Statement made on 06 May 2010 by Senator Rose-Marie Losier-Cool
Hon. Rose-Marie Losier-Cool:
Honourable senators, the motion that I am submitting for your approval is important to me. This motion is also very important to many women and men for whom Haiti is represented by the faces and names of people who experienced the January earthquakes as a cruel natural catastrophe. This catastrophe took more than 200,000 lives and left more than one million people homeless. It also turned the first page in the country's reconstruction. Everyone is full of hope for a brighter tomorrow.
I remember well the government leader's reply of March 30: She could not imagine that the reconstruction of Haiti would not involve women. I thank her for her honesty and know that, in addition to the good intentions, she hopes, as I do, that the Haitian women will have a real and measurable role in the reconstruction and post-construction work.
In fact, these women constitute more than half the country's population; they have shouldered the responsibility for family and social cohesion of their nation for a long time; and for just as long have endured unwarranted abuse and unfair discrimination.
I would like to quote an open letter to major contributors to the reconstruction of Haiti, regarding regional development and gender-based analysis, prepared by a coalition of women who work in Haiti and in other countries around the world. It was posted on the site of the Observatoire sur le développement régional et l'analyse différenciée selon les sexes (ORÉGAND) maintained by Université du Québec en Outaouais, and managed by Professor Denyse Côté. Honourable senators, I cannot say it any better:
To overcome discrimination and to fulfill their roles as primary care-givers, Haitian women require and are legally entitled to a policy architecture that upholds the full range of their human rights, including social and economic rights. Women's leadership and care-giving work should be recognized and supported by policy and program mandates and transparent resource commitments that enable women to play meaningful, sustained and formal roles in all stages of the relief and recovery process.
Allow me to read another quote, honourable senators, this time from an article by Sophie Perchellet, of the French arm of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt. Ms. Perchellet writes with intelligence and a sense of deep justice. I quote:
. . . the challenge of this misnamed " reconstruction", is that Haitians must deconstruct the former system before even laying the foundation for a radically different logic . . . of a new Haiti, devoid of the neo-liberal capitalist model that caused the impoverishment and exclusion of the majority of Haitians.
I am sure you will agree with me, honourable senators, that it is time for a new beginning for Haiti, and women must play their proper part in the renewal process. I am not the only one who says so, because you can find the same appeal on IRIN news site, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. IRIN says that women's groups were noticeable by their absence from the international donor conference held on March 31 in New York, a mistake that we should all hope will not be repeated.
IRIN also says that more than half of Haitian households were run by women before the January 12 catastrophe, a proportion that will only increase because so many people died in the earthquakes. And yet since January 12, the number of rapes and instances of sexual violence against Haitian women and girls has risen steadily, jeopardizing their full involvement in building the new Haiti.
The top priority in involving women in Haiti is therefore to protect them effectively by funding militias or neutral forces to patrol the refugee camps, providing police and soldiers when needed to rebuild Haiti's police forces and military, and putting in place a true rule of law where criminals will be judged and punished.
More generally, the next step must be to develop and give training programs for health professionals, police forces, politicians, the army and members of the legal profession in order to identify, prevent and address any form of discrimination and violence against girls and women.
Coming back to the purely practical aspect of involving Haitian women, and in light of the past, present and future importance of their role as heads of family, I want to say that women must be consulted as the earthquake damage and the resulting needs are assessed. They know what they have lost and what they need, both for themselves and for the children for whom they are too often solely responsible.
Another priority that will facilitate women's involvement is the development of a health network combining the infrastructure of dispensaries, clinics and hospitals with sufficient human resources, whether local or on loan from other countries. I am talking about doctors, and also nurses, who are often more useful in most cases. According to Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health: Haiti/Zanmi Lasante, Haiti currently needs nearly half a million health care workers.
This health network should also have adequate financial resources and allow women and the rest of the population to have access to medical information and supplies, including reproductive health needs. Maternal and reproductive health is an essential priority in Haiti and Haiti is one of Canada's top priorities in terms of international aid.
Education is another essential network needing to be set up from preschool to university. Right now, simply sending the children to school will help them to feel safe and secure in the wake of the trauma they have just endured. The absence of children during the day will allow women to participate economically or socially in rebuilding their country.
The education network, like the health network, will have to balance the need for infrastructure for the schools and colleges with the need for human and financial resources. What good is it to have schools if there are not enough teachers or supplies? What is more, future generations of better educated citizens can only help Haiti and contribute to its renewal.
Another way of encouraging women to participate is to develop courses adapted either to their traditional activities or to non-traditional activities that will free them from the shackles of their history and allow them to take their place as equal partners with men in the Haitian economy and society. I am thinking of professional training for employment in information technology, in the financial sector and in other non-primary service industries.
Women also have a role to play in politics, which is a key element in many countries coming out of a crisis. Support should be given specifically to female candidates or women who are politically active in municipal, regional or national politics. This should include logistical support such as equipment, materials, telecommunications services and so forth. This support should also be of a legal nature, including training on international conventions and national legislation, which the Réseau des femmes parlementaires de la Francophonie, which I chair, has already started providing. Finally, support should also come in the form of education so that the female candidates or female politicians can receive training tailored to areas that are helpful or of interest to their electors. I am thinking of training in financial management, economics, agriculture and informatics, among other areas.
As soon as the Haitian political leadership gets up to speed, if not before, it will be important to develop and invest in lobbying activities by both civil society and experts, to remind the Haitian leaders that all policies, programs, bills and legislation must show equal respect for women and girls.
As for existing programs and legislation, they must be re-examined and amended as needed in order to ensure respect for gender equality. Furthermore, we must be sure to carefully examine legislation dealing with property ownership, including farmland, matrimonial property and access to housing, all important issues for women.
Honourable senators, the main theme or common denominator in all these initiatives aimed at ensuring that Haitian women are fully involved in the development of their new country is a gender-based analysis, or GBA. GBA is already a reality in Canada, where it applies in several departments. Status of Women Canada is its driving force. GBA is a structured tool that allows us to look at a policy, program, bill or legislation that has some effect on a significant portion of the population in order to determine if that effect applies equally to women, and if that effect is equally beneficial for women and men.
Gender-based analysis will play a critical role in building a new Haiti because it will give women their rightful place in the country's economy, society and government. For example, applying GBA to project funding will remove any possible bias in favour of projects that would primarily benefit men, such as construction projects. Using GBA to assess the funding and management of projects in Haiti will promote projects that allow or require women to be hired and prioritize projects that more directly benefit women, such as the construction of hospitals, clinics and markets, maternal and newborn health education, microcredit and women's organizations.
Gender-based analysis is neither a fad nor a politically correct trend. It is a tool whose usefulness has been proven in the 21st century and one that is essential to ensuring respect for women's national and international rights. Status of Women Canada has a small group of GBA specialists, and I am sure that they can educate the Canadian men and women involved in rebuilding Haiti, from nurses to project managers. Without GBA, any project that Canada funds or manages in Haiti will be doomed to fail in terms of respect for women's rights and their full participation.
One half of the Haitian population is prepared to participate fully in building a new country. I urge this august chamber to reach out to these women and to call on the Government of Canada to provide fair support along the way.