Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate this evening.
One would be hard pressed in the modern era to identify a country outside of wartime that has faced so many catastrophes within such a short period of time, both natural and man-made.
As my colleague has indicated, within the last 11 months Haiti has been faced with an earthquake, with 250,000 people killed and 1.5 million people homeless and massive destruction of infrastructure in the country, and is now faced with the plague of cholera, which is an epidemic with over 2,000 people dead, tens of thousands at risk and an urgent need to address this.
As we heard very much in the news in the last days, there is a crisis of government and of governance as a result of an election for president in November, which was full of irregularities so we can doubt very much the veracity of the voting.
It is facing dire economic consequences as a result of the instability of the governance. There is violence in the streets, humanitarian work is virtually at a standstill and, as we have heard today, the electoral crisis is creating warnings that future humanitarian aid is at risk.
It is imperative that the people of Haiti assume responsibility but equally important is for governments like Canada to work to resolve the democratic impasse as soon as possible.
To my mind, the key issues, and my colleague identified them, are the violence in the country, the lack of stability and the cholera epidemic that is devastating the country.
We have heard some solutions put forward: increased deployment of DART, a special envoy and increased coordination. However what I want to speak to is the crisis of what is being reported as happening to women. Compounding the mayhem and somewhat unreported is what is being called Haiti's unaddressed catastrophe, the violence against women.
Research has been in place that has shown that, when there are catastrophes initiated by weather issues, gender has a profound impact. What we have seen, to give a bit of background, is that in 1980 with the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the police reported that domestic violence increased by 46%. Following the 1993 Missouri floods, the turn-away rates at shelters was over 110%, programs increased by 400% and more women and children were impacted by the floods than anticipated.
In the ice storm in our own country, the Montreal police chief reported that 25% of the calls were related to domestic violence.
What we have heard out of Haiti and what we have heard most eloquently from Taina Bien-Aimé, the executive director of the international women's rights organization Equality Now, who cites data from the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2006, is a direct link between humanitarian emergencies and the increased vulnerability of women and children to both sexual violence and exploitation.
We know that in Haiti, where sex tourism and human trafficking were a prospering business before the earthquake, violence and this kind of activity has increased many times over. In Haiti with the government in a shambles, women are frequently defenceless and frequently unprotected.
There are estimates that, prior to this situation, 72% of Haitian girls had been raped and 40% were victims of domestic violence. The havoc at play without the structures of government and the impact of cholera are widespread.
Taina Bien-Aimé wrote a very moving article describing what was happening to women in Haiti. She said:
Protection of human rights, particularly those of women and children, is as important as providing immediate medical attention, food and shelter. In Haiti, women come last in terms of protection from violence. One small example of the urgent need to establish special contingencies for women in post-earthquake intervention is underlined by images of men fist-fighting over UN-delivered food, while women, barely keeping hold of their babies, struggled in vain to reach the relief truck. Emergency assistance teams must ensure that coordinated security is in place to protect the most vulnerable and that the full participation of qualified women, in particular Haitian women, is secured to tackle gender issues in the response and management of disaster relief.
She went on to say:
Invariably, foreigners leave Haiti enchanted by the kindness, easy smile and resilience of its people. If we want to invest in Haiti's recovery through which prosperity and stability will replace despair and chaos, we must ensure that protective measures and security systems for women and children are in place.
Last September, the UN launched a new operation in Haiti to combat rape and gender-based violence. The UN police force of 200-strong were pressed into service in six of the high-risk camps sheltering 135,000 people. However, it also said at the time that it was impossible to assume complete security coverage in 1,300 camp, given the availability of forces from Haitian national police or the UN peacekeeping mission.
It is important that Canada make this a priority. There are many issues to be addressed in Haiti, but the violence against women, the marginalization of women is of supreme importance. There must be coordination with local governments, with national governments and local stakeholders that are interested, particularly with issues pertinent to women. They must be given the top of mind and priority of purpose.
I urge my colleagues across the way, in all of their negotiations, both with partners in the process of trying to address some of these issues, to remember that the issues particular to women are singular and must be addressed in a coordinated way.
