SRID Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Development of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

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1540

The Chair (Mr. Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Lib.))

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift (Senior Policy Analyst, World Vision Canada)

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1545

The Chair

Mr. Ernie Regehr (Executive Director, Project Ploughshares)

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1550

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1555

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1600

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1605

The Chair

Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, Canadian Alliance)

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1610

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

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1615

Mr. Ernie Regehr

Mr. Yves Rocheleau (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

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Mr. Ernie Regehr

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1625

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

The Chair

Ms. Colleen Beaumier (Brampton West—Mississauga, Lib.)

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Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Ms. Colleen Beaumier

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Ms. Colleen Beaumier

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Mr. Ernie Regehr

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Ms. Colleen Beaumier

Mr. Ernie Regehr

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP)

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

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1640

Ms. Alexa McDonough

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Mr. Ernie Regehr

The Chair

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan (York North, Lib.)

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1645

Mr. Ernie Regehr

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Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

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1655

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan

Mr. Ernie Regehr

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan

The Chair

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1700

Mr. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca)

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1705

Mr. Ernie Regehr

Mr. Keith Martin

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough

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Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Ms. Alexa McDonough

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Mr. Keith Martin

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Mr. Keith Martin

Ms. Kathy Vandergrift

Mr. Keith Martin

The Chair

Mr. Ernie Regehr

The Chair

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CANADA

Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Development of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

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NUMBER 010

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

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[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Lib.)): Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are continuing our consideration of human rights and development in Sudan.

    Our witnesses for today will be Ernie Regehr, executive director of Project Ploughshares, who is making his second appearance before a House committee, having appeared before the foreign affairs committee earlier today on missile defence; and from World Vision Canada we have Kathy Vandergrift, senior policy analyst. We welcome you both.

    I would also like to welcome, because it is not usual for us to have such a distinguished parliamentary delegation from other countries, a 15-member delegation from four countries in central and eastern Europe, accompanied by senior officials. They are in Ottawa for two days and are here attending this hearing. We trust our hearing will provide them with some representation as to how parliamentary hearings are conducted in Canada. We welcome you with us today.

    Kathy Vandergrift will be our first witness. Welcome, Kathy.

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift (Senior Policy Analyst, World Vision Canada): Thank you.

    I certainly appreciate the interest of this committee in pursuing its study of Sudan. I was here once before, and I'm happy to pick up where the situation is in Sudan right now.

    As I indicated in my written submission, I would like to focus on four main points. The high hopes for peace in Sudan, I think, require that we move from a very fragile peace process to something that may produce sustainable peace.

    I think you heard an optimistic view of the peace process last week. I would say within the NGO community it is a very cautious optimism about the current process, and considering that it may be fragile, we are looking at ways we can support the peace process. The areas I want to address today relate to that.

    The first of those is the importance of civilian protection monitoring. This system was put in place when Senator Danforth from the United States was involved in some peace discussions in Sudan. It provided for the establishment of a civilian protection monitoring team that investigated reports of attacks on civilians and tried to hold all parties accountable to the agreements they had made.

    The work of that team has been significantly hampered recently by failure to provide access, limited resources, and questions about its independence. I guess I would highlight the latter, the growing questions about its independence.

    Effective monitoring is a deterrent, and it is important to maintain public confidence in the peace process. We hear reports of continuing attacks on civilians, troop movements, weapons buildup that make people very afraid. So this monitoring of the agreement is extremely important at this point in time.

    In only the last two weeks there have been two reports of serious attacks on individuals in the eastern upper Nile area. One was an attack at night. It was reported that 59 villagers were killed, ten children and six women were abducted, and a pastor of a Presbyterian Church and his family were burned to death in his hut. This is the kind of report that needs to be investigated--it needs to be investigated promptly--to be verified. That is not happening. We have a couple of these reports now that are not being investigated.

    I guess I would draw your attention to the importance of whatever Canada can do to ensure that the civilian protection monitoring is done effectively and is done with some objectivity and independence to restore people's confidence in the process.

    I make a point that Canada has made civilian protection a high priority in its international diplomacy. We were strong backers of a report called “The Responsibility to Protect”. I would submit to you, as I did before, I think, that Sudan is a good place to try to put that report into practice.

    The second area I want to address quickly is human rights as part of the peace process. I think we continually hear, “Let's establish peace and then we'll deal with human rights issues”. I want to emphasize again that there are many human rights issues that are indeed part of the causes of this conflict and need to be addressed early on as part of the peace process and not wait until we have the full peace agreement.

    Civil society groups have been raising these issues to be included in the peace process, and as you heard last week from Senator Jaffer, right now there is no window for these civil society concerns to be addressed. When some of us met with the foreign minister of Sudan, he told us that the Machakos agreement does indeed contain statements about respect for human rights, and it does. But at the same time, newspapers are being shut down, requests for an independent review of serious human rights abuses in the Darfour region are refused, and women continue to report egregious violations of the most basic rights under Sharia law.

    As an example, recently there was a case of a 14-year-old very pregnant, almost nine months, condemned to 100 lashes for adultery. Sudan is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, yet we hear about these abuses, and we submit to you that something needs to be done in terms of addressing them as part of the peace process or it will not be sustainable.

    Again, we see this as a possible role Canada could play, and we do appreciate efforts that are being made by the peace envoy to do that.

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    The third area is an early start on capacity building in the war-torn regions. This has been a long war that has taken a heavy toll on the social structures in the affected regions.

    For a long time, NGOs have been advocating that we need more than relief assistance, but to start building some capacity in these communities if they are going to be able to administer their own affairs. Education, for example, is essential. It can be delivered through non-formal means--even when it is unsafe to build schools. So this transition from relief to development is very important if these communities are going to have an opportunity in the six-year transition period.

    We appreciate the efforts of donors to put together a package for the time the peace agreement is signed, and we appreciate the concern about quick impact. There is a concern among NGOs that this may mean a lot of high-visibility projects, so we would like to see an equal emphasis on the less visible social structure or social cohesion projects essential to maintaining peace in Sudan.

    As we look at the package coming into place when the peace agreement is signed, we would like to see Canada use its voice in the donor community to ensure attention is paid to those issues as well.

    The fourth area I want to address is the early demobilization of the youth involved in the conflict. The Watchlist on Children in Armed Conflict released a recent report on Sudan. It's a long document that is not available in French, but I have one copy that can be made available for the committee's use. It is a comprehensive look at what is happening to children in Sudan. It was submitted to the Security Council and to donor groups.

    We are recommending that youth be given a very high priority in the peace process, and that we also start with the early demobilization of child soldiers from both parties. Our experience elsewhere indicates that paying attention early to the demobilization of child soldiers can be a peace-building activity. This was raised with the foreign minister of Sudan when he was here, who expressed some willingness to look at this kind of proposal.

    With that in mind, my concluding comment is that there's a very important role to play in sustaining the very fragile peace process in Sudan, in the hope of achieving sustainable peace there.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Kathy.

    We'll now hear from Ernie Regehr.

    Mr. Ernie Regehr (Executive Director, Project Ploughshares): Thank you very much. I, too, am very, very pleased to be here.

    I did produce a paper and I'll give a copy of it to the clerk. I apologize for not having been able to provide it to you beforehand, but I'd be very pleased if it could be distributed to the committee.

    I'm also extremely pleased that this committee is addressing the question of Sudan. I think one of the most poignant experiences I've had was visiting villages in southern Sudan, or IDP camps, and being asked the question of why the world had abandoned Sudan. Radical abandonment is really how they experience the rest of the world. They may be in IDP camps in remote parts of the south, but they hear the news about Iraq and Kosovo, and all of the other places where the international community has put extraordinary attention, and they wonder, “Why not us?” So with the attention of this committee, and the opportunity emerging out of the Machakos talks, we hope we can provide increased attention and end the level of abandonment we've practised until now.

    Over the course of the past year we've had a small project funded by CIDA in Sudan in which we've consulted with a number of civil society categories or groups of people. It's not quite finished yet. We have one more consultation to do, but I thought I would focus my remarks to reflect a little bit on what those consultations have been telling us about the things in the peace process that are of concern to civil society in the Sudan and about the opportunities coming with the Machakos Protocol.

    If an accord is signed before the end of the summer, as we hope it may be, I think we need to be very much aware that it will be the beginning of the peace process. The issues in the enduring conflicts that have troubled and vexed Sudan for the last 50 years, of which 10 years were not active warfare, will not be settled by this deal. The best possibility is that they will create a timeline and a physical space in which there will be an opportunity to actually begin to work on those conflicts. We need to remember that resolving conflicts of this duration requires a very long presence there--a very long time. Virtually every solution we can cite costs money. So it's going to take a long time or presence with the people of Sudan and the willingness to spend some money on their behalf.

    A year or two ago, Francis Deng, whom all of you probably know as a major foreign leader within Sudan itself and who is now the special representative on Sudanese IDPs, wrote an article in which he referred to the conflicting visions of Sudan. He knows the complications of Sudan very well, or all of the economic and resource issues, and so forth. He was summarizing them and he said that there were really three sets of conflicting visions at the core of the difficulty in reaching accommodation with the rest. Those are the vision of the north, which traditionally has a vision of Sudan as an Arabized Muslim nation; the vision of the south, which sees the future as separate from the influence of the capital, sometimes flirting with separation and sometimes with levels of independence; and a third group, what Francis Deng called “the awakening African groups” in the north, referred to most often as the marginalized communities in the north. The challenge, he said, was to mediate amongst those conflicting visions, to bring accommodation, dialogue, to work jointly to foster joint work amongst them, and to try to mediate an accommodation about them.

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    We were surprised, in our consultations with civil society, at the extent to which southern groups expressed concern about the inclusion of all of those elements in a peace process. They weren't reflecting the view, “let's just get the blazes out and have our own peace and then everything will be fine”, because they recognized that without dealing with the other conflicts, a peace in the south would not be a lasting peace.

    The opportunities for destabilization of any kind of a settlement are myriad. There are numerous communities all with major and long-standing grievances. The availability of small arms is extraordinary, so that anybody who has a grievance and has access to guns can frustrate any agreement that comes along. So it was southerners as well as northerners, but we were surprised at southerners in particular, who wanted the peace process to be inclusive and to include the marginalized areas of the north.

    Now there are three areas of the marginalized north. The Nuba, the Abyei area, and the southern Blue Nile have been drawn into a set of negotiations, which Kenya is also sharing. There are some hopes that they will be included in the process. There are a number of other groups in the north that are left entirely out of that process.

    Kathy mentioned the human rights violations in Darfour. Darfour people are widely understood as Arabized northern Muslims, but they are in growing rebellion with the centre. So a settlement between Khartoum and the SPLA, which does not touch on these areas, will not be a settlement that endures.

    Another one of the concerns they raised repeatedly was the fear that a settlement between the elites of Khartoum and the elites of the south also would not endure. The great fear is that agreement between those two centres will simply be that, an agreement between two centres that don't have influence and effectiveness over the rest of these communities. The centralized, centrally ruled states, as Somalia showed very well in that region, are not effective ways of effectively dealing with the difficulties and the needs and the interests of those people. In the north there are conflicting interests, conflicting visions and loyalties among the people, and in the south it's the same.

    Another thing I didn't mention in the paper but that is extraordinarily important in that region is that Sudan is an area of extensive pastoralist communities. Well, this is the time when the pastoralist lifestyle is coming to an end. With scarce water resources and scarce pasture resources, you can't have your retirement fund to be a herd of 1,000 bulls eating grass and that you are never going to consume. You can't have wealth on that old traditional basis. In other words, the pastoralists are going to have to become farmers and settled in other ways. We're getting into an area when land will go into land titles and land claims and all of that. Even without war and conflict, it's an extraordinarily socially complicated time for Sudan. Those communities are not viable in their traditional way and change is coming to them.

    The civil society people have told us that what we want is a solution that radically decentralizes power, that puts it in the hands of real communities that have a real cohesion and that live in peace with their neighbouring communities when they're not interfered with by the powers in the centre.

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    A brief comment on security arrangements. A couple of years ago I was at a consultation in an SPLA-held area in the south between SPLA and civil society in that region. All of the civil society--there were churches present and others--were all loyal to the SPLA. All welcomed the liberation of their area by the SPLA from Khartoum and so forth. But what they said to the SPLA people who were there, who they regarded as their liberators and who they were very happy with, was that the level of violence experienced in their communities had not changed now from the time of war. In fact, in some instances it got a bit heavier, and those who were their liberators were now their tormentors. That's the phenomenon of the easy availability of small arms, the young men who are there and the lack of livelihood. So one of the most urgent and fundamental requirements in the transition period is to address that small arms problem.

    The disarmament, the collection of those weapons, takes a great deal of money, because not only is it finding and collecting the small arms, but it's entering into credible development projects for alternative sources of security and income for those people and their families.

    Another security issue that will be very important is dealing with a large number of militia groups that have been operating in the south. There are about 25 or so separate militia groups that are funded by the government or operate independently. They have thousands of soldiers under their command. They're not allied with the SPLA. Their loyalty to the government is one of convenience; sometimes it's with them and sometimes it's against them.

    These are not just mercenaries. These are people who are rooted in communities. They're opportunists. They carry out some heinous crimes, to be sure, but they also have followings and they have communities that relate to them. They're led--and I've met some of the leaders--by articulate, charismatic leaders. It will be extraordinarily important to include those people somehow in the peace process. The SPLA will have a very difficult time in incorporating them, but it's the movement of those troops into some kind of integrated force and demobilizing them that will be a very big challenge and that will require a big and a long-term presence.

    As I said, many of those forces, the government forces as well, have committed extraordinary crimes against people. I participated in the Harker Mission that investigated the impact of oil in that region and the devastation of villages that were attacked by helicopter gunships and thrown flames and burnt. People moved out of their villages and had to walk days across the swamps to find a higher level of land. There's been no compensation for their displacement.

    There is an extraordinary agenda of compensation, but also of reconciliation, healing and so forth that needs to take place, and that's a slow, difficult process that takes a lot of time and will also take some energy.

    In the transition period, one of the consultations was with women who also expressed great frustration at their absence from the formal peace process, although they are among the most active in civil society in peace activities.

    Senator Jaffer last week was talking about a group of women who had been mobilized by the Netherlands and so forth. The consultation we had with the women...we had invited those women from that initiative as well, north and south. On the day before the consultation, the northerners had been at the airport in Khartoum. None of them were allowed to get onto the planes, so they weren't able to be at the consultation. These were people who had met with southerners many times over, who were very active and who kept out of the process.

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    Perhaps we don't need to say much about religion, because in some ways, too much has been said about religion and the conflict in Sudan. But it's a very present issue. Whether they need conciliation kinds of activities or truth and reconciliation, those are things the Sudanese will have to decide.

    One other thing they said to us is that they need the presence of the international community, that the political pressure needs to be there. Both the SPLA and the Khartoum regime, in their own way, have strong incentives not to live by the agreements they sign. They both lead to eventualities or to potential results that they don't welcome. So the temptation to betray the commitments they made is great. They believe the international guarantors are absolutely essential. It's an American role, but it needs to be a much broader multilateral role.

    One of the strong pleas was a long-term presence, which only stands to reason. In conflict resolution literature, it says that for it to be effective, if you measure the time from kind of relative peace and stability to the peak of violence, you should really expect that it will take roughly the same amount of time. In other words, it's an even pyramid to get back to relative peace and stability again. In Sudan, that goes back to 1956, so that puts us a long way into the future.

    The point is that the international community needs to be there and present. Canada needs to be there and present, and we need to be open to spending significant amounts of money. I'm very pleased at some of the skills that Canada possesses and the federalism issue earlier on, on the resource sharing related to the oil question. Those are all technical skills that it's very good for us to be there. I think in getting all these diverse interests together and communities together is a long, transformative activity that requires a long-term presence and a commitment not to abandon them.

    Thank you.

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    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Regehr.

    For the benefit of our parliamentary guests from Europe, the procedure now is that we have questions from members of this committee, but we begin with questions from members of the opposition parties. The first questions will be from the two opposition members. Then we will have a government question and then we will alternate.

    Deepak.

    Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses.

    Sudan is one of those countries where a clash of cultures has taken place, which is, as you pointed out, Ernie, between the Arabs and the blacks. It's one of those areas where it is part of sub-Sahara, but it is in the Arab zone too. This has been the crux of the problem at any given time in that country.

    I have a strong Sudanese community in my riding that has settled here from the south. They come to my office and we talk a lot about it. Nevertheless, I have also seen the divide, and it's a real divide. The other countries have the Sahara Desert as a dividing line between the north and south, but over here you don't have a dividing line. They live together, and henceforth there is an artificial dividing line, but it seems to create a division in the nation, the north and the south, including, as you mentioned, other black communities that are Muslims, but not near this thing. Nevertheless, it's one of those countries facing that problem in Africa.

    Let me ask you one question and another question in reference to what you just talked about, the Harker report in reference to Talisman. In all honesty, will there be, from your point of view, ever, in trying to build this divide, a real peace in that country, or will it come to the point where it will become a failed state like Sudan or Somalia? At one time we never felt that could happen. Could there be a long-term possibility of that? Could there be a possibility for that nation to break up into two portions?

    My point of view is that federation may be a good answer, but I do not know if that is an acceptable process. I'm just throwing out that question.

    The second question is the following. When Talisman was in southern Sudan, a lot of moral pressure was put on Sudan to provide some basic services to do good, and in all honesty, Talisman did that. It came along and did that. Nevertheless, the debate always remained whether the Government of Sudan was using the aid money for arms and ammunition.

    You have that portion sold to India. Now you have India, China, and Malaysia as part of that. Basically, the pressure that was applied has all disappeared. You can hardly apply much pressure on these countries for them to do that. Would you not say that for some reason we may have lost that, considering what the Harker report said on this thing?

    I leave those questions to both of you to answer from your experience working in that area.

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    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: I'll start and then I'll let Ernie answer.

    Yes, in terms of boundaries, the divisions in Sudan are artificial and there are these different cultural groups. But when you speak with them, they always point to a period of 10 years when there was a functioning democracy and people did get along.

    I guess I would point to the work that was done in the south between different groups to find ways of establishing peace and living with one another among the tribal divisions in the south. I don't think the Sudanese people believe it's impossible for them to live together in peace.

    On the question of divide, well, that is why the referendum is in the peace agreement after six years. I think the position is that the people of the south have the opportunity to make that decision themselves after six years. I wouldn't want to prejudge the outcome of that. You will find different views in the south on that question, whether the unitary state or the divided state.

    In terms of your second question, revisiting the Talisman question, certainly both of us were part of the groups that first engaged directly with Talisman. I want to repeat that because I think it's important that that be understood. It was an attempt, first, to engage with them in terms of ways they could work there that would not contribute to the war.

    There are differing views about how much moral pressure they actually did put on the government. I think many people would assess that the harm done by the resources that the government gave and the government's efforts to protect those oil fields were much greater than the little bit of humanitarian assistance they provided. That's one judgment, but there are others on that one.

    In terms of the pressure disappearing, when Talisman left, the Government of Sudan was very upset about it. The situation in terms of some of these issues is certainly no worse now than it was when Talisman was there.

    The Talisman question I think also has to be seen on the larger agenda. I think it has raised very much the question of how you do commerce in zones of conflict. Certainly the NGO community in Canada is still engaged with our foreign affairs department on the fact that Canada's laws are inadequate to deal with this question.

    I would highlight for you and ask you to read the judgment in the court in the United States where Sudanese had taken Talisman to court. The first question Talisman raised was trying to move that trial to Canada. The judge looked very carefully at Canadian law and Sudanese law and on whether to move it to Canada or Sudan, and the judge concluded that the law in Canada was not adequate to move that trial to Canada.

    For me, as a Canadian, that's embarrassing. Our laws on the question of protecting human rights by commerce in conflict were not adequate to move the trial to Canada. I think that's a question this country has to address.

    I would highlight, on the larger question, that there's now an evaluation report by the World Bank also highlighting that its role in terms of extractive industries in developing countries needs to change dramatically. It suggested the World Bank not fund those projects but look at the governance issues. Those are the exact questions we were raising with Talisman.

    I don't think the issues are settled, but it has drawn attention very much to an area that we need to do a lot more work on in Canada and internationally. I guess at least I welcome the initiative at the G-8 to provide greater transparency by extractive industries working in developing countries. It's a start. But that's probably a whole other debate we could have.

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    Mr. Ernie Regehr: If I may, I have a very brief response. Can there ever be peace in Sudan? Sudan is a failed state. There are large portions of the country in which there is no governmental presence. It effectively is that currently.

    I think there will never be peace in Sudan in the sense that there will be a government in Khartoum that makes all the decisions and calls all the shots and directs the country. That's not possible. When there's peace in the south, whether it's as an autonomous region, as part of the government, or as an independent state, it also won't have a government that's in Juba and makes all of the decisions for the western upper Nile, and Gharb Bahr al Ghazal, and around the whole country.

    I think Somalia is in the process, and one hopes they will be successful at it, of reinventing the kind of government for that kind of state. It's a radically decentralized form of government. It functions much more with local district control and gradually building up. That's the kind of solution we're going to be looking for and seeing in Sudan.

    You can make that decision, but to make it operate requires a great deal of time and resources and effort. There needs to be a lot of training of local councillors and officials and decision-making processes created locally. A wide range of those kinds of resources must be brought in to make that effective.

    Also on the Talisman question, I was never among those who thought Talisman's getting out of Sudan was somehow going to solve the problem of oil; it was just going to be somebody else's problem. Also, it wasn't our experience in our dialogue and meetings with Talisman a little while back that they had very effective pressure. They said to us, “When we talk to the government, we engage them on the peace process and we engage them on human rights.” We had a very simple request to them. We said, “To make that credible, next time you talk to the government about human rights, just put a human rights expert on your delegation to give it some credibility and they can give feedback. You guys drill for oil; you're not human rights experts. But if you want to talk to them about it, put a human rights person on your delegation or put someone who knows the peace process on your delegation.”

    That was not something they were open to doing. I personally was kind of embarrassed and wondered what we were going to do if they said yes to that. It was almost a bit too easy for them, but it was a very simple and minimalist request to them, which they didn't take. On the notion that they had influence on the government, I haven't seen the evidence for it.

    The Chair: Mr. Rocheleau.

[Translation]

    Mr. Yves Rocheleau (Trois-Rivières, BQ): I would like to thank the witnesses for coming before us today to help us enrich our thought process. I have three questions.

    The first bears on a point that you have emphasized rather strongly which is the circulation of weapons. You mentioned reports on incessant aggressions against civilians, troop movements and the accumulation of weapons. I would like to know where those weapons come from.

    Are there private groups or neighbouring governments or governments further away encouraging this conflict and seeing to it that people can be equipped to continue causing damage especially in the civilian area? Are those weapons circulating only amongst the military or are they in civilian hands?

    Second, in point IV, you mention the early demobilization of the young participants in these conflicts. You say that this experience in early demobilization also has a negative effect if the children just leave the armed forces only to go back home or wind up on the street somewhere. It is far more probable that they will then join other rebel groups and contribute to getting the conflict going again.

    I would like to know what the situation is vis-à-vis social organization in that country. Does it mean there are no schools? Normally, children go to school. Does that mean the situation has deteriorated so much that you do not even have that minimum organization that means that children can be where they should be?

    Third, concerning a question that was raised about the referendum that will be held in six years on the south's secession, will this referendum be held by the south, the north or by both together? Is there political maturity in that respect? We know very well, in Quebec, that you need a lot of maturity to hold a serious referendum. Does that country have the democratic maturity necessary so that a fair referendum can be held where both parties, the yes and the no sides, will have enough people on both sides in order to do things equally and equitably?

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[English]

    Mr. Ernie Regehr: I will refer the issues relating to children to Kathy to respond.

    On the question of arms, I once saw an AK-47 held by an SPLA soldier who showed a group of us that there were FRELIMO markings on it. There was a marking on that gun from Namibia. What was the name of the liberation group? Anyway, it was from the Namibian civil war. In other words, that AK-47 had fought in the 1960s in the Mozambique war and in the 1970s in the Namibian war and in the 1980s and into the 1990s in the SPLA war.

    That's an explanation of where the guns come from. There are huge volumes of guns in the continent and they circulate. There are vibrant businesses of people who circulate these weapons. The most difficult part is the regular supply of ammunition, but the guns are freely circulated. I think that's the primary source of weapons.

    John Garang of the SPLA once said he was always pleased when somebody sold the Government of Sudan a new big round of weapons because that replenished his supply. That's another place where they get most or a large portion of their supplies. It is typical of these kinds of wars to capture them from government on the battlefield and from armouries and so forth. In the point of view of the southerners, I think that's where the majority of the arms come from.

    I think you had that question last week. I think Laird Hindle answered the point that there are some East European sources. Iran certainly funded some weapons purchases. China did as well. I don't think there are major suppliers to Sudan, nor have there been for a long time, from many western sources. Maybe there are some clandestine ones.

    I have one brief comment on the referendum. The point you make is absolutely important, but not in the sense of whether or not the Sudanese have the maturity to make choices. They have the clear capacity to make choices about their own future. I think the process of getting the question right--and we all understand the issues around that--and of identifying voters and registration, all of those things, takes a huge amount of work to organize.

    Just as an aside, one of the ways to guarantee a referendum vote that says no to unity and yes to separation is to continue to abandon the south during the transition period. If the project fails entirely, that will simply be confirmation that it doesn't work and that will be the end of it.

    I would be happy with that solution if it were a solution, but it won't be a solution because an underdeveloped south on its own has as many fissures and divisions in it as an underdeveloped Sudan north and south has in it. It will simply be a repeat of the same problems.

º  (1625)  

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: On the arms question, I would just add that certainly in recent years some of the larger weapons also came from Russia into the GOS there.

    In terms of your questions about the young people, you are right, we do need to have a strategy that provides alternative livelihoods, which is why I was indicating that education needs to be part of the relief response. That doesn't necessarily mean building schools, which can be insecure places. You can provide education in non-formal ways. Working with young people to take them out of forces and give them alternate livelihoods is a growing area of work among humanitarian agencies.

    The reason I wanted to highlight early demobilization now is what we are learning from other conflicts. You will hear the stories from the Congo, for example, where many young people just left the forces. There was no program. They were not part of and didn't receive any support. The evidence is very clear now that within a very short time they rejoined other rebel forces.

    So the importance of paying special attention to young people, not treating them just the same as adults, and doing it in an orderly way and doing it early, is that it can be a good investment in peace down the line. That's why we are putting a priority on that particular program, but it is a comprehensive approach, working with the community, working with the young people, and providing livelihoods where we can.

    For example, in some cases they can be involved in de-mining. There is an agreement between the parties now to start the de-mining program. It would be excellent to involve many of these former child soldiers in the de-mining initiatives. That has been done in Cambodia and other places quite successfully, but we want to start that process early to try to prevent them from moving into other rebel groups.

    The Chair: Colleen.

    Ms. Colleen Beaumier (Brampton West—Mississauga, Lib.): Thank you.

    I am afraid I'm going to sound a little confrontational in all of this. When we were in Sudan, we met with seven or eight NGOs. I appreciated your answer. You were at least not quite as hypocritical about the Talisman situation as many have been. We asked two questions. We asked at least seven NGOs, if Talisman left, would Sudan be better off or worse off? The second question we asked was, has Talisman improved the conditions of the government in Sudan?

    The NGOs answered that five years ago Sudan was a bad government and today it's a government with some bad people. I don't know about you, but that looks like progress to me. They felt that Talisman was serving a useful purpose there, that maybe it could have done more, should have done more, but it was a start.

    However, the night before, we met with another NGO group. They decided they would meet with us and have a drink with us, but if we named them or repeated anything they said they would flatly deny they had said it. When we got home, we gave the answers we had received from these NGOs and they all denied it. They all denied it, perhaps for the same reasons the group before had given us: “If we're quoted, we'll lose our jobs.”

    We talk about the terror of the Sudanese government, but we know they're a loosely defined democracy, which we know is a dictatorship. We're condemning dictatorships for that and yet we have our own NGOs espousing the same kinds of philosophies and firing people unless that meets their purposes. I find this all very frightening.

    Now Talisman has left and is talking about suing in the States because the United States has stricter laws. That makes me laugh a little bit in view of recent events, but the NGOs have been very silent now that Talisman is gone. I find this very difficult to reconcile and I'd like you to respond to this.

    Do you not feel that working with the present regime or a government in power and measuring progress would be more effective than trying to totally overthrow a regime?

º  (1630)  

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: I'll attempt some of the answers. I suspect some of those are directed toward me.

    In terms of whether some NGO said this, I think there was an exchange, and yes, there were letters back in terms of the firing, I guess. I cannot speak to that. What I would mention is that the UN human rights rapporteur, who is not an NGO, also made very strong statements in a number of his reports about the human rights abuses associated with the oil development. He is not an NGO and didn't get that information from the NGOs.

    So I guess if you look at all the human rights reports from human rights organizations that are not operational on the ground, that went in as human rights experts, they are not the local NGOs, and if you look at the reports that came from churches and you look at the reports that came from a wide range of agencies, there were issues identified.

    Again I would just repeat what Ernie said: none of us went into this sort of anti-Talisman. We engaged with Talisman. I think if they had worked with us on some of those issues, we could have prevented some of what happened.

    In terms of the NGOs being silent since Talisman left, I would like to point out to you that the question of commerce in Sudan was only ever one of our issues. We've been engaged on humanitarian issues, on the human rights issues, in advocating for peace, and in advocating for the EGAD peace process, and we have continued to do that. We have not been silent since Talisman. The media may not be picking up the story as much, but that's a different question. We NGOs have been consistently--and if you ask the Department of Foreign Affairs they will tell you--in dialogue with them, promoting a peace process and promoting observance of human rights in Sudan.

    I don't think the NGOs have changed their stance a lot. We are on the full agenda. We also still will continue to pursue the question of how you engage in commerce in conflict countries in a way that observes basic human rights.

    Ms. Colleen Beaumier: Would you acknowledge that there has been an improvement, though, with the Government of Sudan wanting...? I don't mean “acknowledge”, but would you agree with the report, with what we were told, which was that the Government of Sudan is making an effort for improvement?

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: I would say--and Ernie can talk to this--there are improvements in some areas. Access to humanitarian assistance has improved recently, although there are still some problems in some areas. Again I would refer you to the human rights reports by the United Nations in terms of that as well.

    Ms. Colleen Beaumier: I'm well aware of that.

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: So as for what level of improvement, and certainly our engagement, I mean, we did meet with Mr. Ishmael when he was here and discussed with him ways to improve human rights and improve the transparency of what is happening in Sudan. I highlighted today some areas that I hope will improve, because it's essential for the peace process that they do improve.

    Mr. Ernie Regehr: If I may, I don't think I can add a lot to what Kathy said, but always the fundamental question was not, “Is it good for Talisman to be there or is it not good for Talisman?” That's a secondary question. The fundamental question was, were the people of Sudan benefiting and are the people of Sudan benefiting from the exploitation of oil and from the export of oil?

º  (1635)  

    Ms. Colleen Beaumier: That was my question. I wasn't worried about if it was or was not good for Talisman to be there. The benefit for the people of Sudan is what I was talking about.

    Mr. Ernie Regehr: Okay, then, I'm agreeing. That's the key question. Did the exploitation of oil in the context of that conflict accrue to the benefit of the people? I think the unambiguous answer is no. It accrued to the benefit of the regime. It added to the capacity to import weapons systems. The Nuer people, under whose land the oil is, were expelled from their homes in huge numbers, with no compensation for the loss of their property, homes, and communities. I think that's kind of an inescapable conclusion.

    The Chair: Alexa.

    Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

    I'm a relatively new participant in the work of this committee so I haven't had some of the background on the examination of what's happening in the Sudan, including the visit from the foreign minister. I guess my question really is asking for further elaboration and somewhat more explicit information than has been referred to in your introductory statements. Specifically, I note your expression of concern about this civilian monitoring activity being undermined by inadequate resources, inadequate access, and questions of independence.

    I wonder if you can just be a bit more explicit about what that actually means, as well as in terms of any current role of Canada in those activities that could be and should be improved, and by what means. Specifically, I've been struck by a good deal of increased interest and discussion around the need for there to be some closer collaboration. I don't know whether an out and out notion of partnership is the right one, or better collaboration and perhaps greater complementarity between civilian monitoring and protection measures and the military peacekeeping activities. It seems to me that would imply improved communication, but also perhaps better training, each in the activities of the other, which would allow for there to be a clearer partnership and more effective activity. I just wonder if you could comment on that.

    Then I guess the final question is around this almost systematic exclusion of women on the one hand, but on the other hand there is the recognition that it is women who are often most adversely affected by the violence, the conflict, and, not surprisingly, who are most motivated to be more engaged in the process. I wonder if you could speak more concretely about some of the things Canada could be doing. Is it more of what we're already doing, but just more of it, or are there more effective things we could be doing than what we are now engaged in?

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: On the civilian monitoring system, as I mentioned, this was established as a result of some of the early peace initiatives by Danforth. Certainly it was advocated by many of the civil society groups, because earlier agreements had been made, as you know, to cease fire and stop attacking civilians, and they were just violated with impunity. The question then became, “Can we put in place a monitoring system?” It was a bit of benchmark to test how serious the intentions were to work towards peace. I think in that sense it has had a positive impact.

    Initially there were difficulties in getting it started. It was largely initiated by the United States. A few other countries provided some resources, but it was part of that era. Then we moved into the EGAD peace process. There were some critiques of it early on. Then it issued some really good detailed reports on what was going on in some of the oil regions of Sudan, and there were really detailed accounts of these attacks. After that, the group was denied access. So after one report that had a lot of detail in it, it appeared that there was in fact interference with their operations in that they were subsequently denied access.

º  (1640)  

    Ms. Alexa McDonough: Was there Canadian participation?

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: There is a Canadian on the team, but he is not there as a representative of Canada. The government here was concerned about the terms of reference of that group and whether it had the right skills in it and so on.

    Then it subdivided, and some of it works out of Rumbek in the south and some works out of Khartoum. There is an increasing sense that there are delays and that bureaucratic kind of procedures are used to stop it from being effective. The United States has sort of shifted its perceptions of the Sudan situation a bit, or its role there, and people are now concerned about that.

    I think in terms of a future direction, there is talk about whether it could report to the peace process. Could it report to the chief negotiators at the peace process? Could it be truly independent? Could it have the skills with it?

    It is just to investigate these reports, but that could play a very important role (a) in terms of stopping these attacks. I mean, I don't think it's coincidental that we are seeing these reports of attacks now that the monitoring mission has been grounded. And (b) it could increase the public confidence--and it's by both sides, by the way. It's really important to have someone who can inspect these reports of arbitrary attacks on civilians in Sudan. That's what its mission was. So we think it's an important role at this point in time. Maybe Ernie wants to say more about it.

    In terms of your second one on military peacekeeping and civilian...there isn't a military peacekeeping role in Sudan right now. Maybe in the future, if there were that presence. Right now it is just a civilian monitoring force.

    In terms of the exclusion of women, I think we are really supportive of the efforts the Canadian government has made and that the Netherlands government is also making to try to help women north and south to identify their issues. But then it becomes a question of how you get them on the table and how you get them addressed. I certainly support the efforts being made by Senator Mobina Jaffer to help be an agent in doing that. I think that could be an important contribution.

    Mr. Ernie Regehr: Briefly on the monitoring and the peacekeeping, I think if an agreement is signed and it's followed by a genuine ceasefire, I think the security situation will change quite significantly then and it will move much more toward issues of quite local security and criminal behaviour. There are the problems related to the proliferation of small arms.

    I think there have been some discussions, and some have proposed a more traditional peacekeeping force enter into the country. I haven't followed it closely enough to know whether there would be any appetite for that at the Security Council and whether that's going to move anywhere.

    In many ways that kind of a traditional peacekeeping force, particularly when it's centred in some central place, when the security situation that will be faced is very spread out and dispersed, is really more a police function. I think it will then be into training programs of ex-combatants into local police forces and organizing them in that way. What the monitoring role will be in that situation, I'm not sure.

    The Chair: Karen, are there any questions?

    Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan (York North, Lib.): This is all brand-new material for me, I have to tell you, and I find I'm a bit overwhelmed.

    Mr. Chair, I really feel I need a briefing, because I am finding we have witnesses who are coming before the committee, which we've just started, who are providing us with solutions to a problem that I don't really know that much about. Certainly, in some of the solutions you are talking about, you are talking about the problem as well. But I am kind of at a 101 level here. I didn't have my name on the list. What a change, right?

    Unless you have already addressed this, I'd really like to understand a little bit more about the responsibility to protect. This report is from the International Commission on Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention. What has Canada's role been in that, and how do you see that actually acting as a framework to encourage these sorts of things, or even what is laid out?

    So maybe do the 101 on this particular document itself, because I am a firm believer in monitoring. I do a lot of environmental work, and nothing happens unless you measure that sort of thing. You have your baseline, you get to see how things happen over time, and it also provides a spotlight on the issue, which is vitally important as well.

    If you would like to respond, that would be helpful.

º  (1645)  

    Mr. Ernie Regehr: Well, I can say a little bit about the responsibility to protect. I think Kathy raised it in her paper and it may well add to it.

    The international community is at a 101 level on the responsibility to protect. That is the idea that when people are in grave peril and are either not protected by their governments or are victims of their own government abuse, the international community has a responsibility to come to the aid and protection of those people. That's the kind of basic fundamental moral and normative obligation on all of us to come to the aid of those people.

    In my opening remarks I said that one of the most poignant moments I faced was in one of these camps and being asked why the world abandoned them when they were all keen on Kosovo, where lives had been lost but not nearly the two million that had been lost in Sudan since 1983. In one particular case they said, “These are southerners who are Christians”; they said, “We're Christians. Aren't you Christian? Why does the Christian west not care about us?” They have the feeling of themselves as being extraordinarily abandoned. One could go on and on about that.

    But I think the report on the responsibility to protect is intended to bring a new level of awareness of this responsibility of the international community to those who are abandoned and in peril.

    I'll leave Kathy to comment on the context within which she addressed it in the Sudan situation. But if I may say just one particular additional thing, some NGOs have in the past called for the southern Sudan as a no-fly zone. What's behind that is the fact that a great deal of the trauma and the creation of displaced persons in southern Sudan is the result of bombing by the Khartoum government by very unsophisticated means, turboprop aircraft, sometimes just kicking barrels of gasoline with a wick in them out the back and dumping them on civilians. That had absolutely no military purpose. It was designed for one purpose only and that was to make populations move, to create displaced persons, and to keep the population off balance and always on the move.

    Well, that would have been a very simple international intervention to stop that. With one CF-18 fighter aircraft you could patrol the skies of southern Sudan and prevent these slow Antonov aircraft from flying over and dumping their bombs. There would have been an extraordinary humanitarian payoff to a very limited kind of intervention had that occurred, but of course there was not the political will to do it, because we don't accept the responsibility to protect the vulnerable.

    This report that has been put out I think is part of a process of trying to make us and all countries more aware of that responsibility.

º  (1650)  

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: I was linking it to Sudan in terms, again, of putting the priority on this question of the protection of civilians. Who do we have around the peace table? We have two military dictators. You can have an agreement between these two people. This is what the Sudanese tell us is their biggest fear, that there can be an agreement between these two that isn't necessarily even in the interests of the people.

    I think sometimes the international community wants that agreement so bad that we may agree to something without putting the pressure on there to also address the issues the civilians are putting forward. It is to highlight that.

    Canada has taken a strong position to give those priority. I'm hoping they will engage in this process to really make sure there is a protection for civilians as we move into the next stage--and investing in the human rights monitoring is a big part of it, that there be attention to those basic human rights issues in Sudan.

    Those who follow it closely know that when there is reporting on Sudan, things improve a bit. Then when we can't get a report in.... So it does matter that there is reporting on what happens. I hope we really support that in Canada.

    Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Why has the rest of the world ignored Sudan? That question begs an answer.

    If I could, Mr. Chair, I've been on this committee the last couple of months, I guess, and I sit on the foreign affairs at the indulgence of the chair, but I've been finding some very interesting themes coming forward.

    Sometimes people's understanding of human rights abuses have a great deal to do with their own country's interest. Again, I offer that up. What other countries' interests are involved in Sudan, or not involved enough? I think you can draw the strings back and start connecting dots back to our spheres of responsibility and our own backyard.

    You talk about the problem of small arms. Well, where are those small arms being manufactured, and how do they make their way into those areas? There's a whole area of analysis. Whose best interest is it that this conflict remains in Sudan? Who actually cares if it's dealt with?

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: I can't resist that. That is why some of us were so concerned about what role Talisman Energy played and what was its role of complicity in displacement of people. A fundamental point: you change the dynamics. They could continue to take that resource out under conflict conditions, perhaps with fewer constraints than if there were peace. That's the dynamic of commerce in conflict that we need to get a handle on because the traditional motivations for peace are not necessarily there. This was a big factor in Angola. It's there in the Congo as well. It's more advantageous sometimes to continue the conflict than it is to have peace. That's the dynamic we wanted to address.

    Certainly there were human rights abuses associated with that, which I think in a situation of failed state we need to take some responsibility for. World Vision was feeding, for example, to be very concrete, 15,000 people displaced by that oil company. Why should Canadian donors raise that money when it was a direct cost? That's why we were making the link. That's why we engaged them in dialogue in the beginning, and they left that dialogue.

    I can't answer the question exactly why Sudan is ignored. Some of the larger geopolitical factors certainly played in when we tried to get Sudan on the Security Council, and there was resistance to that. You have some of your power bloc countries. I think that has contributed to it. It has never been seriously examined there. It is seen as a civil conflict in some ways. Even after the Security Council said that issues of attacking civilians were a matter of international peace and security, we still have difficulty getting Sudan on that agenda.

    I hear you when you ask if certain human rights abuses are highlighted because of our own agendas. I guess we wanted to look at all the human rights kinds of questions in Sudan. You might get a broader range.

    Certainly one of those you may be interested in looking at is the question of slavery. There's a recent report that has tried to very seriously document over 11,000 cases of abduction that might fit under the definition of the slavery convention. It is another one I didn't mention that is very much on the agenda in Sudan.

    The issues of women perhaps are highlighted by us because Canada has traditionally been very active on the question of issues of women.

º  (1655)  

    Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: When I say human rights, I don't mean it so much sectorally as perpetrated by nation states. Certainly, there are types of human rights abuses that one might be really concerned about, but not those. Then you have this matrix overlay of saying, in what part of the world is this occurring? You know what? Maybe we'll turn a blind eye. For example, one day of this illegal war in Iraq could fund two years of interventions in the Congo. So where do we put our resources?

    Mr. Regehr, do you have any comments?

    Mr. Ernie Regehr: I simply want to concur with the direction of your comments. I emphasized at the beginning that every one of the solutions we offered, whether it be small arms collection, providing local security, building up a police force, or entering into reconciliation-conciliation kinds of activities--every one of these cost money and resources, and we need to put it in there. However, when you compare the amount of money that costs to what we were talking about this morning, the ballistic missile defence, it's not even pocket change, it's so small.

    The perversion of priorities in our part of the world is something that is extraordinary and, I have to say, utterly inexplicable. When you sit down with somebody in a tukul in Yei, west equatorial, in southern Sudan and try to explain why $10 billion a year just for research--that is $10 billion with a “b”--on ballistic missile defence is so important but that minimum relief to the southerners there isn't available, you can't explain it.

    Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: It's not rational.

    The Chair: With regard to your question, I think there has been a pattern of international indifference and what might be called crimes of indifference and conspiracies of silence for some time now around the world.

    Sudan is a dramatic example in terms of the longest conflict in Africa, with two million killed and untold millions displaced. We've used the “g” word before with regard to Sudan--genocide or genocide by attrition, and if that has not been enough to act as a wake-up call for the world, one begins to ask what can.

    Sharon, you yourself have just indicated that you're just coming into this issue now. This issue has been and should have been on the radar screen for years now. We have a situation with regard to the Congo: 3.5 million killed over the last four years. It still doesn't make the radar screen. Rwanda--we know what happened there. This was not only an unspeakable genocide but unspeakable because it was preventable. We knew and we allowed it to happen. The killing fields are now exploding again in Burundi and so on--again, silence.

    You mentioned Iraq. Iraq had two experiences of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Anfal campaign against the northern Kurds in 1988 at the end of the first Gulf War, against the Shi'ite Muslims and Arabs in the south, and still we didn't intervene. One can go on and on. I think it's marked by a horrific sense of international indifference, if not at times even complicity.

    I think one of the reasons there was a focus on Talisman was because there was a feeling here that this was not just indifference in terms of Sudan but that we had a corporation that was chartered by the Government of Canada that may have been in fact complicit. Therefore, the issues with regard to Talisman were raised. That may have been a means of raising the whole issue around which the issue in Sudan can be highlighted.

    I think the pattern in the international community has been one of appalling indifference and silence. If this committee can somehow act as a wake-up call for Sudan and places around the world, we will have done something.

    I'm sorry for intervening on this, but I had to say that these things just anger me. Hopefully, there are two things that did grow out of all these killing fields. The first is the International Criminal Court, which has put perpetrators on notice that they can now be tried for their war crimes and crimes against humanity as of July 1, 2002. We have to take that seriously. We have a court that soon will be operational, and we have to put these would-be perpetrators on notice that they will stand trial for their crimes.

    The second thing is that this report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty has three aspects to it, and we have to remember the three aspects: one is the responsibility to prevent, which we don't often speak to enough; second is the responsibility to intervene if prevention has not worked; third is the responsibility to rebuild. These three responsibilities sometime overlap, but they are the imperatives that the international community has to always bear in mind.

    Keith, did you have anything?

»  (1700)  

    Mr. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca): Thank you very much, Kathy and Ernie, for being here again.

    I completely agree, Ernie, when you made the comment that the GOS, the SPLA, and the other groups in the south have very little incentive to carry this thing through to its end.

    My first question is this. Particularly on the issues of wealth and power sharing--the two major hang-ups over the current peace talks--what levers do either of you think can be applied, first internationally, and second, from Canada's perspective to bring both sides to the table to implement an effective peacemaking process?

    In my dealings, quite frankly, with both sides--and I've dealt with both sides--I don't trust them as far as I can throw them. Their behaviour has been reprehensible in the extreme on both sides. Can levers be applied to force these two groups to the table? I think both groups are profiteering massively from this issue.

    Second, should the notion of independence be removed from the peacemaking negotiations? I think the GOS certainly fears that. Egypt will not tolerate an independent south, and the country has a 500-year history under the Funj kings where the south was sovereign within a larger Sudan. The borders of the country were intact, but it had greater ability to function within itself. Is that a model you'd recommend?

    You could write to us if there isn't enough time to answer these couple of questions. If you know anything about the GOS's support of the LRA, which was up and then down, and give us an update on that, and also Museveni's support for the SPLA in northern Uganda would be appreciated.

    I had a very difficult time trying to get good intelligence on the ground. Maybe your groups know what's going on there to deal with that horrific situation.

    Also, if you can answer later, the money that's going from oil...is there any commitment on your part, is there any way we can lever the GOS to use some of the oil moneys for post-conflict reconstruction practices in the south?

    I just have an observation. When Colin, Roger, and I were in the Sudan, one of the observations I had was that the Chinese presence was huge. Second , there were a lot of brand-new Chinese small arms in the hands of the GOS troops. I'm just saying that as a point of information. I have seen the Chinese do this is in sub-Sahara and Africa quite extensively. They're insinuating their arms into the massive resources in the continent. The quid pro quo is that they're getting money and weapons from the Chinese in exchange for resource access in the south.

    If you want to write to us on that, it would be appreciated, if you have any on-the-ground knowledge of that.

    That is my first question, but I would really appreciate knowing what levers could be applied to bring these two groups to the table to implement what they're talking about.

»  (1705)  

    Mr. Ernie Regehr: I don't have a very good sense of the levers of pressure. They are at the table and they are negotiating. They have agreed to some basic principles. They are being pressured by their own populations, particularly in the south, to reach an agreement to end the fighting. The Sudanese we consulted made a very strong point about an ongoing international presence and put it on the agenda of the international community.

    I'm not coming up with anything that would be a more specific kind of stick or carrot at this time. Maybe Kathy can help with that.

    On the question of independence being removed, I don't think it can possibly be removed from the deal, nor can the opportunity to decide on independence be removed from the deal. It absolutely has to be there. I think it will be what happens in the transition period that will be the telling thing as well.

    It speaks to very many southern Sudanese who echo what you said about the 500-year history, that “We as a nation are an extraordinarily complex, sophisticated mix of traditions, and why should we abandon that to be sectarian in the south?” Many southern Sudanese feel that, but many also feel that they've lost all trust in the north and the only option is to separate. However, it's in the transition where that issue will be dealt with, and how it's dealt with will determine the way in which they can decide.

    I think if you take it off the table, it's back to the bush and back to the fight. I don't think it can be--

    Mr. Keith Martin: I just see these two groups profiteering so much from timber, water, oil, and gold.

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: I have a couple of comments that may be a little bit more specific. I think one of the reasons all of us are so strong on trying to strengthen the civil society groups is that they will put some pressure.

    In addition, Sudan wants investment. Sudan was not happy Talisman left. Sudan wants European companies. Some are moving in.

    If you look at the European NGO group as sort of the counterpart of what we have here, it has come up with some benchmarks for Europe reinvesting. Europe has sort of held out this carrot, saying if you agree at the peace table we will reinvest in Sudan. The NGOs have come up with some benchmarks that they want to see before that reinvestment happens. I think that's maybe an effective carrot.

    Another one is that the Sudan desperately wants debt relief. Canada actually holds some Sudan debt. Canada has a seat at the Paris Club, where right now Canada is one of the holdouts on Sudan's debt. Sudan wants IMF restructuring.

    I would say, let us set some benchmarks of progress before we do that, but it certainly is a lever of influence. Like you, I think many of us have been looking for positive and negative levers, and I think those are to meet some of these benchmarks. The benchmarks should not just be a peace agreement. They should be on the question of human rights. They should be on the question of that oil money actually going to help the people, and if that's the case, maybe Canada could advocate for forgiving Sudan's debts.

    The Chair: Ms. McDonough.

    Ms. Alexa McDonough: I know it's very late, and far from our chair apologizing for his very strong comments about the crimes of indifference, complacency, and even complicity, those comments are very welcome, or at least I want to express that view personally and not take up more time to repeat the same kinds of concerns.

    I did have one very specific question. You made reference, Ms. Vandergrift, to a recent study that documented 11,000 cases of potential slavery. I'm wondering if you could just refer us to that report so we could follow up.

»  (1710)  

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: Sure.

    As part of Senator Danforth's engagement, there was an international commission on the question of slavery and abduction. This has been an outstanding issue, and it does happen mostly by forces associated with the northern government in the south. So it is related to the conflict. That commission came up with a stellar report. A Canadian lawyer, Georgette Gagnon, was part of that commission.

    Subsequently, the Government of Sudan technically should have to respond to that report under the slavery commission, but it isn't happening. So a group called the Rift Valley Institute, which includes John Ryle, an African of U.K. origin who knows Sudan very well, and a Sudanese professor, began to build the database and actually document some of these cases. They recently released the start of that. I think many of us were shocked to find over 11,000 entries on there, but they are trying to document cases that in fact might have consideration under the convention on slavery.

    One of the interesting components, because it does tie us in, is that if under the convention on slavery the first government doesn't respond, there is in fact an obligation on the international community to respond.

    So where this will move when you pick this one up in light of the peace process is a question...but I don't think we should turn a blind eye. John Ryle's work certainly was stellar on other human rights reports. I think it should be looked at.

    Ms. Alexa McDonough: Could we get a copy of that report for circulation to the committee?

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: Yes, and I have the Watchlist report on children.

    Mr. Keith Martin: What is the World Bank study that you were referring to?

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: I will have to get you that one.

    Mr. Keith Martin: Could you? That would be really great.

    Ms. Kathy Vandergrift: An evaluation of their extractive industries program.

    Mr. Keith Martin: If you could just let us know where we can find it, we'll hunt it down.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: I wonder if I might close by asking a question to either of the two or both of you, about Canada's role in the peace process itself and the EGAD peace process. Do you think our role has been marginalized? Do you think there is more of a role that we can be playing?

    Ernie, I know you have some thoughts on that, and perhaps you might want to comment.

    Mr. Ernie Regehr: It's my strong sense that we've been radically marginalized, that we are not playing a major role. There was a time when we were more engaged, more actively diplomatically engaged, in the friends of the EGAD process. We're not one of the key contact states now.

    When you travel to the region you encounter the Norwegians. They are very active and very influential. There is the active involvement of their minister of cooperation, who is a very dynamic and effective person on that stage and who makes a major contribution.

    I've often thought that there's this sense of embarrassment when peacekeepers are sent to some place and Canadian peacekeepers aren't among them. Why is there not a sense of embarrassment when we become marginalized at the diplomatic level in a critically important peace process? It is critically important for the people of Sudan and for that region. It needs to have a much higher priority and much stronger engagement. I don't think it's too late for that.

    As I was saying earlier, in many ways it's when the Machakos agreements get signed and the transition period starts that the real peace process begins. That's the time for us to become aggressively engaged in that process again.

    The Chair: I want to thank both of you for being with us today. Your testimony has been very helpful. Your experience in the Sudan on the ground as well as the expertise you've developed have made a real contribution to our inquiry. Thank you very much.

    The meeting stands adjourned.