Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to engage in this debate on the crisis currently unfolding in Nigeria. I will be splitting my time with the member for Durham.
Like everyone else, the Government of Canada was shocked to hear of the abduction of nearly 300 school girls from the school in northeast Nigeria. The girls have been gone for nearly a month, four weeks during which heartbroken mothers and fathers have agonized over the fate of their stolen daughters, pleading, as all desperate parents would, for their safe and eventual return.
We still know very little about what happened, about where these girls were taken, about what their captors ultimately have in mind for them, but slowly the details are emerging, and these details are terrifying. We hear that teenage girls, no more than 16, 17, or 18 years old, will be sold, forced into marriage and robbed of their futures. They are on the cusp of joining the estimated 9.5 million young girls around the world who every year are made to become young brides against their will. This is utterly wrong, and we have a duty to say so.
The Government of Canada has made it a priority to end child early enforced marriage. Indeed, it is in line with Canadian values and ultimately in every nation's self-interest to protect the rights of all girls and help them fulfill their potential.
While in Nigeria last week, the Minister of International Development used the opportunity to meet government representatives, including Vice-President Namadi Sambo. During his meetings, the Minister of International Development offered Canada's continued assistance in the search for the missing girls. This partnership between our two countries is not something new. Canada has always been there for the government and people of Nigeria, having been very active in development work there.
We know that in many developing countries, children in general must overcome incredible odds just to survive. Without adequate health services, with little nutritious food to eat, more than six million children a year die before they reach the age of five. Also, it has been proven time and again that girls who are educated become women who earn more money and ultimately transform societies. The light of knowledge makes it possible to expose these bullies and cowards for what they are.
Canada too understands the power of education for these girls, and that is why Nigeria has long been the recipient of Canadian development assistance. It is worth pointing out that the violence in Nigeria has not deterred Canada from working towards its development goals. We remain committed to supporting the country's most vulnerable people.
While Nigeria just recently became Africa's largest economy, the rewards of such economic advancement have not yet flowed to its citizens. On the United Nations 2013 Human Development Index, Nigeria ranked 153rd out of 187 countries. More than three out of five Nigerians live on less than $1.25 a day. Women and children face particularly long odds in accessing health care, during pregnancy and delivery for mothers and for their kids during the critical first years after birth.
For the last 15 years, since the country returned to civilian rule, Canada has proudly partnered with Nigeria, particularly in the area of maternal, newborn, and child health. When the G8 launched the Muskoka initiative in 2010, Nigeria became, and still today remains, one of Canada's maternal, newborn, and child health countries of focus. Eighty percent of Canada's $1.1 billion in new funding for maternal, newborn, and child health programming is allocated to sub-Saharan Africa where the greatest burden of maternal and child mortality exists.
Nigeria has been a fortunate recipient. From 2010 to 2013, our Muskoka contributions helped to train 1,611 health workers, including nurses and midwives. They now have the skills to provide antenatal and delivery care to an estimated 100,000 pregnant women and newborns and to prevent transmission of HIV to an estimated 3,000 HIV-exposed infants.
The global community continues to chart a course for how best to reach millennium development goals 4 and 5 by 2015, and to build momentum for a meaningful global partnership that will keep maternal, newborn, and child health at the centre of the post-2015 development agenda.
As one step, Canada was pleased to renew its support to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria last December. As a key partner on maternal, newborn, and child health efforts, the global fund is saving 100,000 lives a month. Canada is proud to be contributing $650 million over the next three years to support the global fund's large-scale prevention, treatment, and care programs against AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
Later this month, the Prime Minister will host an international maternal, newborn, and child health summit that will shape the future of child and maternal health collaborations in Canada and around the world. The summit, called “Saving Every Woman Every Child: Within Arm's Reach” will be held in Toronto May 28-30. It will build on Canada's leadership and chart the way forward in three key areas: delivering results for mothers and children, doing more together globally, and real action for women's and children's health. Saving the lives of women and children is not only a moral imperative, it is the foundation for building prosperous communities for this and future generations. This applies equally in Nigeria, all other parts of Africa and, indeed, all over the world.
Even the healthiest of citizens will struggle without opportunities to earn a living, and opportunities to earn a living will go unmet without citizens who are healthy and who possess the skills required to keep a steady job.
Like many other African countries, recent high economic growth rates in Nigeria have not always translated into reductions in unemployment and poverty. Many challenges persist, from broken infrastructure and financial systems to a weak business-enabling environment, to youth unemployment, to environmental threats, to volatile resource pricing and food instability. Canada is working hard with Nigerian officials to address these issues by aligning initiatives with national and regional plans in order to support the country's ownership of its own development. The need for meaningful, sustainable employment, especially for youth, is also a critical issue and is addressed through Canada's focus on sustainable economic growth.
Canada is supporting improved technical and vocational skills, and increased business opportunities for the Nigerian workforce, with the overall objective of increasing employment and improving prospects for disenfranchised youth.
Nigeria is a country blessed with enormous potential, enough to give its citizens hope for a better future. With a gross domestic product that reached $510 billion in 2013, it is a country on the rise, a huge marketplace. That should be the headline news, but it is not.
Instead, today, Nigeria is on the front page for all the wrong reasons. The violence in Nigeria has had serious consequences for the civilian population, especially people living in the northeast of the country, the area where violence is most intense. Six million people have been directly affected by the violence. Three hundred thousand had to leave their homes and seek refuge in other parts of Nigeria or in neighbouring countries. The vast majority of internally displaced people are women and children.
There is no place in this world for brutal terrorist regimes like Boko Haram, for groups that perpetuate violence against innocent civilians under the guise of it being their divine right, if not their divine obligation. Such groups, such cruelty, such blatant disregard for human rights cannot be tolerated. That is why Canada is doing everything it can to help Nigeria bring back those girls.
