Time to add substance to photo-op feminism
Two days, two Nobel peace laureates. Only one got the press, although the other matter was pressing.
One day after Malala Yousafzai addressed Parliament as an honorary Canadian, Nobel peace laureate Leymah Gbowee from Liberia and Canadian-Iraqi peace activist Yanar Mohammed met Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
They were petitioning him for a small amount of money — $5 million — on behalf of two NGOs that launched “Canadian Feminist Action Lab,” a pilot project attempting to change how foreign aid is delivered to support women who are driving change.
Was Trudeau positive, polite and respectful? Yes, said Mohammed. “He listened to me to the end and said he was honoured to be in our presence.”
That’s a start. Did he commit anything?
No. Or, not yet, if you are the hopeful sort.
Their need was urgent because the NGOs in question — The Match International Women’s Fund and Nobel Women’s Initiative — say that out of $562 million gender-based funding provided by Canada, grassroots women’s organizations received only $1.7 million, or less than half a percentage point.
This matters because when bombs fall, large aid agencies — the ones that get the bulk of the money — are not on the scene, leaving grassroots NGOs — the ones getting very little — to tackle the injured, the orphaned, the impoverished, the violated.
This matters also because those dropping the bombs or supporting it are often us or our allies, but when it comes time to take in those who seek refuge from the violence, many of us and our allies rush to shut our doors. Helping grassroots organizations would help contain the flow of refugees.
“Women have become the invisi- ble victims (of war),” Mohammed says. “(Daesh) has brought Iraqi women to modern-day sex enslavement.”
Women, already second-class citizens under extremist governments and extremist religious oppositions, are victimized multiple times in war. If a woman is made destitute because her family has been killed, or if she has been raped and manages to return home, she becomes “disreputable” and risks being re-victimized by honour killing.
“The Iraqi government does not have an agenda for them,” Mohammed says. “It lacks the humane and feminist agenda. We know for sure women and children are escaping (Daesh) on foot and in order to they have to cross a mountain . . . Having walked on minefields, they come in terrible conditions.” Mohammed began to help women after the war in Iraq in 2003, she says. All she could offer then were a couple of rooms as shelter. Dividing her time between Toronto and Iraq, she went on to found the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). With help from Dutch and Norwegian governments, she now has 10 shelters for women fleeing violence. Her organization has helped some 500 women, she estimates. Obviously, that’s not sufficient. This is where the Canadian Feminist Action Lab would step in. Large development agencies typically liaise with governments, which typically dismiss women-led local agencies like Mohammed’s. The pilot project would identify 150 grassroots organizations around the world and give them modest grants. (150 to honour Canada’s 150th anniversary.)
Women’s rights groups innovate, hold governments accountable and build peace, the two NGOs involved with the lab project say. They remain underfunded — most women’s organizations in the world have budgets of less than $25,000.
“Women human-rights defenders are often at odds with their governments because they are demanding rights,” said Liz Bernstein of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.
“We want to give them the support to lead their own initiatives and issues that are important to them . . . in the spirit of partnership rather than seeing them as beneficiaries or rather than seeing them as a charity.”
Not using money to impose a Western, outsider agenda on local issues is a progressive, non-imperialistic approach with the potential to be most effective. It doesn’t involve a whole new bureaucracy, Bernstein says, and given the lower overhead costs, the majority of the funds will directly provide aid.
It’s encouraging to have a prime minister who says he is not shy about being a feminist. Trudeau’s 10-second Snapchat tutorial to men on how to be better feminists (“don’t interrupt women”) is also on point and highly shareable. But to be more than Mr. Feminism Clickbait, he needs to make specific commitments. To be a global leader who stands for more than photo-op feminism, he needs to articulate — and back up — a feminist foreign agenda, one that would steer away from military intervention, facilitate the participation of women in peace missions and peace talks, and empower women in disaster zones.
For Mohammed, the meeting with Trudeau came as a validation after her struggle for official acknowledgement as a messenger of peace.
“I was happy to be Canadian when Jean Chrétien said ‘No’ to joining the (Iraq) war (in 2003),” she says. “I will be happy again if Trudeau decides to dedicate funds to women around the world.”