are living through concurrent health, economic, environmental and humanitarian crises. All of these have profound and differentiated gendered impacts, which are compounded by where women are socially, economically and geographically located. These impacts are undeniable and include sharply rising rates of femicide and gender-based violence, inability to access or pay for essential sexual and reproductive health services, increased unpaid care work, and more precarity, lower pay and fewer labour protections than men. These are not unfortunate and inevitable side effects of a world in turmoil, but an abject failure of human rights and those responsible for upholding them.

What makes this current moment in history particularly dangerous for women is that at the same time as these crises we are also witnessing rising anti-democratic sentiment within well-established democracies, an emergence of far-right and authoritarian regimes, an acceleration in the spread of disinformation, a deliberate erosion of trust in the institutions charged with upholding human rights norms and standards, and increased transnational organizing and funding among anti-human rights, white supremacist and anti-gender equality actors.

This confluence of events and actors has resulted in an unprecedented intensification of attacks on rights related to sexuality, gender and reproduction, those who defend them and the mechanisms we use to seek protection, remedy and accountability. This is happening online, in schools, in parliaments, in bureaucracies, in the courts and at the United Nations.

This past September, Afghan women human rights defenders addressed the UN Human Rights Council to demand that the international community act on women’s complete erasure from all aspects of public life since the Taliban took over. In Saudi Arabia, women have been sent to jail for decades under the state’s terrorism laws for tweeting. The recent protests in Iran, sparked by the killing of Gina Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for violating strict laws about what women can wear, are truly emblematic of the ways in which women’s rights and bodies are deeply tied to the nation state.

No country or region is immune, and it would be a mistake to think that violations of women's rights only happen in what we think of as repressive states. One only has to look at the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that reversed almost 40 years of federal abortion rights protections.

The question is, why do these actors target gender equality, and sexual and reproductive rights? Gender and sexuality are deeply symbolic and culturally meaningful concepts in all societies. Anti-democratic actors understand the potency of using issues that can be culturally contentious, such as abortion, trans rights, and sex ed to galvanize people to support them.

At the heart of many of these anti-rights movements is a commitment to the perpetuation of patriarchal families and systems that are hetero-normative and reproduction-oriented, and can only exist through the control of women’s bodies, sexuality and gender expression. As such, the realization of sexual and reproductive rights and gender equality is a direct challenge to autocrats and populist movements that have identified and targeted these rights as threats to their purpose. Feminist sexual and reproductive rights defenders are on the front lines of attacks against human rights and democracy and face enormous risks to their lives, livelihoods and the safety of their families.

When we are talking about access to abortion, gender-based violence or early and forced marriage, we are also talking about democracy, human rights, peacebuilding and freedom from tyranny. When we identify state and non-state actors organizing, financing and influencing democratic institutions to undermine bodily autonomy, women’s rights and the rights of LGBTQI persons, these are clear signs that democracy is under threat.

History has shown us that social justice, women’s rights and feminist movements have been at the forefront of the expansion and strengthening of human rights all over the world. Political scientists have long documented that advancement in women’s rights and democracy go hand in hand, as women’s political participation is a precondition for genuine democratic and egalitarian progress.

To turn the tide of cascading human rights violations against women, we need the strongest possible commitment to nationally driven feminist and social justice movements in all aspects of Canada's domestic and foreign policy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you, Ms. Doherty.

We're going to continue on to Ms. Hassan for five minutes, please.

[Sayeh Hassan, Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you for the opportunity to address the Subcommittee on International Human Rights on the issue of the rapidly diminishing rights of women and girls in Iran.

This is my first time appearing before the subcommittee, and it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for having me.

I would like to tell you a little bit about myself to put in context my testimony before you today. I was born in Iran in 1980, right after the revolution and after the Islamic regime hijacked the revolution and took control of the country. When I was seven years old, my parents decided to flee Iran, in part because they didn't want me and my younger sister to grow up under a repressive regime that had no respect for women's rights.

My family and I lived in Turkey for five years as refugees before we were able to come to Canada when I was 13 years old, and I'm so grateful for that difficult decision my parents had to make and so grateful for the opportunity to be living in Canada.

For the last 20 years, I have been a very vocal advocate of human rights and democracy in Iran. I started my activism during my undergraduate studies at Carleton University, where my sister and I started, to the best of my knowledge, the first Iranian student association that focused on human rights in Iran. I continued my activism after becoming a lawyer through blogging, writing articles, staying in touch with activists inside Iran, speaking to members of Parliament and speaking at various conferences both nationally and internationally.

Speaking out against the oppression of the Islamic regime is not a popular activity, and, as a result, I have been subjected to consistent backlash from supporters of the regime both in Iran and in Canada. The most noteworthy example was about 10 years ago, when the regime’s national TV put up my picture on live television. They referred to me by name, and they announced that I was an enemy of the state. I continue to watch others who are also outspoken opponents of the regime face similar threats and harassment.

However, I consider myself both privileged and fortunate because I live in Canada, where I can speak out without the fear of being arrested, tortured, raped and murdered for my opinions and beliefs. Sadly, that's not the situation for millions of Iranian women and girls who have been subjected to exactly those types of treatment for the last 40 years. It is that oppression that has motivated me to speak out against the Islamic regime whenever I’ve had the opportunity. I want to ensure that the world can and will hear the voices of millions of women and girls in Iran.

For the past two and a half months, Iranian women and girls have been able to show the entire world not only the oppression that they have been facing for the past 40 years but also that they are ready for change. They are ready for freedom, and they're willing to risk their lives to achieve that change and that freedom.

Current Iran protests, which many of us refer to as the Iran revolution, started with the murder of one young woman, Mahsa Amini, by regime agents because they didn’t like the way she was wearing her mandatory hijab.

Her murder sparked an outcry in Iran that has led to the largest protests we’ve seen in 40 years. What is so unique about these protests, besides the fact that they’re nationwide and that they've been relentless for the past two and a half months, is the fact that they’re being led by women and young girls. Elementary schoolgirls are taking off their mandatory hijabs, taking down the picture of Khamenei in their classrooms and saying no to oppression. It’s incredibly humbling for me to watch these brave young women claim what is rightfully theirs, the right to choose what they wear, what they think and how they conduct themselves. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here today to try to be their voice.

The Canadian government has condemned the regime’s brutality in the past two and a half months, and they’ve taken limited steps to sanction the Iran revolutionary corps under the immigration act. Those are very positive first steps, but there's so much more Canada can do, including listing the entirety of the Iran revolutionary corps as a terrorist organization under the Criminal Code.

I am hopeful that the Canadian government will take concrete, meaningful steps to help these brave women and girls achieve their goals of freedom and equality.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you so much.

We're going to continue on to Mr. Viersen for five minutes.

Go ahead, Mr. Viersen, please.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here.

Ms. Hassan, on your testimony around the harassment that has happened to you here in Canada, could you explain a little bit more what that looks like?

[Sayeh Hassan]

Yes. It goes back really to when I started 20 years ago, especially because at time it was not a very popular.... A lot of the harassment I've experienced has been online, which is one reason why I am no longer online. I have a very limited social media presence. It's very easy, I find, for people to attack individuals who are active online.

I've had situations where I've gone to protests and I've been followed. I've gone to events at community centres and have been followed by men in the back of the community centre until I was able to get inside or get to public transportation.

I've attended a protest with my husband at night where, when the protest was finished and we were going into the parking lot to get our car, men were following us. My husband recently received a threat online—he's an activist as well—telling him that if he continues what he's doing, they're going to come after him. The threats are not limited to women; it's men as well.

I think the Iranian Canadian community has been very vocal about the fact that there are Islamic regime elements in Canada that are threatening and harassing activists who are outspoken about the situation in Iran.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Would you say that this is connected back to the Iranian government, or is it local actors on their own?

[Sayeh Hassan]

I would certainly say that it's connected to the regime.

There's a very systematic way that the Islamic regime has been harassing and threatening activists—people who are vocal against the regime—in Canada and in other countries as well. In the U.S., there have been threats of people being kidnapped. They haven't been kidnapped, but there were reports of very outspoken activists who were going to be kidnapped, but that was stopped.

It's very common. It's the regime elements in Canada that are trying to stop activists like myself and many others from speaking out.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

It's very concerning that this is happening right here in Canada.

Is there something that the Canadian government can do to ensure that you feel safe, essentially, at home in Canada—never mind what's going on in Iran?

[Sayeh Hassan]

Part of it is that Canada, sadly, has been a safe haven for the Islamic regime and the people who support the regime. They've come here for many years. They've brought their investments and they've felt very safe and secure here. The government hasn't taken any steps to ensure that the Iranian Canadian community is protected.

I think it's great that we're having this conversation right now. This is really one of the few times that I've been able to raise this issue and feel like it is being listened to. I think this is a very positive step.

The Canadian government needs to ensure that the regime elements and sympathizers do not feel that Canada is a safe haven for them—that they can just come here, bring their money and do whatever they want to do, in terms of threatening and harassing Iranian Canadian activists, and get away with it.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Is it fairly easy to identify folks' connections IRGC, or does it take a little bit to prove that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

You have 50 seconds.

[Sayeh Hassan]

I think this something that the government will need to do, along with CSIS. It's not for me to identify who the revolutionary guards and their sympathizers are here.

I do know that a lot of them are here and they have assets that are not necessarily under their own names, but in their families' names, which is another concern. I think the government needs to look not specifically at the names of particular revolutionary guard individuals, but also their families and associates who are here and have the assets of those individuals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to Mr. Sidhu for five minutes, please.