UN urges Canada to curb violence against Indigenous women

ITK president Terry Audla speaks at a press conference following the Feb. 27 national roundtable on violence against Indigenous women in Ottawa. (PHOTO COURTESY OF ITK)

A new report by the United Nations says Canada has violated the rights of Indigenous women here by not finding out why so many of them are targets of violence.

The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has added its voice to a growing number of groups calling on the Canadian government to launch a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.

In a report released March 6, the UN committee found Canada to be in violation of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which requires countries to remove all discrimination against women in law, policy and practice.

Canada ratified the same Convention in December 1981.

To prepare the report, committee members Niklas Bruun and Barbara Bailey visited Canada in 2013 to look into allegations by non-governmental organizations.

The pair concluded that Canada has violated a number of its obligations under the Convention, including upholding the right of Aboriginal women to equal protection and remedy under the justice system; the obligation to combat and eliminate harmful stereotypes and the right of Aboriginal women to enjoy adequate living conditions.

The report noted that 31 per cent of Inuit women and girls live in crowded houses in Canada, compared with three per cent of non-Aboriginal females.

“The violence inflicted on Aboriginal women is often rooted in the deep socio-economic inequalities and discrimination their communities face and which can be traced back to the period of colonisation,” Bruun and Bailey said in the report.

The UN committee made 38 non-legally binding recommendations, including the call for an independent inquiry into missing and murdered cases.

National Inuit groups made public their support for the UN report, calling its release timely, following the first national roundtable held on the issue last month in Ottawa.

“In particular, [the] report reinforces the need to address the underlying socioeconomic factors that make us uniquely vulnerable to violence and abuse,” said Rebecca Kudloo, President of Pauktuutit, in a March 10 release.

“We hope the federal government will be an active partner in working with us to prevent more Inuit women from going missing or being murdered.”

But Pauktuutit has also noted that any inquiry should not take away from immediate efforts to respond to issues of violence in Inuit community.

“We know that there are too many Inuit women who are missing and have been murdered. We need to stop this from happening,” Kudloo added. “We need an immediate national action plan to address our specific issues, and we need this work to begin now.”

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami voiced its support for the UN’s findings, saying the report highlights the same concerns Inuit groups have expressed in the past.

“I hope that these findings will help to accelerate the work we plan to undertake together over the next 18 months, following the national roundtable on missing and murdered Indigenous women in February,” said ITK president Terry Audla in the release.

“We add our voice to the call for a national inquiry but insist that an inquiry be truly national in scope and demonstrate awareness of the specific circumstances of Arctic communities.”

In other recent efforts to convince the federal government, the Coalition of provincial and territorial advisory councils on the status of women called on Prime Minster Stephen Harper to create a national action plan to address violence against Aboriginal women in Canada.

The coalition, which includes Qulliit Nunavut Status of Women Council, says the disproportionate level of violence Aboriginal women and girls experience is a serious and pervasive issue across Canada.

“In addition to experiencing violence at more than twice the rate of non-Aboriginal women, Aboriginal women aged 25-44 are five times more likely than other Canadian women of the same age to die of violence,” the Coalition wrote in a Feb. 27 letter addressed to the Prime Minister.

“The high frequency at which Aboriginal women and girls experience discrimination and violence is unacceptable and requires a meaningful and immediate response from the Canadian government.”

During this most recent session of the Nunavut legislature, some MLAs called the territorial government to do more to help protect women and children from violence.

The Government of Nunavut has so far said it does not support a national inquiry on missing and murdered Indigenous women.