April 2018 – The Canadian Partnership for International Justice recently submitted a note to Ambassador Isabelle Hudon, Co-President of the Gender Equality Advisory Council for Canada’s G7 Presidency, to provide useful information and reflection material in preparation of the 44thG7 Summit that will be held in June in Charlevoix.
On November 16, 2017, members of the CPIJ participated in a public event and subsequent experts’ roundtable consultation with Deputy Minister for the G7 and Personal Representative of the Prime Minister, Peter Boehm. The event was held at Laval University in Québec City. In addition, CPIJ members met with Ambassador Hudon, on March 14, 2018, also at Laval University. The note, written by Fannie Lafontaine, Pascal Paradis, Janine Lespérance, Penelope Simons and Valerie Oosterveld, was then submitted to Ambassador Hudon at her request, on April 16.
The submitted note aimed at contributing to the development of Canada’s agenda and specific priorities for the G7 meeting. In particular, CPIJ identified three main areas in which Canada is well placed to take a leadership role:
- Preventing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) through increased criminal accountability;
- Ending corporate complicity in human rights violations, in particular violence against women and girls, through corporate accountability and remedy mechanisms;
- Using laws and legal mechanisms to empower women and girls.
These subjects relate to the five key themes that the Canadian Government has identified as priorities for Canada’s G7 Presidency, and are all most acutely related to the main and cross-cutting priority theme of Advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment. They are also central to the themes Building a more peaceful and secure world and Investing in growth that works for everyone.
The recommendations include notably the creation of an international taskforce on accountability for SGBV, which would serve to gather and identify best practices in the prosecution of this type of violence from past and present international criminal accountability mechanisms. They also include the adoption of adequately funded ombudsperson mechanisms, with the independent ability to conduct effective investigations, make recommendations, and impose sanctions on corporations and provide reparations to victims of corporate related human rights violations, including SGBV. The direction of foreign aid and international cooperation programmes toward supporting women’s legal empowerment is also recommended.
