Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on April 27th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everyone, to meeting number 17 of the House of Commons Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the subcommittee on Monday, January 26, 2026, the subcommittee is meeting as part of its study on the current situation of defenders of human rights and democracy around the world.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For those on Zoom, at the bottom of your screen you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation—floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I'll remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

I would now like to welcome the witnesses.

As an individual, I have Mozn Hassan, head of the board for Nazra for Feminist Studies. She is with us by video conference.

I also have Mr. Omaid Sharifi, president of ArtLords, also by video conference.

From Equitas international centre for human rights education, we have Madame Odette McCarthy, executive director, and Mr. Gerardo Ducos, senior manager in impact and accountability.

From Resilient Societies, we have Abdoulaye Bah, fellow, and Ghazaal Habibyar, human rights advocate.

From UN Watch, we have Hillel Neuer, executive director, also by video conference.

Welcome to you all. I would like to give every one of you five minutes for an introduction. I appeal to you to respect the time, please.

I would like to start by inviting Mozn Hassan to take the floor for five minutes.

The floor is yours, Madame Hassan.

[Mozn Hassan, Head of the Board, Nazra for Feminist Studies, As an Individual]

Thank you so much.

Chair and honourable members, thank you for this invitation.

I speak to you today as the chair of the board of Nazra for Feminist Studies and as part of a growing global ecosystem of movements, including Demos Kratos. This network connects grassroots actors, thinkers and institutions working to reimagine democracy from the ground up.

From this dual position, local and global, I want to focus on one central message: Democracy cannot be strengthened without investing in the lived realities, narratives and leadership of women and human rights defenders, especially in regions such as the Middle East and North Africa.

Too often, women and human rights defenders are engaged only at the moment of crisis, when they are imprisoned, attacked or exiled, but democracy is not built in moments of crises alone. It's built through narratives, daily resilience and lived experiences.

Women human rights defenders and minority leaders in the MENA region are mediating local conflicts, supporting displaced communities, leading economic survival initiatives and creating informal peace structures where formal ones usually fail, yet their voices remain under-represented in global policy and decision-making spaces.

Supporting them is not only about protection; it's about enabling them to shape the global understanding of democracy itself. Global networks such as Demos Kratos play a critical role in this. These networks provide protection through visibility and collective advocacy; constructive solidarity that is not symbolic but strategic and sustained; platforms that connect local realities to global policy-making; and spaces for peacebuilding, including tracks for engagement that are often overlooked. In regions affected by war and fragmentation, such networks are not optional. They are infrastructure for survival and transformation.

In the MENA region, where conflict and instability are widespread, investing in women and minorities is not a social policy choice; it's a security strategy.

From my experience, including founding one of the first feminist funds in the region, I have seen that when women and marginalized groups are resourced, they invest in civic engagement and accountability, local peacebuilding and mediation, economic resilience through entrepreneurship and social innovation, and community-based safety and protection systems.

This is what I call holistic empowerment—economic empowerment, political participation, social protection, and security and safety policies. Importantly, it requires engagement from governments, private sector actors and civil society. Peace is not negotiated only at high-level tables; it's built in communities.

Formal peace processes often exclude those most affected. Global and regional networks sustain tracks for peace efforts, create safe spaces for dialogue across divides, and ensure that women's voices and minority voices are not erased. If we don't invest in these networks, we risk building peace processes that are detached, fragile and unsustainable.

In terms of Canada's role from commitment to leadership, Canada has a strong legacy in supporting human rights and feminist approaches. I particularly welcome the appointment of a new women, peace and security ambassador. This is an important step, but this is also a moment to move further.

Canada can play a transformative role.

First, invest in global networks. Support networks such as Demos Kratos that connect local actors to global systems, enabling protection, advocacy and influence.

Second, support flexible, movement-led funding. Ensure funding reaches grassroots and feminist organizations directly, especially those led by women and minorities.

Third, elevate narratives. Use diplomatic platforms to amplify the lived realities of women and human rights defenders, not just statistics but also voices.

Fourth, bridge local to global decision-making. Facilitate pathways for defenders to engage in international negotiations, policy spaces and peace processes.

Resources are not only financial. They also include access, legitimacy and visibility.

In regions like the Middle East and North Africa, where war and instability are shaping everyday life, peace will not come only from agreements between states. It will come from people, communities and networks that continue to hold societies together.

If we want to have a sustainable democracy, we must invest in those who are already practising it under the most difficult conditions.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Madame Hassan. The time was well respected.

Now I would like to invite Mr. Omaid Sharifi to take the floor for five minutes.

[Omaid Sharifi, President, ArtLords, As an Individual]

Honourable Chair and distinguished members of the subcommittee, friends and colleagues, thank you for this opportunity.

On August 15, 2021, my team and I were painting a mural on the walls of Kabul's governor's office when the Taliban entered the capital. Some of those colleagues, after years of waiting, have finally found refuge in Canada, which I'm very grateful for.

In the three weeks that followed, before the Taliban had even announced the government, they painted over more than 2,000 murals that ArtLords had created across Afghanistan over the previous seven years. Seven years of work was erased in three weeks.

It was deliberate. They were dragging Afghanistan and 20 years of democracy and development back into the dark. I am an artivist and the president of ArtLords, a movement that began on the walls of Kabul and that has since worked with communities in more than 20 countries to reclaim public space, defend dignity and amplify voices through art.

I also speak to you as someone who has witnessed first-hand what happens when democracy collapses. The Taliban did not only dismantle institutions—they erased voices. Artists, journalists and civil society leaders were silenced, displaced or forced into hiding.

This is not an Afghan story. It is part of a global pattern.

Authoritarian regimes are no longer operating in isolation. They share surveillance tools, coordinate across borders to silence dissidents in exile and learn from one another faster than democracies do. Meanwhile, those defending democracy remain fragmented, underfunded and at risk.

The world order itself is shifting. The assumptions that once anchored global stability are no longer certain, and middle powers like Canada are being asked to lead in new ways. This moment requires more than reaffirming values. It requires rethinking how we support those on the front lines.

From our experience, I would offer three reflections.

First, human rights defenders are not beneficiaries. They are partners. What we too often see instead is short-term project funding that prioritizes compliance over impact and creates distance between those designing solutions and those living the reality. The most effective responses we have often witnessed are locally led, trust-based and flexible. They invest in people, not just projects.

Second, protection must go beyond emergency response. For many artists and activists, the threat is not a single moment of crisis. It's constant. My colleagues who eventually reached Canada needed far more than a flight. They needed legal status, time to rebuild, mental health support after years of trauma and the means to keep working. For an artivist, the silence after evacuation can become its own form of erasure. Too often, international protection systems end at the airport. If we protect individuals but fail to sustain their ecosystems, we lose the very movements we aim to support.

Third, culture and storytelling are not secondary. They are central to democratic resilience. Authoritarian systems understand the power of narrative. That's why they target artists first. Through our work, we have seen how art creates space in which dialogue becomes possible, dignity is restored and communities begin to imagine alternatives again. If democracy is to be defended, it must be felt, seen and experienced—and not just legislated.

In this context, Canada has a unique opportunity. Canada's strength lies in its credibility, its diversity and its ability to bridge the global north and global south.

As is highlighted in the brief submitted to this subcommittee, Canada can lead not only by imposing models but also by convening, connecting and enabling partnerships rooted in mutual respect and shared learning.

I would encourage three areas of action.

The first is to expand long-term flexible funding mechanisms, modelled on instruments like the Equality Fund and Lifeline, which reach grassroots actors directly, with timelines measured in years, not just months.

The second is to build a Canadian rapid response capacity for human rights defenders under threat, combining risk analysis, legal pathways, digital security and trusted partners on the ground and deployable in days, not months.

The third is to create standing spaces in which artists, activists and policy-makers collaborate as equals, bringing frontline defenders into the design of the policies meant to protect them, not only into their delivery. Ultimately, democracy is defended not only in parliaments: It is defended in classrooms, in communities and on the walls of cities where people still choose to speak, even when it's dangerous.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Sharifi.

Now I would like to invite Madame Odette McCarthy to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Odette McCarthy, Executive Director, Equitas]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee.

Gerardo and I are here today as conduits and witnesses of what defenders tell us in their own words and in data. We thank you for the opportunity at a moment when the questions you're studying carry real stakes.

Democracy worldwide is under growing pressure. No country can take its resilience for granted, according to the 2026 V-Dem democracy report. Recently, Prime Minister Carney acknowledged what communities have long known: Human rights commitments are not applied consistently, enforcement is selective and accountability is uneven.

That raises a question: Why continue to champion human rights in such a weakened system?

The answer is that abandoning the framework would mean losing the only universally agreed upon set of principles that build stronger, more cohesive communities and countries. In moments of fragility, the task is not to discard the system but to strengthen and reform it, keeping what remains essential to its purpose. It's in this context that building up informed, connected and rights-aware citizens is essential. As our two peers have spoken to today, democratic resilience depends not only on institutions but on the people who claim their rights.

For nearly 60 years, Equitas has worked in Canada and globally to strengthen leaders and organizations. In the past 14 months, Equitas trained over 150 human rights defenders from 40 different countries. Nearly one in three faced threats, surveillance, physical violence or the targeting of their families. Not a single one of them stopped working, but when those defenders needed protection, 60% of them turned to a trusted peer. Only 27% reported to police, and nearly half never used a formal channel at all.

We're often asked what the connection is between democracy and human rights. For many communities, both concepts feel abstract and distant from local realities. At their very core, human rights are the values and principles that protect human dignity, and democracy is a system that gives those values effect in public life through participation, accountability and the power to shape the rules that govern. A healthy democracy requires meaningful, safe and equal participation. When rights are weakened, democracy weakens, and when marginalized communities are excluded, systems fail.

At very key moments, Canada has demonstrated bold international leadership, from its contribution to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—with Canadian John Humphrey as a co-author—to advancing the global land mines ban in the 1990s and supporting efforts to end apartheid in the 1980s. Looking back, these efforts reflect a consistent pattern: When Canada leads, it helps shape global norms around dignity, equality, justice and accountability.

What if Canada acts now so that 10 years from today, it's recognized not only for its principles but for how it supported and connected human rights and democracy defenders?

Gerardo will continue.

[Gerardo Ducos, Senior Manager, Impact and Accountability, Equitas]

Our three recommendations anchored in practice, evidence and the testimony of thousands of human rights and democracy defenders are a pathway to reposition human rights and democracy support as a strategic priority across Canadian foreign policy.

First, strengthen support for human rights and democracy defenders and organizations globally. Defenders are not failing, they are adapting. Our data further shows that those who faced threats, harassment, or intimidation did not retreat. On the contrary, they deepened their community engagement. They led more types of initiatives. They built more partnerships. They reached more people. Risk, for many defenders, became a catalyst, not a deterrent. We recommend sustaining their work by resourcing the peer networks, psychological support and rapid response infrastructure that defenders have already built. These informal networks are often the first line of protection.

Second, essential support for human rights education is needed. Canada can serve as a constructive model by supporting individuals and human rights organizations through human rights education now and even more so if it joins the Human Rights Council in 2027.

That support allows people to understand and advocate for their rights, including the democratic right to be heard and to participate in governance. It also allows them to acquire the skills to recognize and challenge systems of oppression, discrimination and abuse of power; to build connections and solidarity networks to act collectively and protect one another; and to rely on national and international human rights norms to hold decision makers constructively accountable.

Third, gender equality must be seen as a cornerstone of Canada's credibility. Gender equality is not an abstract principle; it is the foundation of stable, inclusive societies. As such, it must continue to be part of Canada's foreign policy. It is a lever for promoting democracy.

Canada can lead by supporting spaces that convene human rights and democracy defenders from different regions. This can be achieved in practical terms by prioritizing multi-year funding and recognizing organizations and networks that are built as strategic civil infrastructure. These networks reduce isolation and amplify impact.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Ducos.

I now invite Ghazaal Habibyar and Abdoulaye Bah to take the floor for five minutes.

I believe you are going to share the time, so each of you can take the floor for two and a half minutes, please.

[Ghazaal Habibyar, Human Rights Advocate, Resilient Societies]

Honourable Chair and distinguished members, thank you for this opportunity.

My name is Ghazaal Habibyar and I'm originally from Afghanistan. I have worked on governance, development and women's rights issues. Today, I represent Resilient Societies, a Canadian-based organization that supports human rights defenders in Canada and abroad.

I also speak from personal experience. I was a young girl during the first Taliban regime in 1996 when education was banned and we were denied basic freedoms. Despite those barriers, I also served as one of four women in the Afghan cabinet, as acting minister of mines and petroleum. Today, I live in exile because of my work in government and advocacy for women's rights and democracy.

I'll focus my remarks today specifically on challenges facing women human rights defenders.

In Afghanistan today, Afghan women and women human rights defenders face what can only be described as gender apartheid. Their challenges are real.

First, they face acute personal risk. Women defenders face arrest, intimidation, disappearances and targeted harassment, with no protection or access to justice.

Second is the dismantling of civic spaces. Women are excluded from public life and girls are denied education, cutting off both current participation and future leadership.

Third, as civic spaces close, recording abuse and violence becomes very dangerous—yet is very critical.

Canada's support for the Afghan women's case, under CEDAW, has been crucial. We hope to see it sustained and extended to similar contexts.

Across Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar, Iran, Syria and many other countries, we see a clear pattern. Repressive systems are not only targeting political opposition; they are systematically targeting women who lead resistance. This reflects a broader global rollback of rights, in which repression is increasingly normalized and has become transnational, unfortunately.

Last week, Ottawa hosted nearly 400 leaders at the inaugural Ottawa Civic Space Summit, highlighting that protecting civic space and amplifying frontline voices is key to resilience in Canada and globally.

Canada can lead by strengthening support, especially for women human rights defenders, through protection, documentation and pathways of continued civic engagement.

Thank you very much.

I look forward to your questions.

[Abdoulaye Bah, Human Rights Advocate, Resilient Societies]

Thank you, colleague.

Mr. Chair, members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

My colleague began by addressing the situation of human rights defenders outside the country. I would now like to focus on those inside the country or who have been asylum seekers.

My name is Abdoulaye Bah. I am speaking to you as someone directly affected by the reality you are examining. I am a human rights defender from Mali. I came to Canada in August 2023, after being forced into exile.

For over ten years, I have dedicated my life to defending human rights in my home country. With a master’s degree in legal and political sciences, I work to promote the rights of women and adolescent girls, facilitate access to justice for the most vulnerable, support members of marginalized communities, such as the LGBTQ community, and combat a phenomenon known as descent-based slavery in the eastern Malian Kayes region. It is a deep commitment, rooted in the conviction that human dignity must be protected everywhere and for everyone.

This commitment comes at a cost, however. My activities exposed me to serious threats, forcing me into exile in Canada. I had to leave my country and leave behind my work, my family, my roots, my friends, and a part of myself.

When I arrived in Canada, I found a country that protects rights and an environment where freedom of speech can still exist. I am eternally grateful for this.

Exile also brings its share of challenges for many exiled defenders: having their professional or academic experience recognized; rebuilding a new social, professional, or community network; overcoming isolation or psychological repercussions; and finding ways to stay connected to their homeland realities.

Still, despite these challenges, we persevere. Today, I have the opportunity to work with Canadian organizations, participating in advocacy initiatives and contributing to the integration of the most vulnerable populations. My participation in training programs demonstrates the key role I can play in supporting the mechanisms that sustain the continued engagement of defenders in exile.

That has led me to observe one essential thing: with a minimum of support, defenders in exile can re-emerge as powerful agents of change here in Canada.

If I have one recommendation to make, it is that Canada must make structured and sustainable investments in exiled human rights defenders by actively supporting initiatives that build bridges between their expertise, life experiences, skills and leadership qualities and Canada’s democracy and human rights landscape—and that is precisely what Resilient Societies does.

Specifically, this involves funding programs that value lived experience, facilitating professional integration—including the recognition of foreign credentials—and building pathways to human rights, communications, advocacy and public policy sectors.

Otherwise, Canada is depriving itself of unique expertise—expertise forged in a context where rights are truly at risk—

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Excuse me, Mr. Bah. Could you please wrap up your remarks? You've gone over your speaking time by nearly two minutes.

[Abdoulaye Bah]

All right.

In closing, I would like to say that investing in defenders in exile is investing in the resilience of democracy itself.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

I now invite Mr. Hillel Neuer to take the floor for five minutes.

[Hillel Neuer, Executive Director, UN Watch]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, honourable members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify on the current situation of democracy and human rights defenders around the world.

My organization, UN Watch, leads a coalition of 25 human rights NGOs. For the past 18 years, we have organized the annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. I'm grateful to the permanent mission of Canada in Geneva for co-hosting the UN opening of our most recent summit.

When the UN Human Rights Council recently met in Geneva, members included Qatar, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Vietnam and Iraq. These are regimes that jail journalists, torture dissidents and erase minorities. They were about to sit as judges of the world on human rights, but we were there first, with our Geneva summit, to give the microphone not to regimes but to those they persecute: frontline defenders of the democratic values that Canada seeks to uphold.

Permit me to share what we've heard from these courageous dissidents and the common themes that emerged.

The first is transnational repression: Authoritarian regimes target dissidents abroad.

We heard from Chloe Cheung. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she joined the pro-democracy movement at age 14 during the 2019 protests, witnessing first-hand the police violence, mass arrests and dismantling of civil liberties that reshaped her generation. After the imposition of the national security law, she went into exile in 2020 to continue her advocacy abroad. In London, she leads global campaigns calling for the release of political prisoners. In December 2024, the Hong Kong authorities placed a bounty on her head in the amount of one million Hong Kong dollars, making her one of the youngest activists ever targeted. She was only 19, but they put her face on a wanted poster; stuck it all over train stations, airports and police stations; and declared her a fugitive. Since then, she's been followed, harassed and threatened in the U.K. “Many friends have cut me off out of fear of retaliation”, she testified.

We also heard from Masih Alinejad. She's the journalist whose activism for women's rights in Iran gathered millions of followers and inspired that country's “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. She now lives in exile in New York. The Iranian regime is trying to kill her. They sent hit teams multiple times to assassinate her, yet Masih perseveres in speaking for the people of Iran, tens of thousands of which were massacred in January—in two days alone—for protesting.

The second theme is political prisoners.

One of these individuals is Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition leader, journalist and filmmaker. Because he spoke out against Vladimir Putin, they tried to kill him by poisoning him in 2015 and again in 2017. He barely survived.

He went back to Russia. He spoke out against the regime. In April 2022, after he called Putin a war criminal, they took him away and sentenced him to 25 years in prison for treason. He was languishing in a Siberian gulag in solitary confinement. His wife, Evgenia, went around the world, tirelessly fighting for his release. By a miracle, in August 2024 Vladimir was released as part of a prisoner exchange.

We invited him recently to speak at the UN. His appeal is that Canada and other democracies can still save thousands of Ukrainian civilian hostages held in Russian custody and help children abducted by Russia and Russian political prisoners jailed because of their opposition to the war. The release of all of these people must be an essential part of any ceasefire agreement.

The third theme is the assault on religious freedom.

China is a member of the UN Human Rights Council, yet China crushes any independent religious leader who does not answer to the regime. One is pastor Ezra Jin, founder of one of China's largest underground churches. They took him away in October, along with 27 other leaders of the Zion Church. We heard from his daughter, Grace Jin Drexel. Her appeal is for Canada and other democracies to call on the Chinese regime to release all Zion Church leaders immediately: “Do not accept China's trampling of human rights and universal freedom with silence. If left unchecked, Beijing's wave of repression will reverberate around the world, for freedom of religion and human rights as a whole.”

The fourth theme, Mr. Chair, is the assault on women's rights.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban, as we heard, continues to erase the faces and the voices of women. At our summit, we heard from Marzieh Hamidi. She's an Afghan tae kwon do athlete who fled Kabul after the Taliban takeover, and she now trains in France.

Because of death threats against her, she has to live under police protection 24-7. Through sports and advocacy, she stands for every girl who has been told that she must disappear.

Fifth and finally, we are seeing an assault on journalists and freedom of the press.

In Zimbabwe, the journalist Blessed Mhlanga reported on corruption, and for the crime of covering a press conference critical of the president, he was charged with incitement to violence and detained for 73 days.

After speaking at our Geneva summit, Mr. Blessed Mhlanga was threatened with rearrest and is unable to return to his family in Zimbabwe. We urge Canada to be vigilant as to his safety and freedom.

In conclusion, honourable members, authoritarian regimes rely on silence, while human rights defenders rely on your international solidarity. Supporting these individuals is not symbolic; it can be decisive in protecting lives and advancing freedom. Parliamentary advocacy, naming cases and sustained pressure can have real impact in securing releases.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Neuer.

Now we will go to the first round of questions and answers. I would like to start by inviting Mr. Majumdar to take the floor for seven minutes.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, witnesses, for all your testimony.

Mr. Neuer, let me start with you.

The Canadian government, as you know, joined consensus to nominate the Iranian regime to a UN body that shapes policy on issues like women's rights, human rights and counterterrorism, and had joined consensus with China and Cuba to oversee a UN committee that oversees human rights NGOs.

May I ask you for your perspectives on that particular issue?

[Hillel Neuer]

Thank you, honourable member, for this timely question. It's an issue that has sparked outrage around the world in parliaments, not only in Canada but also in the United Kingdom, the European Parliament, Australia, Finland and other places.

On April 8, at a meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, two decisions were made by Canada as well as other democracies, including France, Germany, the U.K., Finland, Australia, Norway, Austria and the Netherlands. That decision was to join consensus on nominating the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN Committee for Programme and Coordination, which is meeting in a few weeks, with one day on women's rights, one day on human rights, one day on peacekeeping and one day on terrorism prevention.

The notion that the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has just massacred some 40,000 protesters in two days, would be nominated for election to a committee that decides priorities for the United Nations on these critical issues is an insult to the memory of the tens of thousands of individuals who were killed on those days. It is an act of contempt for the people of Iran. By the way, the election will be held in November, and it's a rubber stamp by the UN General Assembly.

The Government of Canada made a bizarre statement on the Global Affairs Canada Twitter account, @CanadaFP. They said that this was a decision of the regional group and that they had nothing to do with it. Of course, the Asian regional group is the one that puts the names forward, but if you look at this formally, the nomination was done by ECOSOC, and Canada is one of the members of ECOSOC. Canada formally joined in the nomination. It joined consensus.

If you want to look at it informally, in practice, Canada could have spoken out. The chair asked if anyone wanted to speak out. The United States took the floor and said that this was a shameful thing to do, but Canada chose silence.

Is this the normal practice? No. A few years ago, in April 2022, ECOSOC elected a candidate from Russia; Canada, the EU and the U.K. took the floor and said it was wrong. How could we keep silent? We spoke out when this council elected Russia, but this time we chose not to.

America spoke out in this session. Canada did not. In a previous session, when it had to do with electing another authoritarian regime, Canada spoke out. This time, it did not. Whether you look at this informally or formally, Canada joined consensus to nominate Iran and chose silence. This caused me great shame as a Canadian.

Second, equally shameful, is the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, as you indicated, honourable member.

We are a UN-accredited NGO. We have to answer to the UN committee on NGOs. There are 19 member states. Who are the 19 member states? As of now, they include, by the election that just happened, China—which oppresses 1.5 billion people—Cuba, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Nicaragua. These are authoritarian regimes that are now sitting on the body that regulates human rights NGOs. This is a betrayal of the human rights movement.

We heard from a witness about the structures of international human rights. If our own democracies are going to abandon these structures and hand them over to the world's worst regimes, regimes that jail dissidents, that crush any NGOs—you can't have an NGO in any of these countries—then what is the purpose of the UN?

Our former ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, was president of the UN Economic and Social Council. How are we supposed to take these bodies seriously if Canada says it doesn't matter if we nominate Iran and it doesn't matter if we join consensus in electing China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia and Sudan? It's absurd.

I think what happened was absurd, and what was even worse was to double down with the denial. Canada formally joined consensus. It's incontrovertible. In practice, Canada could have taken the floor, and it didn't.

This shameful decision, this abandonment and doubling down, is not befitting the principles of democracy and a free society that Canada and its charter are meant to uphold.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you for that powerful assessment and for your indictment of a bad decision and repeated bad judgments.

Let me ask you another question in the short time I have.

What concrete actions could Canada take to confront the malaise at the United Nations that you have already been doing great work in documenting, whether it is agenda item 7 at the UN Human Rights Council, which singles Israel out disproportionately for human rights abuses rather than places like Iran and Beijing, or whether it is the continued mandate for UNRWA, which Canada defunded over a decade ago but has now refunded, despite the evidence provided by you and many others on the use of schools for militant purposes around October 7?

When you look at the institutional bias and problems at the United Nations itself, what kinds of concrete actions would you suggest for reform?

[Hillel Neuer]

We could look at grand issues for reform, but these are very elusive at the UN. It is difficult to achieve grand reform at the UN. We could look at simple things that could be done more concretely.

One is to clean up who gets to sit in judgment. Just as we spoke about before, the UN Human Rights Council includes China, Cuba and Qatar. We need to clean that up. We need to have standards on who gets to be there. The UN General Assembly decided that there should be standards when they created the Human Rights Council in resolution 60/251. They said there should be standards, but they're ignored. Either we uphold the standards and we stop supporting the presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, China and Cuba on these bodies, or we say there are no standards and everyone gets to be on it. It's one or the other. That has to be decided, because otherwise you allow dictatorships to wear a false badge of international legitimacy, and they say, “Here's a body that has criteria, and we made it on to it.” That has to stop.

Second, the UN system has to clean up its own credibility. Currently we have a situation in which external actors can fund UN special rapporteurs. A report that we have coming out in the next couple of weeks shows that there are UN rapporteurs who are getting around $1 million from the Chinese Communist regime. One of them is a law professor in Australia named Ben Saul. He received $150,000 from the Chinese Communist regime for his work. How can you be a human rights expert and receive that kind of money from one of the world's most repressive regimes? That has to be cleaned up. There should be no earmarked funding from anyone, and certainly not from a dictatorship.

We need to clean up the standards for UN reporting. Currently, UN reports are cited by international courts, yet there is very little in the way of standards for evidence sourcing and methodology. If these reports are being cited by courts, they need to meet courtroom-level standards.

Finally, I would say we need accountability for misconduct. We need a complaints mechanism that has consequences. There are UN officials who are acting as apologists for the world's worst regimes. There's a UN expert named Alena Douhan. She has flown into Damascus, Tehran, Caracas and Zimbabwe to embrace the regimes. These kinds of people need to be suspended, reprimanded or removed if they're violating the UN code of conduct.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Majumdar.

I would like to invite Madame Anita Vandenbeld to take the floor for seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

On that previous testimony, I want to reassure members of the committee and those watching that Canada does not support Iran for positions of influence in the United Nations.

I really appreciate that we have some incredible human rights defenders here today. I'd like to pick up on what some of you have said.

Mr. Sharifi, you said something profound. You said that “human rights defenders are not beneficiaries. They are partners.” I'd also like to go to Ms. Hassan, who said that global networks are essential infrastructure.

With lot of democracy funding being cut quite rapidly for things like the World Movement for Democracy—primarily from south of the border, but elsewhere as well—we see that the connective tissue for a lot of these networks of human rights defenders around the world has been broken. Human rights defenders are isolated, and this puts them in much greater danger. I know that Equitas has some data about the situation now, and if we don't have time, I'd love for you to table it with the committee.

It makes me think about my family in World War II. They were in the Dutch underground resistance. Many of you mentioned security. There's no way we could have won World War II with just the soldiers and the Allies. We had to have the connections that were made with the underground resistance movements that were happening there. The human rights defenders who are fighting autocracy, who are fighting for democracy, are really that resistance. If we want a world in which we will retain our democracy, making common cause and supporting those defenders is as important as it was in the 1940s.

I wonder if I could get comment from you on how Canada and other countries around the world—because this is an international subcommittee—can help to connect human rights defenders to one another and to us, so that they're not working in fragmented ways, as I think one of you said.

I'll start with Equitas. Then I'm hoping to have time for each of you, but we can always continue in another round.

[Odette McCarthy]

Thank you, all of you, for your attention today.

I invite you to really think about a shift in who is moving forward with democratic practices. For example, we can look at Brazil, which is a country that has had very different types of governments electorally chosen to govern. What's important to realize is the role of civic space and the civil society organizations and coalitions—for example, Pacto—that convene folks with different political positioning, but with a strong defensive democracy and democratic practice, working together to make sure that is robust. There's a lot of learning that can happen just in looking at that example.

Also, connecting Pacto—again, as an example—with democracy activists in other countries and really breaking the model of north and south, and taking a look at the shifting space that's happening globally, is in Canada's interest, and it's certainly in the interest of democracies worldwide. For Canada to continue to thrive, it needs to be part of a worldwide community of democracies.

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

Thank you.

If I could, I want to get to some of the other witnesses as well.

Ms. Hassan, you're part of Demos Kratos. Could you tell us a bit about what kinds of things Canada and others could do to support such grassroots global networks?

[Mozn Hassan]

Thank you so much.

I really think that we are facing this anti-rights movement in the same places, but also, the resources are important to bring those people together. As I said, having champions internationally from different countries, especially Canada, can bring resources that are not only about funding but also about spaces like this one now. I really think that these networks are able to manage these transnational relationships and at the same time give a voice to people to speak about themselves and narrate their narratives, because mostly in those spaces, people like us are not existing there.

These networks, in my opinion, are existing in tough times in the world now and, especially in regions like mine, we need these places. We need this constructive solidarity. Without this, we will continue to have these fragmented things. Champions are important, because they are the backbone for people like us.