Rights Coalition Releases
National Action Plan to End
Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls
Women's Memorial March, Vancouver, February 14, 2019.
On February 6, the Canadian Feminist Alliance for
International Action (FAFIA), together with Canada Without
Poverty (CWP), and Dr. Pamela Palmater, Chair in Indigenous
Governance at Ryerson University, made public "A National
Action Plan to End Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls:
The Time Is Now." The National Action Plan, which was
submitted to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Women and Girls in December 2018, calls on the federal
government to take immediate measures to end the violence.
The
proposed measures are to match the scope
and serious nature of this "national emergency" of murdered and
missing Indigenous women and girls. They include increasing
funding to
programs that serve
Indigenous women and girls; removing discrimination based on sex
in the Indian Act that disadvantage First Nations women;
putting in place "a rights-claiming mechanism" that would enable
Indigenous women and girls to have redress when their rights are
violated; ending the abduction of Indigenous children from their
mothers; and enforcing police accountability to stop police
forces
preying on Indigenous women and girls etc.
 The authors write in
the
conclusion of the
plan: "The
crisis
of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls has been
created and is perpetuated by Canadian governments, institutions
and agencies. The infrastructure of violence is a complex of
racist and sexist laws, policies and practices that combine to
create a unique form of violent misogyny, and that permit
violence against Indigenous women and girls by both public and
private actors to occur and continue. Despite knowing the root
causes of violence, and its deadly consequences, the governments
in Canada continue to make conscious legal, policy and funding
choices that sustain the crisis."
In their press release, the authors note that
nothing
short
of radical emergency measures, will suffice to end the violence
against Indigenous women and girls, a crisis, they emphasize,
that Canada created.
Shelagh Day, Chair of the Human Rights Committee
of
FAFIA,
said: "Indigenous women, civil society organizations, and
international human rights authorities have repeatedly urged
Canada to act strategically and urgently. So far, Canada's
responses have been un-coordinated, piecemeal, and ineffective.
Our coalition is calling for a national co-ordinated action plan
to attack the root causes of the violence with resources to
support change and timelines for implementation. Nothing less
will do."
Lelani Farha, Executive Director of Canada
Without
Poverty,
noted: "This ongoing violence is a failure to protect the human
rights of Indigenous women and girls, and now we need human
rights action on the part of the Canadian government. We expect
our governments to live up to the international and domestic
commitments they have made to treat Indigenous women and girls as
equal human beings, worthy of dignity, respect, and
protection."
Dr. Pam Palmater, Chair in Indigenous Governance
at
Ryerson
University in Toronto added: "The extreme violence experienced by
Indigenous women and girls is no accident. Historic and current
practices of institutions and governments result in Indigenous
women and girls being treated as lesser human beings --
sexualized, racialized, and disposable. Governments have to be
willing to take responsibility, to be accountable, and to
dismantle laws and practices that perpetuate the violence.
Indigenous women's lives depend on it."
One of the key principles elaborated in the
National
Action
Plan is the demand that Canada must follow a rights-based
approach in addressing the problem of murdered and missing
Indigenous women and girls and that all decision-making and
planning must be in the hands of Indigenous women, who "know best
what is needed to end the violence against them. A key principle
of a rights-based approach is to place their voices at the core
of decision-making ... throughout the formulation,
implementation,
and monitoring of the National Action Plan."
Press conference held by women organizers in the downtown
eastside of
Vancouver before the Women's Memorial March, February 14, 2019.
The National Action Plan brings into sharp relief
that
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's claims -- before, during and
after the election of October 2015 -- that his government was
going to engage in a "new and respectful" relationship with
Indigenous peoples and that no relationship was more important to
him, were bogus. His government has failed on all counts
concerning Indigenous peoples and their hereditary, treaty and
constitutional rights. Many Indigenous people were persuaded by
the Assembly of First Nations and others to vote for Trudeau and
the Liberals in 2015 because of various promises made to
Indigenous peoples.
 One of these promises
was
to organize a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered
Indigenous
Women and Girls as had been demanded for decades by the victims'
families, Indigenous organizations and Canadians. However, from
the
get-go, the Liberals did everything possible to sabotage the work
of
the National Inquiry -- trying to hijack its agenda, underfunding
the
inquiry, pressuring the commissioners and staff, some of whom
resigned,
and refusing to allow a two-year extension that was requested by
the
commissioners to properly do their work. It was only through the
persistent demand of the victims' families and their
organizations,
Indigenous peoples and Canadians, and the tenacity of the
commissioners
themselves to do their duty, that the inquiry continued.
FAFIA, CWP and Dr. Palmater concluded their
Action Plan
by
emphasizing that the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Women and Girls must "take into account the
seriousness of the acts and omissions of governments in Canada
and hold them fully to account. The National Action Plan, which
is the priority recommendation of this submission, must be
grounded
in truth, including the truth that systemic discrimination and
violence against Indigenous women are instruments of genocide."
They conclude that the National Inquiry now "holds deep knowledge
of the violence and of the urgent need for transformative
changes," and are putting forward this proposal to
achieve that end.
For the joint submission click
here. To view the video of the submission by Dr. Pam Palmater
click here.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 5 - February 16, 2019
Article Link:
Rights Coalition Releases
National Action Plan to End
Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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