Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 24th, 2023

[Soomaya Javadi]

I totally agree with Mr. Stanton. If you look at the things that they do—for example, in recent years when they have attacked a maternity hospital to kill newborns or to kill women, pregnant women about to give birth, their intent has been to make Hazara people extinct, and that amounts to genocide.

It doesn't matter if it is recent years, 1991 to 1993, or a hundred years ago. The point is that they do not stop. They are not stopping.

Thank you.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

How important do you think it is for Canada to recognize as such the genocide committed between 1891 and 1893, which you've just mentioned? If Canada, which is a major power, recognized this genocide, what would that mean for the community?

[Dr. Gregory Stanton]

That's very good, because Canada is an important power. In fact, I believe Canada has taken leadership of the world in human rights. I'm sorry to have to say that, with what has happened in the U.S.

However, it would make a difference if Canada recognized that genocide and recognized the ongoing genocide, which we defined as a “genocide by attrition”. In other words, you don't have to do all the killing in just a few years. You can have it going on for a hundred years, and that's what's happened.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Sultani, why do you think that Canada hasn't yet recognized what's happening there as genocide?

[Zaman Sultani]

As Mr. Stanton has rightly said, Canada is an important country. It's a powerful country, and it plays a crucial role in recognizing the atrocities that the Hazaras have faced and still face in Afghanistan, particularly in viewing that those who massacred Hazaras—if not all of them, most of them—are still in power, right in the Taliban.

In Mazar, they specifically targeted Hazaras for being Hazara. In part, there were some military people killed, but they targeted Hazara civilians only for being Hazaras. There were plenty of raids before that. Those Taliban who were in power at that time are still ruling the country.

This gives huge hope to the victims and to the people—not only Hazaras but others in Afghanistan—that justice can come at some point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Sultani. You'll have time in the second round for more explanation.

Now I would like to invite Ms. McPherson to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today. This is very difficult testimony to hear and, I can only imagine, extraordinarily difficult testimony to give.

I also want—and I mentioned this to other members of the Afghan community who testified before this committee—to give my sympathy to all those who are suffering because of the recent earthquakes in the region. We know the need to get development aid and humanitarian aid there is very pressing.

I want to start with Ms. Javadi, if I can.

You spoke about the need for acknowledgement and about justice being one of the key pieces that you'd like to see action on, but you also spoke about being in Saskatoon, I believe. You travelled through Pakistan to come to Canada.

We are trying to make sure that the government allows more folks who are fleeing violence, particularly the Hazaras and members of Parliament—those who are most vulnerable—to come. Could you talk a bit about the challenges you faced in coming to Canada and finding your way here through Pakistan?

[Soomaya Javadi]

Thank you for your question.

I think a big problem for Hazara people in Afghanistan is that they don't have access to foreign humanitarian aid because Hazaras are excluded from the political system and the government. They weren't in high positions in the government. They didn't have connections to foreign countries. If they weren't in very high positions, they didn't have enough authority. These things make Hazara people more isolated.

The way I found my way to Canada.... It was just a miracle and I was lucky. I am here, and many people who may be worthier than I am and who are at risk as well are not. It's just that I was lucky.

I know Hazara people inside Afghanistan are isolated. They don't have enough connections. They don't even have enough money in comparison to other ethnicities. All of these things make it harder for them to find their way out.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I could say that we're lucky you are here. We are glad you are here.

Mr. Stanton, I might ask you the next question.

You made it very clear that, in your opinion, genocide is happening right now. We've been talking about people leaving Afghanistan, the Hazaras leaving Afghanistan and fleeing their communities, and what the Taliban has done to make that happen. We know that forced displacement is one of those pieces of how we define genocide. It's in article 7 of the Rome Statute of the ICC.

Can you talk a bit about how the forced displacement of the Hazaras is contributing to your interpretation of a genocide in Afghanistan?

[Dr. Gregory Stanton]

Sure. As opposed to some lawyers who would like to think that forced displacement and genocide cannot be done together, we think they're almost always done together. In other words, forced displacement is not only a sign of genocide.... What's happening is that people are being terrified and terrorized to leave a country. Part of that is the terror of genocidal massacres. These genocidal massacres—which are genocide—are a way by which the Taliban and ISKP have, in fact, forced a lot of Afghans to leave.

In other words, these crimes are connected. One is a crime against humanity, as you know. The other is genocide, which is really also a crime against humanity.

Our definition of genocide in the genocide convention includes creating conditions of life calculated to destroy the group in whole or in part. That's why it's a genocide.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Stanton.

Thank you, Ms. McPherson.

Now I would like to start with round number two.

I would like to invite Mr. Ali Ehsassi to take the floor for four minutes.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Allow me to start off by thanking the three witnesses, Ms. Javadi, Mr. Sultani and Mr. Stanton, for their really powerful testimony.

On this committee, I think we can all agree that the discrimination that Hazaras have been facing has been long-standing and it keeps getting worse. You have spoken about the terror campaigns against the Hazara in Afghanistan. You have spoken about the confiscation of land. Thank you for all of that.

I will keep my questions very brief because we only have four minutes.

Ms. Javadi, at one point in your testimony, you suggested that humanitarian aid being sent to Afghanistan is not reaching the Hazara community. Do you have any recommendations on that particular front, so that we can ensure that it is being divvied up on an equitable basis and reaching the Hazara community as well?

[Soomaya Javadi]

Thank you for your question.

I know it's not reaching the Hazara communities because I hear from my people. I know that humanitarian aid organizations use the Taliban's help to distribute their aid. That's not a good way to do it. I'm not an expert on this, but I suggest, if possible, using the help of local people to distribute the aid. That's a way to do it.

I would like to invite other witnesses to give their suggestions.

[Dr. Gregory Stanton]

I'll just say one thing.

When the UNAMA mandate—the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan—was up for renewal this past spring, we actually worked with the World Hazara Council to draft a new resolution to renew UNAMA's mandate. However, in the UN Security Council for that the pen was held by a Sunni Muslim country, so the State Department decided that a technical rollover of that mandate was what was needed.

However—and this is very unusual—on the same day, the UN Security Council also authorized, in resolution 2679, an independent assessment, essentially, by a human rights expert, which will be ongoing. It will require this human rights person to give a report every three months. That's how serious things are.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Stanton. I was talking about the distribution of humanitarian aid on behalf of the international community.

I do have one other question for you, Mr. Stanton.

You suggested that the UN system unfortunately overlooks the fact that the Hazara are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable when it comes to the resettlement of refugees. Could you expand on that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

You have 25 seconds remaining. Please be quick.

[Dr. Gregory Stanton]

As others have mentioned, UNAMA is dependent on hiring Afghans to administer its programs. Because of the political pressure from the Taliban under this current government, UNAMA has had to hire a lot of Pashtuns, who are Sunni Muslim, so the religious discrimination that is present in Afghanistan gets absorbed into the UN mission. That includes UNHCR—

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Stanton. I'm afraid I'm out of time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Ehsassi.

I would now like to invite Mr. Genuis to take the floor for four minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was very interested, Mr. Stanton, in your comments about discrimination in the UN refugee determination system.

When I was previously on the immigration committee, we did study issues of systemic racism in IRCC, the Canadian refugee determination. I think this is an underexplored area, and it's important for our policy because we often rely on the UN refugee determination system. I certainly have heard these kinds of allegations in other contexts as well, that there are certain minorities negatively impacted through the process.

I would invite you to share a little bit more on that issue and some possible solutions. Possibly Canada could try to either work outside that UN refugee determination system or push these UN bodies to make reforms, possibly to include the voices of minority communities in the determination process.

[Dr. Gregory Stanton]

Thank you. Yes, indeed.

In the UN resolution that we wrote with the World Hazara Council, we had a specific section urging the UN mission to hire people from many different ethnic groups, but, as I said, because it was a technical rollover, that wasn't included in the rollover resolution for UNAMA.

However, this is something that you can have an affect on because the independent assessment by an expert that will be ongoing can certainly be influenced by expressions from the Canadian government to report on that. We urged, in other words, UNAMA to hire people from other ethnic groups in our resolution.

It is also possible, I think, in Canada, as you have put it, to work outside the UNHCR refugee system to accept refugees who come in and are supported by church groups, by many other people, by mosques, by all kinds of people. I think that's a really good way around this problem.

We saw the same thing in Iraq. I've been to Kurdistan I don't know how many times now. The UNHCR there was also too heavily influenced by non-Kurdish people, so Christians often didn't make it through.

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

Thank you, Mr. Stanton. I think that's important testimony.

We had asked at the time for information from the government about the proportions of certain minority communities that were represented in our refugee resettlement, and we were told that those numbers weren't tracked, so we're not even assessing how we're doing in terms of being inclusive. It's a real problem that, even in refugee resettlement, we're not necessarily being inclusive of the most vulnerable in our processes.

In the 30 seconds or so I have left, Mr. Stanton, I wonder if.... You do important work at Genocide Watch. I wonder if there are any other areas in the world with genocide ongoing or with a high risk of genocide that you'd like to, in a perfunctory way, point out to the committee for possible future study.

[Dr. Gregory Stanton]

The answer is yes.

I think that south Darfur, for instance, is under a genocide right now. Hundreds of people are being killed every day. There have been thousands, in fact. In our estimate, 6,000 from the Black communities there have been killed by the Janjaweed. The Janjaweed has just been renamed Rapid Support Forces. These are the same people who committed the Darfur genocide in 2003.

I strongly hope that Canada will investigate that. I hope the UN will send in a peacekeeping force, a really well-armed peacekeeping force, or get a regional organization, such as the African Union or ECOWAS, to send in such a force to stop this genocide.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Stanton.

Mr. Trudel, you have two minutes.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you again to the witnesses.

You stated loud and clear in your answers that you recognize that there was genocide, which Canada does not yet recognize.

The subcommittee is writing its report, which could be used to lobby for Canada's recognition of this genocide. Could each of you, in 30 seconds, add anything of importance that you haven't already mentioned? They could be included in the report and help to ensure recognition of this genocide.

You can start, Dr. Stanton.