Madam Speaker, the world has rightly feted Nadia Murad, one of the strongest women in the world, with the Nobel Peace Prize for the work she has accomplished in bringing attention to the need to eradicate one of humanity's oldest and most potent weapons in any conflict; rape. While on behalf of Canadian Parliament today I congratulate her on this achievement, I cannot help but feel as though we in this place are letting it ring hollow.
Vanity Fair magazine, after learning of Murad's prize, ran a story entitled “This Year's Nobel Peace Prize Reflects the #MeToo Era”. It could not be more wrong. The key difference between those who have been under the spotlight of #MeToo, the long list of Hollywood actresses, political staffers and most recently Christine Blasey Ford, have presented their stories and the western media and lawmakers have reacted, from marches in the streets, to high-profile trials, to bills in this place to change our own sexual harassment code of conduct. Those who have come forward in #MeToo have seen, while arguably imperfect, some sort of movement on the part of our legislatures, courts and society to acknowledge their plight and act to remedy.
The same cannot be said for Murad and her people. What of justice for them? There has been none. That is because in our position of privilege here in this place, in the glittering halls of Hollywood institutions, in our newsrooms and in our western academic halls and at elite think tank gatherings, it has been easier for us to give Nadia an award for her courage and link the woman and her people to the #MeToo movement rather than to take action to bring justice and that is wrong.
Rape and sexual violence in war is a weapon that we rarely acknowledge, much less take action to end. To all who believe that #MeToo has somehow begun to shift our nation toward a more gender-equitable society, one where there is less sexual violence and more empowerment for women, then why are we in Canada not doing everything in our power to bring those complicit in the use of rape as a weapon against Nadia and her people to justice? To bring them justice, Canada must first lead the charge in condemning rape as the most potent weapon known to mankind.
Time magazine recently recounted a story of a doctor who treats the survivors of rape in a war zone. She has stitched up the tears and she has retrieved inserted objects. She has repaired flesh seared by the heat of a bullet, fired inside a vagina that by some miracle or curse did not kill, but crippled for life. Her work is vital. Women with fistulas, tears between the vagina, the anus, the bladder and the bowel from rape cannot retain their urine or feces. No matter how often they clean, they smell. They are shunned by their communities and they are unwelcome in church. Like a dirty bomb, rape as a weapon of war is so much more powerful than the immediate damage that it yields.
Rape as a weapon of war spreads venereal disease. Rape as a weapon of war renders women sterile. It ends childhoods. Rape as a weapon of war results in children who bear the stigma of rejection of their mothers, their communities and constant reminders of the conditions of their conception and of their bloodlines. Rape as a weapon of war results in women being ostracized from their communities as impure, as having not done enough to resist it, as having somehow asked for it, or worse, implied that they enjoyed it. Rape as a weapon of war disconnects women from their faith communities. It destroys marriages with husbands being unable to cope with children conceived in rape, so-called impure wives, wives who are suffering from the trauma of sexual violence, being unable to participate in intercourse without being re-traumatized. It kills and when it does not, many of its wide-ranging victims wish it had. It causes suicide. Rape as a weapon of war is a means to genocide.
Sherrie Russell-Brown in the Berkeley law review summarized rape as genocide as follows:
[Genocidal rape] is not rape out of control. It is rape under control. It is also rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape to kill and to make the victims wish they were dead...It is rape to be seen and heard and watched and told to others; rape as spectacle. It is rape to drive a wedge through a community, to shatter a society, to destroy a people.
This is the rape that Nadia and her people have suffered, yet there are those who are complicit in using this weapon who walk free in Canada as though nothing has happened. Where is the outrage of #MeToo and our so-called Canadian feminist in chief for them? To end rape being used as a weapon of war, Canada must first acknowledge it as such, then we must destroy it as a weapon. We do that by bringing those who use that weapon or who are complicit in its usage to swift and immediate justice.
Dr. Denis Mukwege, Nadia Murad's co-Nobel Peace Prize laureate, states that establishing and implementing laws that hold perpetrators accountable is one of the most important ways to de-arm those who consider using this weapon.
His foundation states that:
Law serves as an effective tool to end and prevent rape as a weapon of war. When laws are implemented and enforced, more survivors are able to access justice and more perpetrators will be held accountable.
Law enforcement can deter perpetrators and may help to end the cycle of impunity, which otherwise fuels future crimes. If perpetrators fear punishment, they are more likely to end the practice of using rape as a weapon of war.
Legitimate law and legal structures also give victims confidence to demand their rights and feel less wronged.
Yet, in Canada, our government has taken precious little action to acknowledge this truth, much less action to enforce it. Every time one of us stands in here and minimizes the need to place justice first, or worse, places the reintegration or feelings of ISIS terrorist ahead of the need to de-weaponize genocidal rape, we fail its victims. Make no mistake, every person who chose to act as an ISIS terrorist is complicit in the use of this weapon.
In her book, Nadia bluntly outlines that every person, every Canadian who chose to act as an ISIS terrorist is complicit in the genocidal rape of her and her people, and she is right. She says, “I dream about one day bringing all the militants to justice, not just the leaders...but all the guards and slave owners.”
Ali Shamo Aldakhi, a young Yazidi survivor, said “When I see other countries of the free world take charge and stand with humanity, it means that justice will be served and those of us who have survived will have some relief.”
Canada can do so much more. Today, the Conservatives issued a statement calling on the government to take several specific actions to bring immediate justice to the survivors of ISIS, and so many of my colleagues will talk about them. However, I would like to focus on one specific item.
Processes, both in Canada and in the courts of international law, to bring perpetrators of atrocity crimes to justice are slow and rarely work. They fail victims and prevent them from returning home. Canada should lead reforms to ensure justice is swift, both within our own domestic policy and abroad. We cannot purport to stand for human rights as Canadians without demanding change to the processes that allow those who use rape as a weapon of war to go unpunished.
This is not just about one singular bad guy or leader. This is about the fact that state actors are no longer the heads of conflict and those who go, as Nadia said, and willingly choose to participate, to fight, to turn a blind eye to sexual slavery, first and foremost only deserve one thing, and that is justice. We cannot sit here and look into the eyes of these women and do anything other than commit to them, from the bottom of hearts as human beings, that we will bring them justice. That is what each and every one of us should do. For three years, the government had stood here and failed to acknowledge that it is incumbent upon it to do so.
If laws need to be changed, then change the laws. If processes need to be changed, then change the processes. If the international community needs to change, then it needs to change. We cannot be complacent.
Canada should also support initiatives which are taking concrete action to bring justice to women whose bodies, through rapes, have been used as a weapon of war. Canada should acknowledge Nadia and Ali's truth, that every person who took up arms with ISIS is as a complicit as the leaders and must face justice.
If “never again” is not to ring hollow, if it is not just a phrase that we utter when convenient, then we must act. If we are to end rape as a weapon of genocide, we cannot allow those who supported ISIS in its genocidal rape to roam our country with impunity as though nothing happened. If we are to call ourselves feminists, then #MeToo has to bring justice to every Yazidi; to everyone, woman and man and village and town and every religious community and family that has been destroyed by weaponized rape.
For Nadia and her people, justice will only be final when those who wield rape as a weapon of war suffer greater consequences than those who were subject to its abuses. It falls to us, here, today, to see that this happens.