The Commissioners present at the briefing were: Tracy Robinson, Chair of the Commission and Rapporteur on the Rights of Women, Dinah Shelton, Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and Rosemary Antoine, Rapporteur for Canada, and for Social and Economic Rights.

Watch the video: http://www.oas.org/es/cidh/audiencias/TopicsList.aspx?Lang=en&Topic=15

March 27, 2012

For immediate release

(Ottawa) The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) and the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) will appear tomorrow before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in Washington D.C. to provide a thematic briefing on the subject of the disappearances and murders of Aboriginal women and girls in British Columbia, Canada.

Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, President of NWAC, said “The focus of this first briefing with the Inter-American Commission  is on British Columbia for two reasons:

First, because more than one quarter of the disappearances and murders that NWAC has documented for the whole country occurred in British Columbia. It is also well known that there has been a concentration of killings in several locations in the province, in the Downtown Eastside and along the Highway of Tears.
Secondly, it is in British Columbia that the first and only inquiry into police and criminal justice failures with respect to disappearances and murders of women has been appointed.  NWAC and other Aboriginal organizations have learned a sad lesson from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, one that reveals British Columbia’s unwillingness to respect the rights of Aboriginal women to participate fully and equally in judicial processes that address their interests and rights.

NWAC hoped that the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry would provide an opportunity to shed light on the systemic failures of the police and criminal justice system to deal with the racialized and sexualized violence that Aboriginal women and girls experience and become a model for other jurisdictions. For that reason, NWAC applied for, and was granted, full standing at the Inquiry.

Unfortunately, however, both the Government of British Columbia and the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry further violated the rights of Aboriginal women and girls, by refusing NWAC funding for its legal counsel, and by appointing “independent counsel” to speak for Aboriginal women, without our consent.  The recently announced decision of that lawyer to withdraw, and her reasons for doing so, confirmed NWAC’s worst fear that this Inquiry will not provide answers to the ongoing discrimination against Aboriginal women that threatens their safety and lives.

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry is a failure for Aboriginal women, with 25 publicly-funded lawyers now representing police agencies, no publicly funded counsel representing any of the groups that were granted standing, and no participation of any Aboriginal groups in the Inquiry.

We will inform the Inter-American Commission both of the nature and extent of the violence against Aboriginal women and girls in British Columbia and Canada, and also of the profound failure of supposedly corrective steps, like the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.”

Sharon McIvor of FAFIA said “the disappearances and murders of more than 600 Aboriginal women and girls across Canada is a human rights crisis. Governments at all levels have not put in place the measures necessary to discharge their obligations to prevent, prosecute, investigate and remedy this violence. Tomorrow we will ask the Inter-American Commission to urge Canada to:

• initiate a National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls that will lead to the design of national, cross-jurisdictional mechanisms and protocols for police and justice officials and to an action plan that will address the crisis of violence, and the social and economic disadvantages of Aboriginal women and girls – including poverty, inadequate housing, low educational attainment, inadequate child welfare policies, and over-criminalization;

• ensure inter-jurisdictional and inter-agency coordination of policing and law enforcement and establish improved federal, provincial, and territorial police accountability mechanisms that include both civilian oversight and civilian investigation, particularly for adherence with constitutional requirements of equal protection and access to justice;

• establish a federal mechanism for investigations into misconduct and discrimination within the criminal justice system and police forces;

• co-operate with civil society groups endeavoring to end violence against Aboriginal women and girls in Canada and ensure the full participation of Aboriginal women and Aboriginal organizations, with representatives of their own choosing, within national and provincial inquiries and any other related commissions or inquiries dealing with their rights.

NWAC and FAFIA have been assisted in preparation for this briefing by Caroline Bettinger-Lopez from the University of Miami Human Rights Clinic. Ms. Bettinger-Lopez is an expert on the obligations of states to exercise due diligence to prevent, prosecute, investigate and remedy violence against women. She was counsel in the case of Jessica Lenahan (formerly Gonzalez) against the United States, which was decided by the Inter-American Commission in August 2011.

The hearing will take place on March 28 between 9 and 10 a.m. in the Padilha Vidal B room at the GSB Building of the Organizations of American States, in Washington D.C. The hearing will be live-streamed on the IACHR website at: http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/coverage.asp.

‘Disappearances and Murders of Aboriginal Women and Girls in Canada’ : FAFIA Submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

After many years of work on this issue by so many Aboriginal women, family members, and allies, we are pleased that the United Nations Committee has decided to intervene. We hope that the Committee will be able to assist Canada to address the crisis of human rights violations against Aboriginal women and girls.

On 8 February 2012, FAFIA and NWAC wrote to Madame Pimentel, Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women to request a visit to Canada to conduct the inquiry as soon as possible. The letter has been supported by numerous organizations and individuals.

Letter to the Chair of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women

World trade and per capita income grew faster in the first decade of the XXI century than the decade before, but progress against poverty slowed down. A gap widened, due to the unequal distribution of the benefits of prosperity. Now the boom years seem to give way to a bust. The vulnerable did not benefit from the accelerated growth in the economy, but they will undoubtedly suffer the most with a new contraction.

The Basic Capabilities Index computed by social watch looks at basic social indicators. The 2011 figures show that economic performance and well being of the people do not go hand in hand. Progress on education, health and nutrition was already too slow when gross income was growing fast. While using the latest available figures, the Index does not capture yet the whole impact of the global financial and economic crisis that started in 2008, because social indicators are gathered and published much slower than the economic numbers.

Read more: http://www.socialwatch.org/node/13749

West Coast LEAF has published the 2011 CEDAW Report Card. The Report Card is released every year on the anniversary of the 1929 Persons Day victory that established many women as “persons” under the law and eligible for appointment to the Senate. For the second year in a row, British Columbia has scored an overall C- in women’s rights. The province is failing to meet its potential due to continued detrimental practices particularly affecting low income and marginalized women. The grade was awarded in the West Coast Legal Education and Action Fund’s third annual CEDAW Report Card, released today.

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The 2011 recipients of the Governor General’s Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case are:

Madeline Boscoe, R.N., D.U., of North Vancouver, British Columbia, has dedicated more than 30 years to improving women’s health in Canada.

Nancy Hartling, of Riverview, New Brunswick, is a passionate advocate for women, focusing on domestic violence and poverty.

Lucie Joyal, of Boucherville, Quebec, has worked tirelessly for more than two decades to eliminate violence against women and children.

Sharon Donna McIvor, of Merritt, British Columbia, has devoted close to three decades of her life to advancing equality for Aboriginal women.

Kim Pate, of Ottawa, Ontario, is an internationally recognized advocate for marginalized, victimized and criminalized women.

Youth Award recipient Amber JoAnn Fletcher of Regina, Saskatchewan, is an advocate for equality issues and social justice.

Congratulations!

The Nobel Committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 to three women: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman, “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” The Nobel Committee stated: “We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society.”