World watching missing, murdered indigenous women inquiry

OTTAWA— The number of missing or murdered indigenous women in Canada has not escaped the attention of members of the international human rights community, who will keep a close eye on a national inquiry they say is long overdue.

“I think the international community in general is looking to see Canada live up to the human rights principles and values that it espouses,” said Meghan Rhoad of Human Rights Watch in Washington.

The United Nations and other international human rights bodies and non-governmental organizations have all issued reports on the nearly 1,200 indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been murdered in Canada.

Canadian families and advocates alike have used that degree of global scrutiny to amplify their calls for an inquiry — calls that until this year have gone unheeded.

The scrutiny included a stinging rebuke by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which released a report last year concluding the disproportionate amount of violence indigenous women face in Canada — including the high number of deaths and disappearances — constitutes “grave violations” of their human rights.

Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said the impact goes beyond borders.

“It’s a national tragedy, but it’s an international shame,” Bellegarde said Wednesday in Gatineau, Que., after the Liberal government unveiled the terms of reference for the inquiry and handed the reins over to its independent commissioners.

Dinah Shelton came to Canada to learn more about the issue in 2013 when she was rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States.

Its 2014 report added its voice to the call for a national inquiry.

“It took a lot of external pressure for something that should have been dealt with internally a long time ago,” said Shelton, a professor emeritus of international law at George Washington University. “Hopefully this will encourage others not to wait so long, when they have similar problems, to take this up.”

There’s another lesson the situation in Canada can teach other countries about the pervasiveness of violence against women, she added.

“It’s not limited to poor countries. It’s not limited to Islamic countries. It happens in countries that have overall good human rights records, and yet it still happens and it can still be very widespread.”