Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2024

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

They're mostly undocumented migrants, they're migrants who shouldn't be in these countries and that makes these people vulnerable.

As you said, it's a context where human rights can easily be trampled on, such as the right to security of the person, the right to work and the right to education. Children don't go to school in transit countries, for example.

This is a situation that requires a hemisphere-wide response. We need to work together to find a solution, because this is happening in our backyard. Canada is doing very little to try and solve this problem.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

In your opinion, are there any countries with which it is currently easier to collaborate in terms of protecting migrants' rights? I'm actually talking about this route from South America up north.

In your opinion, is it easier to collaborate with Colombia or Costa Rica?

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Please give a brief answer, because we have exceeded the time allotted to the member.

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

There are leaders, like Colombia, which has been working on internal displacement for a long time, but also receives people from Venezuela.

I think these are good examples from which we can learn.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

Mr. Johns, you have the floor for seven minutes, please.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witness for her wonderful testimony so far and the work she's doing.

Ms. Clark-Kazak, an education report in 2024 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that almost half of the world's 14.8 million school-aged refugee children are not in school, which is obviously deeply alarming.

We know education is a fundamental human right and that quality education is a powerful tool in shaping positive outcomes for children. What can the international community do to speed up progress in increasing enrolment in education for child refugees? Specifically, how can Canada help lead?

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

It's really important to recognize, as I mentioned earlier, that when we're talking about the right to education, more than 70% of the world's displacement is in countries of the global south, which are already very poor. One way in which Canada can contribute is by financing primary, secondary and tertiary education in those contexts.

In cases that I've been in—in Uganda, for example—education is provided for both locals and refugees in the same schools. This is a good way of helping bring together the development and the humanitarian sides so that both nationals and refugees are benefiting. This is because in some cases, if you provide better education to refugees, it causes problems with local populations, who are also poor and don't have access to education. Resources are one thing.

I would also clarify for the committee that in many contexts, as you probably already know, secondary school is not free. Even local children are not able to access secondary education, so financial support would be one thing.

The second thing I would say is that when we look at the stats on children in school in displacement contexts, we see a disparity between boys and girls. Girls are not going to school because they're expected to have domestic and caregiving responsibilities, but also because there's widespread sexual violence in schools, including by educators. This is an area where there needs to be more advocacy and more sensitization around the rights of women and girls in these contexts.

I would say those are two practical ways in which Canada could encourage more education within these contexts.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Thank you.

At the last meeting of this subcommittee, we received an update on the situation in Sudan. One of the witnesses spoke about the difference in Canada's response to the conflicts in Sudan and Ukraine in terms of how we accept people who are being displaced.

Mr. Diamond from the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights noted that not a single Sudanese displaced person had been resettled since the launch of a financially burdensome program, capped at 3,250 people, that was released in February by the government. He compared that with the approval of nearly one million people under an emergency family reunification program for Ukraine that had no eligibility or financial requirements. Mr. Diamond stated, “This widely disparate response to the war in Ukraine and to Sudan is a scandal of the first order and can only be explained by a discriminatory and, frankly, racist implementation of policy towards communities fleeing conflict.”

Do you believe there is systemic racism in Canada's refugee intake policies? If so, what can be done to ensure that Canada implements inclusive policies in this area?

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

Yes, there is definitely systemic discrimination within the context. The previous speaker also referred to this in terms of the disparities in the responses.

I think we also need to recognize, however, that the program for Ukrainians was a temporary visa program. It was not a permanent resettlement program. The Sudanese program is a resettlement program. It's a program that's bringing people here permanently.

That said, I agree with you that it's unfair to place the burden on families who already are working, in many cases, lower-wage jobs in Canada and then need to find the funds in order to rescue their families to come over from Sudan. We should also be opening up a government-assisted refugee program. We should also be considering temporary visas, as we did for Ukrainians, for other displacement contexts. Currently, the only other context where we're considering this is Gaza.

We can think about other protracted conflicts in other places and we could be thinking about a humanitarian visa, which would allow more people to come to Canada temporarily, as we did with the Ukrainians.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Can you comment on the relationship between climate change, economic inequality, migration and the gaps in existing international instruments? What should the international community do to fill these gaps in the years ahead, especially as we see a change when it comes to climate and we see the increase of undocumented migrants and displaced peoples? Can you comment on that?

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

Climate change is definitely a huge gap in the current human rights legislation.

As I mentioned earlier, the refugee convention does not recognize climate refugees. It doesn't recognize people being displaced for climate reasons. The guidelines on internal displacement do, but again, those are for citizens who would already have the right to be in those countries anyway, so this is a huge gap.

I believe we had a missed opportunity in the global compact on refugees. This was a time when the international community could have come together and could have decided to include climate as part of the issues, but it was not addressed. I think the reason was that countries are worried about the number of people who will then have claims to come to Canada and other places on the basis of widening a definition of protection in this context.

But climate change is here. It's real. I mean, you're in B.C.; we just saw the scenes happening there. We're affected in Canada, especially in indigenous communities, but we also will be affected by people who are fleeing this displacement elsewhere. I think we need to seriously come up with some kind of plan, globally but also nationally, to address it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Johns.

I invite Mr. Ali Ehsassi to take the floor for two minutes, please.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Allow me to start off by thanking you, Professor Clark-Kazak, for your testimony today.

I want to follow up, if I may, on the questions that concern children.

We all appreciate full well that 50% of the world's refugees are children. You touched on and highlighted the challenge of the lack of birth registries. Just so we can grapple with this challenge of when there is no birth registry and a child refugee has no papers, could you share with us both the short-term and long-term challenges and implications? You did touch on statelessness, which is very important, but could you give us a better sense of how that impacts individuals who are refugees?

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

Birth registration basically provides documentation of you as a legal person, so it has implications not only in the early stages but also for the rest of your life. For example, it prevents people from registering for school, getting access to health care and registering to vote, so civil and political rights as well as economic and social rights are all implicated in this.

I would also say that in the resettlement context, if a child does not have a birth certificate, then UNHCR basically has to try to approximate a birth date. While this is helpful because it gives people the ability to be resettled, the problem is that often these birth dates can be off, because you have to rely on people remembering some kind of significant political or natural event, for example. This can have consequences for children being placed in the wrong grade.

At the other end of the spectrum, it has consequences for when people are eligible to retire because, in our society, everything is based on chronological age. If that chronological age is off by a few years, it can have repercussions across the life-course.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ehsassi.

Mr. Majumdar, you have the floor for two minutes, please.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you very much for your insightful perspectives, especially when it comes to perhaps uneven assistance for various refugee crises or forced displaced crises around the world.

When you think about the scale of internal displacement we're seeing in Sudan, which is arguably the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world today, you wonder why—I would wonder why—Canada has not distinguished itself in terms of how we assist those people who are dealing with forced migration issues.

Why do you think there's less attention on how we lead on issues as significant as Sudan than there is on other issues?

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

I think there's a constellation of factors. First of all, it's domestic politics.

In the case of Ukraine, we have a large Ukrainian-Canadian constituency, the largest diaspora outside of Russia and Ukraine, so this means that there are people here who advocate and who talk to you as MPs and to other people to try to get action on the issue.

I think the second thing is foreign policy objectives. Canada will have different foreign policy objectives, and immigration is one of a suite of foreign policy objectives. Development assistance in cases of internal displacement, for example, will also be part of that package.

Third, I would say that there's a kind of fatigue, a compassion fatigue. Generally around the world, after people hear again and again of different crises, there are varying levels of public support. This is imbued, I think, with racism and with expectations of certain areas of the world. We saw this even in the news reports: People were shocked that white Ukrainians were being displaced because they looked like us, whereas in other parts of the world, there's an expectation that there will be crises.

I think this is a huge problem in terms of public education and also in terms of the media portrayals of what's happening around the world.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe, you have the floor for two minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You said earlier that the United States had not signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Do you know why they didn't?

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

It's because of family rights. They think that parents' rights will be diminished if children have them.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Has Canada signed this convention?

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

Yes. Every country has, except the United States.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

You specialize in forced migration and age discrimination.

In your opinion, why did Canada sign a safe third country agreement, i.e., an agreement on migrants, with a country that is the only one not to have signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child?

[Christina Clark-Kazak]

In the agreement with the United States, there's an exception for unaccompanied children. I think Canada could explain that it's because of this exception.

That said, this exception does not apply to other children, such as those who are with their parents. Also, one of the problems with the U.S. is that detention of migrants is much more frequent and much more severe than here.