Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on June 1st, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to our witnesses.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 20 of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Pursuant to the motion adopted by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, and the motion adopted by the subcommittee on Monday, May 25, 2026, the subcommittee is meeting on its study on the human rights situation of children around the world.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members may attend 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. 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 of the floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

I would now like to welcome the witnesses.

From the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security, we have Dr. Shelly Whitman, executive director. She is with us by video conference. From the Hudson Institute, we have Zineb Riboua, research fellow. She is also here by video conference. From the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network, we have Yasmin Ullah, executive director. From Save Ukraine, we have Mykola Kuleba, chief executive officer. He is also here by video conference.

I would like to welcome you all. I will give every one of you five minutes for your introduction. I would like to start with Dr. Shelly Whitman.

Dr. Whitman, you have the floor for five minutes. Please do your best to respect the time.

Thank you.

[Shelly Whitman, Executive Director, Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security]

I will. Thank you very much, Chair.

My name is Dr. Shelly Whitman. I am the executive director of the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security. Thank you for this opportunity.

More than half of the world's children are exposed to some form of violence every year. Today, approximately 520 million children, or one in five worldwide, are living in areas affected by armed conflict. For the first time since 2007, Africa now has both the highest number and the highest share of children living in conflict zones.

According to the UN's 2025 annual report on children and armed conflict, the situation is worsening at an alarming pace. In just one year, there were over 41,000 verified grave violations affecting more than 22,000 children, which is a 25% increase compared with the year before.

Conflict alone, however, does not explain this surge. Since 2010, the number of children living in conflict zones has risen by 60%, but the number of verified grave violations committed against them has increased by nearly 373%. This stark discrepancy points to something deeper: a profound erosion of international norms and protections that are meant to safeguard children.

In the most affected countries, we see patterns that emerge: intensified conflict, increased militarization and a breakdown in respect for international humanitarian law. Both state and non-state actors are responsible. Non-state armed groups account for nearly half of all violations. However, government forces are the primary perpetrators of some of the most severe abuses, including the killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and hospitals, and the denial of humanitarian access.

Meanwhile, children are facing increasingly complex and overlapping forms of violence. The number of children subjected to multiple violations, such as abduction, recruitment and sexual violence, rose sharply. This reflects a disturbing increase in both the brutality and the systemic nature of these acts.

Modern warfare strategies are also playing a role. The use of explosive weapons in populated areas, increasingly destructive weapon systems and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure have made children more vulnerable than ever. In many cases, children are not just bystanders; they are directly targeted, recruited or exploited for combat. Deliberate violence against children instills fear, causes long-term psychological trauma and forces families into prolonged displacement. Entire generations are being shaped by these experiences.

If we look at the data, there are several types of violations that stand out. In the last year, nearly 12,000 children were killed or maimed. There were close to 8,000 incidents involving the denial of humanitarian access, leaving children without essential services like health care and education. Over 7,400 children were recruited or used in armed conflict, and more than 4,500 were abducted. At the same time, the number of children detained for alleged association with armed groups rose to over 3,000, further stripping them of their rights.

Sexual violence has also increased significantly—up by 35% over the last year, including a disturbing rise in gang rape. These crimes remain vastly under-reported due to stigma, fear of reprisals and lack of access to support services. I should mention that this affects both boys and girls.

Beyond the human cost, the economic impact is also severe. In some countries, the total cost of violence against children reaches as high as 11% of national GDP. In fact, in several cases, these costs exceed government spending on health, sometimes by as much as six times.

Despite the scale of the problem, investment in prevention and response remains strikingly low. In 2020, just 0.72% of official development assistance was directed towards ending violence against children. The reality is that ending violence against children is not only a moral imperative. It's also a sound economic investment. Strengthening child protection systems, supporting families, investing in education and well-being help build human capital and foster long-term, people-centred development.

Canada has an opportunity to play a leadership role by championing stronger investment in child protection and its centrality to creating peace and security around the globe.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Can you wrap it up please? Time is out.

[Shelly Whitman]

Please give me two seconds, sir.

Canada can help build a compelling case for action, one that demonstrates both the social and economic returns. It can also help ensure that protecting children is not treated as a secondary issue, but a central one. Ultimately the question is not whether we can afford to act; it's whether we can afford not to. The cost of inaction is being paid by children around the world every day, and that cost is far too high.

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

I gave 35 seconds instead of two.

Now I would like to welcome Ms. Zineb Riboua to take the floor for five minutes, please.

The floor is yours, Ms. Riboua.

[Zineb Riboua, Research Fellow, Hudson Institute]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the subcommittee, for the opportunity to testify. I'm deeply honoured by it.

I must say that the international architecture for protecting children in armed conflict is substantial. The UN Secretary-General has published an annual report on children and armed conflict every year since 1996. The optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force in 2002. The Security Council, as well, has maintained a monitoring and reporting mechanism for grave violations against children since 2005. Canada has been a consistent supporter of that framework.

What the framework has not produced yet, especially when it comes to the Middle East, is a policy response adequate to the scale and organizational character of the violations taking place. Closing that gap requires understanding the specific actor most responsible for those violations. Children's rights violations in the Middle East are not evenly distributed across actors or causes. The most systematic and sustained violations trace to a single organizing source: the Islamic Republic of Iran, through the IRGC and the proxy network it has built, financed and directed across the region. The evidence is extensive, verifiable and spans four decades.

The Islamic Republic's use of children as instruments of its revolutionary project began during the Iran-Iraq War. In 1982, Ayatollah Khomeini announced that school boys between 12 and 18 could join the Basij paramilitary without parental consent. After a week of rudimentary training, recruits were issued plastic keys, mass-produced amulets painted gold, and told the keys would unlock the gates of paradise if they died clearing minefields ahead of the IRGC infantry. Radio Free Europe estimated that more than 550,000 elementary and high school students were sent to the front. Iranian official figures acknowledge that 36,000 school-aged children were among the war's martyrs. The regime has designated October 30 as Student Basij Day in formal law.

Iran has appeared on the United States' Child Soldiers Prevention Act list every year since 2018 without initiating a single credible investigation, prosecution or demobilization effort, in seven years.

In Yemen, for example, the Houthis movement—organized, armed and directly trained by Tehran—has produced the most extensive documented case of child soldier recruitment in the contemporary Middle East. The UN Secretary-General has included the Houthis in his annual list of parties responsible for grave violations against children every year since 2011.

The subcommittee's mandate rightly identifies poverty, armed conflict, displacement and lack of access to education and health care as root causes of children's rights violations.

In the case under examination, those conditions have been actively deepened by the armed groups responsible for the violations. Lebanon was among the most economically developed societies in the Arab world before Hezbollah's penetration of its state institutions drove the country to collapse. Yemen's humanitarian crisis reflects a strategic choice by the Houthi leadership to prioritize Iranian regional objectives over Yemeni civilian welfare. Addressing root causes in these contexts requires addressing the organizational actors who have a demonstrated interest in perpetuating them.

Canada is well positioned to lead on this issue. The June 2024 listing of the IRGC as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code, the 2022 designation of Iran as a regime engaged in terrorism and systematic human rights violations, and the long-standing listings of Hezbollah and the Fatemiyoun Division provide a legal and policy foundation that few other democracies, I must say, have matched.

The task now is to ensure that foundation actively informs Canada's multilateral engagement, foreign assistance decisions and diplomatic posture. The children whose rights this subcommittee is charged with looking at and protecting are best served by a policy built on the evidentiary and legal record Canada has already assembled. This is one that names responsible actors, traces organizational chains of command and holds the Islamic Republic accountable for the violations connected to its name and under its direction.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you. The time was well respected.

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

[Yasmin Ullah, Executive Director, Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the subcommittee, for the opportunity to speak today.

The root cause of the Rohingya children being forced into labour, prostitution and trafficking networks, and even used as human shields in war, is ultimately a failure of states to protect them.

The Rohingya genocide did not end when families crossed the border into Bangladesh. It created opportunities and conditions for an ongoing cycle of exploitation that continues to evolve every day. The same genocide that displaced Rohingya children from their homes has left them vulnerable to trafficking across the Andaman Sea, starvation in Myanmar, kidnapping in the refugee camps and years of limbo without legal status, education or protection.

Today I want to highlight three urgent forms of forced labour affecting Rohingya children.

First is the trafficking of Rohingya girls into domestic servitude, forced marriage and sexual exploitation. In Bangladesh, children as young as seven have reportedly been recruited as domestic workers. Community reports and international assessments have documented cases of Rohingya girls disappearing from the camps and later being found in domestic slavery, forced marriages or prostitution. Some are trafficked through Myanmar into Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan and India. Survivors describe being confined, unable to contact their families, subjected to violence and sold from one exploiter to another. As humanitarian funding declines and education programs close, the risks facing girls are increasing. Every learning centre that shuts down creates new opportunities for traffickers.

Second is the forced labour of Rohingya boys. In Bangladesh and across the region, boys are often expected to become breadwinners when families lose their parents, livelihoods or access to aid. Children as young as eight are carrying loads weighing up to 20 kilograms as part of their employment, risking spinal cord injury. Others work in construction, fishing, agriculture, restaurants and transportation. Community reports indicate that some Rohingya boys as young as 10 are trafficked into hard labour in neighbouring countries, including Malaysia, where they are subjected to dangerous working conditions, wage theft and exploitation. Many of these children are invisible to authorities because they are stateless and undocumented.

Third is the forced conscription and use of Rohingya boys in armed conflict. The report of the special rapporteur on Myanmar has documented the forced recruitment of thousands of Rohingya men and boys by Myanmar's military junta. Children have been abducted, trained and sent to frontline positions. Some have been used as porters, trench-diggers, guides and human shields. Across Myanmar, 77% of the children conscripted have been documented as being used as human shields. The Arakan Army has also been accused of forced labour, arbitrary detention and forced recruitment of Rohingya boys and girls, including reports of underage girls being abducted in February and April this year. Rohingya children are being trapped between the armed actors, who view them not as children but as tools of war.

These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a broader protection crisis.

Canada has an important role to play. First, Canada should continue to support and expand anti-trafficking initiatives, including programs implemented by the IOM and local partners. These programs save lives through awareness raising, case management, survivor support and community-based protection. Greater involvement of Rohingya-led organizations would strengthen their reach and effectiveness.

Second, Canada should work with like-minded partners to protect critical education and child protection programming. I recognize that Canada alone cannot fill the humanitarian funding gap. However, strategic involvement and investments in education, child protection and health services remain among the most effective tools for preventing child labour and trafficking. Education is not only a development intervention but also a protection intervention.

Third, Canada should continue advocating for greater livelihood opportunities for Rohingya refugees. Families surviving on extremely limited assistance are often forced into impossible choices. When parents cannot feed their children, traffickers step in with false promises of work, marriage or opportunity. Expanding access to legal livelihoods would reduce the economic pressures that drive exploitation and child labour.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you. The time was even better respected.

Now I would like to invite Mr. Mykola Kuleba to take the floor for five minutes, please.

[Mykola Kuleba, Chief Executive Officer, Save Ukraine]

Mr. Chair and honourable members, thank you.

Save Ukraine, the largest organization I run, is rescuing children from Russia and the occupied territories and creating services that restore their lives after reunification with their relatives. For now, we have rescued 1,343 children. They have been found and rescued by Save Ukraine.

Before this war, Ukraine had over eight million children in its population. Today, on the territory we control, there are about 4.5 million. Half of the country's children are gone: killed, abducted to Russia, trapped in the occupied territories or carried abroad to safety. No European nation in living memory has lost half its children, and the loss compounds. In Ukraine today, for every child born, three people die.

Let me describe what Russia is doing to Ukrainian children in the language of rights, with each one taken from them. A Ukrainian child in occupation cannot see a doctor, attend a class or hold a single document without a Russian ID. Their identity is no longer a right. It is a condition of survival.

Parents who refuse a Russian school are fined, then prosecuted and finally stripped of the parental right to place a child in Russian orphanages. New programs order schoolchildren to identify and report enemy content—anything that contradicts the regime—and requires every child to train in flying drones to fight the west with new technologies.

We've just rescued an 11-year-old girl who told me that children in her class were made to watch state films of Russian propaganda showing Ukrainian soldiers cutting open the bellies of pregnant women. Children were crying, but no one was allowed to leave the room.

In the occupation, medicines are reserved for Russian soldiers. Newborns are taken from their parents, and the testimonies of rescued women who gave birth in those maternity hospitals are that the blood of these newborns was given to the Russian military. Children are interviewed by Russian soldiers in their schools, who torture them with hundreds of questions, including, “How do you feel about killing?” and “Are you ready to kill?” One boy who refused to answer was told that he would be the first taken to the battlefield on Russia's side.

There is a quieter violation, one that we see only once the child is already in our hands. Nearly every young person Save Ukraine rescues today arrives carrying heavy psychotropic drugs prescribed in the occupation for psychiatric conditions that these children do not have. We have too much evidence from the testimonies of children we've rescued from re-education camps and military academies in temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine not to assume that Russia has discovered that a sedated, compliant adolescent does not resist conscription, does not think clearly about escape and does not push back on the uniform pressed into his hands.

With Senator Stan Kutcher, who visited us in Ukraine recently and talked to these young adults, we now work to document the psychotropic medication and its effects and to design mental health treatment that returns a child not only to Ukraine but to himself. Young adults we rescue state that 11 years is a deadline, as they'll then be forced into the Russian army immediately.

In the 19th century, enslaved people followed a secret network north to freedom, and it ended here, on Canadian soil. We've built a modern one. Save Ukraine's underground railroad is the road by which a stolen Ukrainian child is found, reached and carried out of Russia. Canada is the country that helped make it end in safety.

With the Canadian support that we received in 2024, we have identified 800 full profiles of children whose lives were stolen, and we have rescued 200 of them. Canada has set the example for other countries, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of those still waiting to be rescued. Rescue is only the beginning, and we need your support. We built a comprehensive system of recovery for these kids, bringing them hope and restoring their childhoods, but we have to move forward. War is continuing.

Thank you, Canada. Thank you for your support. Let's do more for these kids.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you.

Now we 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, please.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the experts for providing horrific testimony as witness to horrific crimes upon children in the context of war.

Ms. Riboua, I'm going to start with you, if I might. You really laid out some of the structural issues in geopolitics and international security and how, fundamentally, they are the sources of this exploitation of children in conflict.

My first question is this: How do great-power politics, rivalries and proxy conflicts, particularly involving the Kremlin, Beijing and Tehran, influence in Sahel, in north Africa and in the Middle East? They affect the rights, the education and the physical security of children in those regions. For example, what patterns do you see in recruitment into militias, in the disruption of schooling or in the use of children in hybrid warfare tactics?

[Zineb Riboua]

I would say that what Russia, China and Iran have in common is taking advantage of every single opportunity offered to them when it comes to asserting influence and power in places where the west is in decline, retreating or not really engaged. It's been very noticeable, for example, with what the Russians are doing in Sahel in places like Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

I would also stress that it's very similar to what is happening in places like Iran and Syria, where the states are still very fragile and where a lot of terrorist groups and groups related to militias—the proxies of the IRGC—take advantage of those states that are very weak, weak to the point where they always need another power so that they can survive, maintain their sovereignty or expand their influence.

This is what I would say is the pattern. It's very noticeable, as I mentioned in my testimony, when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In order for them to maintain a revolutionary state and in order for them to continue their project in the Middle East and beyond, they need to recruit children. They need to recruit students. This is one of the guidelines Ayatollah Khomeini has been preaching for a very long time.

Therefore, what the west should take into consideration, what Canada should take into consideration and what the United States should take into consideration is the alignment of their foreign policy and their advocacy of human rights. They should go together. It is very hard, for example, to counter the exploitation of children in armed conflicts when there isn't a real, staunch and very, I would say, aggressive policy against the IRGC. This is the real gap that all of these adversaries continue to exploit.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you for that.

Digging a bit deeper, can you explain this gap between counterterrorism policy and child protection in terms of why that persists?

[Zineb Riboua]

I would like to give you the example of Yemen and the Houthis.

The Houthis have been engaging, as I mentioned, in organized and armed conflict directed by the IRGC. They benefited from having access to a lot of aid and humanitarian assistance while they were recruiting children. In fact, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented the recruitment of more than 10,000 children between 2014 and 2021. There were even, more recently, certain reports saying that 1,400 children recruited by the Houthis died on the battlefield in 2020 alone. Because they're still considered by certain states to be a legitimate group in Yemen, the Houthis take advantage of a lot of loopholes when it comes to U.S. or Canadian foreign policy. They can still get aid while perpetuating the same conditions they denounce.

I think Yemen offers a very good example of how certain terrorist groups not only teach and use children in training camps but also benefit from a very dire situation and weaponize it.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

I really appreciate that very incisive insight.

In the darkness of what we're seeing in terms of how authoritarians are working in this region, we're also seeing the promise of initiatives like the Abraham accords and normalized relations between countries like Morocco and Israel. These are providing a different basis for Arab and Jewish harmony.

From your perspective, what are some of the long-term lessons that can be drawn from what might be working?

[Zineb Riboua]

What is important about the Abraham accords is that they dismantle what makes the recruitment of children and terrorist groups, and even their maintenance, possible and sustainable. The more Israel is integrated into the region—the more western influence is tied to development, economic collaboration, technology and so on—the more people in the Middle East and north Africa can see the benefits. This therefore presents an alternative case to, for example, the IRGC or the Houthis, who recruit children precisely to chant, “Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse to the Jews and victory to Islam.” This offers an alternative to that very teaching and to the case they are making for child recruitment.

I think it especially helps because of Israel's leadership in biotechnology, water management, irrigation and so on. These are technologies that are very much needed in the Middle East region. The Abraham accords have helped promote that. It's also about giving tools to a lot of these states so they can promote the private sector and have jobs available for a very young population, which a lot of terrorist groups prey on as they recruit children.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Thank you very much.

Mykola, I've had the privilege of working with you for many years and of supporting your organization. Let me ask a quick closing question.

You portrayed the horrific indoctrination and recruitment of Ukrainian children and their exposure to psychotropic drugs. What has the intensity of the international response been with respect to holding the Russian Federation and the Kremlin accountable for these obvious crimes against humanity?

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

You have no more than 10 seconds because we're 33 seconds past.

Go ahead.

[Mykola Kuleba]

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your support, Majumdar. It's really valuable.

There are not enough efforts in the international community because there are still more than a million Ukrainian children in a Russian trap. Putin is a war criminal. We're asking for your leadership in these efforts. You have shown us your willingness to help us find and rescue more kids. Don't wait, please. Move forward. You have a reputation as a country that fights for justice, and we—

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Excuse me. Wrap it up, please. We've passed the time by more than a minute and a half.

[Mykola Kuleba]

Can I have one more minute?

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

[Inaudible—Editor] seconds.

[Mykola Kuleba]

I just want to ask you to not stop and to move forward with your efforts and your leadership, and to do your best to bring Putin to justice. We have a lot of evidence. We've rescued, as I told you, more than a thousand kids who testified about war crimes. It's from the top when Putin is just turning all Ukrainian children in occupied territories—

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you. Probably in the next round of questions you will have more time.

I invite Mr. Zuberi to take the floor for seven minutes. I will give every one of you a minute extra.