The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have released a report on “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in British Columbia”. The groundbreaking report analyzes the context in which indigenous women have gone missing and been murdered over the past several years and the response to this human rights issue by the Canadian State. The report offers recommendations geared towards assisting Canada in strengthening its efforts to protect and guarantee indigenous women’s rights.
This human rights commission reveals Canada’s utter failure on indigenous women. The report attributes colonization, poverty and discrimination as root causes of violence against indigenous women and girls.
The document, in part, reads:
The IAHCR stresses that addressing violence against Indigenous women is not sufficient unless the underlying factors of racial and gender discrimination that originate and exacerbate the violence are also comprehensively addressed. A comprehensive holistic approach applied to violence against Indigenous women means addressing the past and present institutional and structural inequalities confronted by these women. Elements that must be addressed include the dispossession of their land, as well as historical laws and policies that have negatively affected indigenous women, put them in an unequal situation, and prevented their full enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
Advocates also echoed the IAHCR’s recommendation that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration create a national-level, coordinated action plan or make a nationwide inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls—something it has been slow to do, despite the fact that Indigenous women are significantly over-represented as victims of homicide and are also three times more likely to be victims of violence than non-Indigenous women.
[ilink url=”https://bcmetis.com/wp-content/uploads/Indigenous-Women-BC-Canada-Report-en.pdf” style=”download”]Click here to download a PDF version of this report[/ilink]
