Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I can. Let me take you to India, since you mentioned India and South Asia in your introductory comments. Haryana state, which is just north of Delhi, has one of the most strikingly disproportionate sex ratios in terms of missing girls. It also had an unusual government in po

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Goldring. First allow me to say that I'm not an expert on the Convention of the Rights of the Child, so I'm not able to really speak to the heart of your question. In terms of child marriage, the convention says that it's children under 18 other than, if its cust

Foreign Affairs committee  That's right. It's organized, but it's not done by the global organization. It's done by the national chapter of the Girls Not Brides coalition. ICRW in the United States is the secretariat, so we would advocate with our government. The same would be true of Girls Not Brides Eth

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you again for your question. When a young girl has been married, quite frankly, in that first year in a new household, she's establishing her position within the family. And so childbearing, having that first pregnancy, is uppermost in everyone's mind. However once that fi

Foreign Affairs committee  I wish I had more hopeful news for you. We do see movement. For example, if we take the case of Bangladesh, we see that the age of child marriage is increasing. So rather than girls being married perhaps at the age of 16, they're now being married at the age of 17. The age is inc

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. Quite frankly, that's why I loved the first question about the importance of focusing on adolescent girls and what was said by another panellist about the importance of voice. Adolescent girls know what their needs are. If they're given an opportunity to speak on their own

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Madame Laverdière, for your question. To this point, we are very encouraged by the formulation of the sustainable development goals, mostly particularly those indicators that focus on preventing child marriage and addressing preventable death, which we refer

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me start by referring to points that were raised by other members of the panel. It is important to work deep in communities and to actually be very grounded in order to understand the local culture, the customary practice, and the political landscape within communities and to

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Honourable members of Parliament, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today as you consider the important topic of child, early, and forced marriage, and the role Canada can play to end this harmful practice. I serve as the president of the Intern