The Indigenous Unist’ot’en land defence camp on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia has now stated that it expects a “militarized invasion of our territories” by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) today (Wednesday February 5).

The Unist’ot’en add, “Busloads of police have taken over local community halls, airport hangers have become RCMP training grounds, while armored pickup trucks and police dogs have been spotted in the area. Canada is preparing to use militarized force to steal our lands and destroy them, with the world as witness.”

And Michael Toledano has tweeted, “RCMP taking over community centers to stage militarized raid. A mobile command unit is parked out front.”

This RCMP mobilization happened during discussions between the company Coastal GasLink, that wants to build a fracked gas pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory, and the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, the legal governance body of this territory.

The Wet’suwet’en Nation has not given its free, prior and informed consent to the construction of this pipeline on their traditional lands.

The Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs have stated in this media release dated yesterday, “Coastal Gaslink declined to see this discussion resulting in progress. Therefore, the enforcement of the injunction zone is imminent.”

That injunction was issued by a lower court in British Columbia even though the Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed that the Wet’suwet’en never surrendered title to their ancestral lands and accepted extensive evidence outlining their hereditary governance system.

The Unist’ot’en Camp states, “We are peaceful people and we have every right to protect the land that defines and sustains us.”

“We continue to honour our ancient laws, shaped over millennia to ensure a sustainable relationship with the land; while BC and Canada fail to honour their recent commitments to reconciliation and to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.”

The Unist’ot’en Camp adds, “We are protecting our right to exist as Indigenous people, while protecting the land and water for everyone’s future generations.”

At this time, Peace Brigades International-Canada recalls statements of concern made by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, British Columbia’s Human Rights Commissioner, dozens of academics and lawyers from across Canada, and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

The UN Committee called on Canada to guarantee that no force would be used against the Wet’suwet’en peoples and asked that the RCMP and associated security and policing services be withdrawn from their traditional lands.

Last year, heavily armed RCMP officers raided the Gidimt’en checkpoint. The Guardian has reported, “Canadian police were prepared to shoot Indigenous land defenders blockading construction of a natural gas pipeline… The RCMP commanders also instructed officers to ‘use as much violence toward the gate as you want’…”

This potential for violence against Indigenous land defenders in the current context is of the deepest concern to us.

For updates on this situation today, please see the Twitter accounts of the Unist’ot’en Camp and the Gidimt’en Checkpoint.

On Wednesday September 23, the United Nations will convene a high-level meeting in New York City to mark the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women that took place in Beijing, China in September 1995.

What is the Beijing Platform?

The Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace produced the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

The 38-point Beijing Declaration committed to ensuring, “the full implementation of the human rights of women and of the girl child as an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

It also identified twelve critical areas of concern: “poverty, education and training, health, violence, armed conflict, economy, power and decision-making, institutional mechanisms, human rights, media, environment, and the girl child.”

Violence against Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders

The situation continues to be critical for women.

On January 29 of this year, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released a major new study titled: Gender-based violence and environment linkages: The violence of inequality. It found that “climate breakdown and the global crisis of environmental degradation are increasing violence against women and girls.”

Chapter 6 of the IUCN report, titled Gender-based violence in defending land, territories and the environment – The situation of women environmental human rights defenders, can be found on pages 162 to 180.

That chapter highlights, “Statistics provided by the Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders Initiative (IM-Defensoras) found that a total of 609 aggressions against WEHRDs were recorded between 2015 and 2016 in Mexico and Central America alone. In this same region, between 2012 and 2016, at least 42 WEHRDs were killed.”

It also explains, “Violence against WEHRDs in the public and private sector is interlinked with and rooted in social, economic and political power relations, including gender discrimination, an unequal division of labour, and pre-existing levels of violence.”

“WEHRDs thus endure gender-differentiated violence, whether as users and managers of natural resources, as victims of abuse by state or non-state actors, or as journalists, lawyers, educators, indigenous leaders or everyday citizens concerned over the degradation of the environment and natural resources.”

Canada and WHRDs

The Voices at Risk: Canada’s Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders developed by Global Affairs Canada for Canadian missions (embassies, consulates, high commissions) has an annex on Women Human Rights Defenders (pages 25-27).

Those guidelines note, “Missions should address the situation of women HRDs in their reporting, noting in particular the occurrence of any threats or attacks against them and their ability to undertake their work in safety, as well as practices that are potentially harmful and areas where they can be supported to mitigate risks.”

While these are important guidelines, concerns have been raised by Canadian civil society about the voluntary, non-compulsory nature of them. 

PBI and Women Human Rights Defenders

In February 2015, Joke Oranje, a Board member with Peace Brigades International-Netherlands, wrote, “As defenders of human rights, women face all the resistance and risks that are part of it, even more so, since their position is vulnerable because they cannot be sure that people will respect their own rights as women.”

She continues, “In terms of protecting human rights defenders, a few Dutch organizations joined the initiative of Peace Brigades International in the Netherlands to organize a conference in 2014 with female human rights defenders from Guatemala, Colombia, Sudan, Mexico, Egypt, Afghanistan and Palestine on protection issues.”

Oranje highlights, “From the perspectives of Peace Brigades and our partners, it is recommended that more work should be done to protect women activists against intimidation, slander, abduction, rape and murder and to promote their full participation in peace negotiations and environmental, indigenous and women’s rights movements.”

PBI Toolkits

Oranje also notes, “[After the conference in the Netherlands in 2014], some 20 other NGOs joined efforts to develop a toolkit on the protection of women human rights defenders [in 2015].” The following year, in 2016, PBI-Kenya also developed and published a Toolkit for WHRDs in Nairobi’s Urban Settlements.

PBI accompaniment of WHRDs

The most recent Peace Brigades International Annual Review notes 53 per cent (705) of the human rights defenders we accompany in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya and Mexico are women. Additionally, 68 per cent (298) of the volunteers who worked in our field projects, country groups and our international office are women.

The annual review also highlights, “To commemorate the International Women Human Rights Defenders Day (WHRDs Day), PBI launched the Remarkable Women campaign to highlight the tireless work of WHRDs around the world and invite the international community to #standwithher.”

Upcoming dates

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women will hold a 25-year review and appraisal of the Beijing Platform’s implementation in March, the high-level meeting on the Platform will take place on September 23, and the annual International Women Human Rights Defenders Day is on November 29.

This past January, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, a body of independent experts mandated to oversee compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has 170+ parties, including Canada, issued this 16-page ruling on human rights obligations to climate migrants.

Professor Jane McAdam, director of the Kaldor centre for international refugee law at the University of New South Wales, has commented, “What’s really important here, and why it’s quite a landmark case, is that the committee recognised that without robust action on climate at some point in the future it could well be that governments will, under international human rights law, be prohibited from sending people to places where their life is at risk or where they would face inhuman or degrading treatment.”

That view is supported by John H. Knox, the former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and environmental issues, in this series of tweets commenting on the ruling.

Now, CBC reports, “Currently, there are no specific provisions for people seeking asylum on the grounds of climate change under Canadian immigration and refugee law.”

That article – titled Does Canada have a ‘moral and legal obligation’ to allow climate migrants? – quotes Montreal-based Mitchell Goldberg who was a Peace Brigades International volunteer in Guatemala in 1989-1990.

In 2009, he reflected on that time, “We accompanied refugee leaders negotiating a potential return from Mexico and threatened human rights groups inside the country. During my stay two women and I were attacked by death squads. We filed complaints, but we have reason to believe the culprits are found within the Guatemalan military. A glimpse into refugee reality. Yet I have a country of safe haven, and that country is home.”

In 2011, Goldberg co-founded the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

Goldberg tells CBC News senior writer Adam Jacobson that the Canadian government will need to take urgent policy and legislative action in order to account for the “very threatening new reality” of forced migration due to climate change.

Goldberg adds, “Every time the Canadian government provides subsidies to the gas sector, every time it builds another pipeline, we should be thinking of the impact it will have on millions of people around the world living in already precarious situations.”

He says, “There is a very powerful moral and legal obligation, especially for Canada, to step up the plate to take responsibility for our actions and the impacts we have had on millions of people around the world.”

Goldberg also notes that many countries, including Canada, will try to ignore the ruling, that the “rich countries of the world” have been against any expansion of the UN’s refugee convention, and that the UN ruling could lead to legal challenges from people whose asylum status may have been denied because it did not meet Canadian definitions.

The CBC article highlights, “According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 17.2 million people worldwide had to leave their homes in 2019 because of disasters exacerbated by climate change.”

Peace Brigades International has field projects that accompany threatened human rights defenders in Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia and Mexico, four countries now being profoundly impacted by the climate crisis.

Last month, the Mexican National Guard and immigration agents stopped a caravan of 2,000 people, predominantly Honduran migrants and asylum-seekers.

The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project accompanies the Saltillo Migrant Shelter which is located in the state of Coahuila on the Texas-Mexico border. That shelter provides services to hundreds of people each year transiting through Mexico to the United States. With the deepening militarization of the US-Mexico border, the shelter is experiencing an increasing number of security incidents.

Peace Brigades International-Canada will be hosting a visit by a representative of the Saltillo Migrant Shelter to Canada in mid-March. More details on this soon.

Photo of Mitchell Goldberg by CBC News.