Women's Human Rights

By Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexNeveAmnesty

There has been considerable debate recently about the revelations that Ottawa’s Algonquin College (as well as Niagara College in Welland) has reached a lucrative deal to operate a campus in Saudi Arabia that will offer courses to men only.

It puts a third story about Canadian connections to human rights concerns in Saudi Arabia on the public record. That unenviable statistic is, sadly, not at all surprising. Amnesty International released a briefing paper this month in which we documented a sharp deterioration in respect for human rights in Saudi Arabia over the past year, including a serious clampdown on free expression and deeply troubling findings that Saudi forces that have intervened in the conflict in neighbouring Yemen have been responsible for extensive violations, including war crimes.

A new report released today by Statistics Canada shows that Indigenous people are six times more likely than other people in Canada to be murdered.

Amnesty International has long called for systematic, publicly available data on the Aboriginal identity of both the victims and perpetrators of violence. Such data can be crucial to better understand and eliminate violence.

When the first national statistics on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls were released in 2014 by the RCMP ("Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: An National Operational Overview")  the data was widely misrepresented and oversimplified in public debate. The numbers show a complex and pervasive pattern of violence against Indigenous women and girls. Amnesty International is still reviewing the data in the latest report, but we feel it is important to emphasize the following:

This month’s Amnesty International Book Club pick, Secret Daughter, is a touching story of three women, worlds apart but entwined through circumstance, loss and love.  In telling these stories, author Shilpi Somaya Gowda sheds light upon gender discrimination and its shocking impact upon the women whose rights are ignored.

Gender discrimination

Secret Daughter offers powerful insights into how Indian society values women and girls. In a culture that favors sons, minutes after the birth, Kavita’s husband takes her first born daughter away. Kavita dares not ask what happened to her baby; whether she was drowned, buried or simply left to starve. She only hoped the death came quickly. In the home she shared with her husband’s family she was given scornful glances and uninvited counsel on how to conceive a boy the next time.