Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Perhaps. Essentially, I do see that there's an opportunity. I've spoken with many, many large philanthropists in this country, who care deeply about this issue and want to do something material about it. I know that there's interest, certainly by the Liberal government, but als

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We get that quite a bit. There are two Rachels in this world. It's pretty great, actually. Yes, the Dutch government is working to stand up a program of emergency visas specifically for journalists. They are doing this in consultation with a number of experts, including our Dutc

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That's a great question. Thank you so much for posing it. It gets right at the heart of the key core issue of the financial sustainability of independent news. I've spent quite a lot of time, both thinking on this question and working on it with philanthropists and fellow civil

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It's a very good point. Thank you so much for the question. Yes, it is true that there is a 250 per year visa program for human rights defenders. Journalists are one of eight categories that it is intended to serve. It's an excellent introduction to a world in which we have thes

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you so much. I also thank the other distinguished witnesses for their perspectives, and the members of the committee for this invitation. I am really honoured to be here with you, to share some ideas and to tell you about the situations and the work of the journalists w

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Just to pick up on that, one of the things we've seen in South Sudan that I discussed prior to our intervention there with Nicholas Coghlan, our ambassador there—fabulous guy— was media development. This is one of the ways we can effectively create internal pressure loops on thos

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'll respond to the point about the role of women, because that's very close to my heart. One of the points to stress in this is that Canada should also seriously consider a gendered approach to human rights work in the DRC, mindful that women and girls are often disproportionat

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Sunlight is the best disinfectant in the Congo as elsewhere.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We have an interesting situation in that we are funded in the DRC by the National Endowment for Democracy, the project manager of which is not allowed to visit the Congo. He is denied a visa every time he applies. The last time I was in the DRC, I decided to visit the national mu

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  A lot of people get their information from social media platforms that they access in a variety of ways. There is a lot of misinformation that circulates on social media platforms, which is one of the things that our programming works to mitigate against. Radio remains king for r

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That's a very good question, very apropos. The forum that I cited in my remarks was organized in February of 2016. At that point, we thought we were gearing up for elections in November of that year. We're now in May of 2018. The narrative is that there will be elections in Dece

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I do believe that is possible, but I believe it will take a significantly greater emphasis being put on this process by the international community than we've seen to date.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  First of all, thank you so very much for the opportunity. It's exciting to be here and a great honour to be sharing this desk with Roméo Dallaire. My name is Rachel Pulfer. I am the executive director of Journalists for Human Rights. JHR is an independent, non-partisan charity

Foreign Affairs committee  We have a few different strategies. Our methodology of media development is radical grassroots media development, which means that we send trainers to work side by side with journalists. They won't be credible and they won't build the trust or confidence of the sector if they're

Foreign Affairs committee  No, we were never in Afghanistan. We are now working very productively with a woman in northern Ontario who has done grassroots regional media development initiatives in Afghanistan. She is doing training with aboriginal communities, so we're practising what we preach at home. A