New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch is expressing concerns over a federal government decision to cease funding for a program that kept track of the number of indigenous women and girls who have gone missing in Canada.
The funding for the Native Women's Association of Canada's Sisters in Spirit initiative was ended in 2010 and although Ottawa has since committed to a follow-up NWAC program for three years, called "Evidence to Action," the statistical monitoring will be assumed by the RCMP's National Police Support Centre for Missing Persons.
"Police forces in Canada are not mandated to collect ethnicity data; thus there is currently no precedent for the routine collection of such data in RCMP missing persons databases," HRW said in a statement. "While the center is still in development and the database will not be fully operational until 2013, it will lack the independence and focus of the NWAC data initiative."
It's among the concerns HRW is taking to the United Nations, which will be carrying out a review of Canada's human rights record in April 2013 and required submissions by October said HRW researcher Meaghan Rhoads.
SIS had collected data showing that nationally 582 indigenous women and girls had gone missing or been found murdered in Canada, with 39 percent of the disappearances and deaths occurring since 2000. Moreover, SIS had documented about 160 cases of missing and murdered women in B.C., considerably more than any other province or territory in Canada.
Rhoads said HRW is currently researching a report on police treatment of indigenous women and girls in northern B.C. that should be out early next year.
"That includes any mistreatment that might happen, whether in cells or on the street, as well as how they respond when anyone comes forward to report violence," Rhoads said.
The focus is on northern B.C. because the province not only has the highest number of missing and murdered aboriginal women but also the highest rate of such cases that remain unsolved and the Pickton inquiry mainly focussed on the Lower Mainland. said Rhoads.
"We thought we could try and look in a different area," Rhoads said.
