Citizenship and Immigration committee  Great, this is easy. I think it's also, again, that connection with local partners, people who have a deep understanding of their own area, of their own context, the people who are invested in creating change within their own environment. How can we look across sectors to ident

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Part of it is also what I started talking about at the beginning: addressing these root causes of migration. Again, it's putting more financing into local conflict prevention and trying to actually look at partnerships with diverse actors, and these increased investments, as well

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it also depends on what type of situation we're talking about. For example, many people may be in a protected situation of displacement—or even housed in refugee camps—who never resettle to Canada either, where the most durable solution for them may be to possibly return

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Actually a few years ago there was a direct connection between Colombian refugees and Canadian Mennonite churches here in Canada. MCC actually helped facilitate the sponsorship of a number of Colombian refugees directly from Colombia. One of the processes that made it very

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I believe this is something the committee probably has more expertise in than I do, but I think it also goes back to my response about domestic violence as well. What are we looking at—and maybe that is special measures—for people who need the most protection in the least traumat

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. Thank you for raising that. This is a very pressing concern. With regard to domestic violence, Latin America has one of the highest levels of violence against women in the world. Often, when women are fleeing, even in this migrant caravan coming from Honduras, a numb

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can't make that statement. My organization doesn't have a stance on that, but I would say that it would be imperative to pay careful attention to those cases and carefully study and examine whether women or other members of the LGBTQI community are able to access adequate prote

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the optimal situation for people, especially those who are fleeing violence or domestic violence, is to have as easy access as possible to channels that provide them safety and security as quickly as possible.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right...and situations where they have to undergo as little trauma as possible to access safety.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  At MCC, because we already do work with local partners on the ground, we can see the value in partnering with local people who—as mentioned earlier in the testimony—are fully aware of the situation and can speak with personal experience and are very knowledgeably and also have ac

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. One of the pillars of our organization is partnering with local grassroots organizations that actually do very good documentation and awareness-raising on where there may be gaps within institutions, especially what we heard earlier today from Uganda. Having that kind of i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would just like to say that this isn't my area of expertise. Our colleague Brian Dyck can also respond to some of these questions. He's spoken to the committee before. He is currently in Ethiopia. He did emphasize the need for Canada to be involved globally in presenting resett

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If I can just jump on this, a lot of times when we think about climate change-caused refugees, there are a number of factors that also lead up to their forced migration. Often, especially as we're seeing in central America, climate change is the last factor that serves to push pe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you so much for the invitation. Mennonite Central Committee, or MCC, is a ministry of Anabaptist churches responding to basic human needs and working for peace and justice. While our work began in 1920 assisting refugees fleeing the former Soviet Union, today MCC works wor