[Wamvan] DTES Women’s Organizations Release UN Submission Details

[Harsha W.]

DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS RELEASE UN SUBMISSION DETAILS

http://womensmemorialmarch.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/dtes-womens-organizations-release-un-submissons-details/

December 14, 2011 Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territories– In the past
twenty four hours, the positive and much-awaited news has been released
that the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women initiated a significant official inquiry process into the
murders and disappearances of women and girls across Canada in October
2011.

Two women’s groups based in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, a
neighbourhood known as the ‘ground zero’ for missing and murdered women,
are releasing details of the submissions they made in October 2011 under
Article 8 of the Optional Protocol of the UN Committee on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women.

According to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre and February 14th
Women’s Memorial March Committee: “All levels of government have failed to
understand or take action on those systemic injustices that allowed the
unimaginable deaths and disappearances of so many women from the Downtown
Eastside for decades. This is why we decided to make our voices heard at
the international level.”

The Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre (DEWC) and February 14th Women’s
Memorial March Committee (WMMC) have been rooted in the Downtown Eastside
for the past thirty years and have been raising issues of discrimination
based on gender and race, a legacy of colonialism, institutional
discrimination, economic marginalization, and the enabling environment for
violence against women in Canada’s poorest postal code.

In October 2011 the two organizations made submissions to UN CEDAW in
light of the failure of the provincial Missing Women’s Commission of
Inquiry. The organizations formally submitted that “The Commission
continues the pattern of grave and systemic discrimination against women
in the Downtown Eastside which the Commission was supposed to
investigate.”

The UN CEDAW Committee has already repeatedly recommended that Canada
engage in comprehensive investigation, analysis, and action on the issue
of missing and murdered women. But dozens of women’s, DTES, and Indigenous
groups have refused to endorse or participate in the provincial
government’s current Sham Inquiry. The clear failure of the Missing Women
Commission of Inquiry demonstrates the critical and urgent need for the
international community to take on this task.

The groups also argue that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples and the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial
Discrimination stipulate particular guarantees, rights, and freedoms for
Indigenous women who are over-represented among missing and murdered
women.

The two organizations are seeking a series of remedies from the UN CEDAW
Committee, including the following:

- A UN CEDAW inquiry into the issue of missing and murdered women in the
Downtown Eastside which includes a country visit to Canada and
specifically to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for a meeting with women
residents of the DTES.

- Urging the Committee to outline the downfalls of the Missing Women
Commission of Inquiry and to clarify that the proceedings of this
Commission do not meet the recommendations set out by the Committee in
regard to missing and murdered women investigations.

The UN submissions of the DEWC and WMMC were formally supported with
letters to the UN by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, PIVOT Legal Society,
BC Civil Liberties Association, West Coast LEAF, PACE, WISH, Ending
Violence Association, Native Youth Sexual Health Network, and the DTES
Neighbourhood Council.

“We have been a witness to the provincial government and federal
government’s gross and unconscionable negligence as well as racism and
sexism in investigating disappearances and murders of our women. This is
representative of the legacy of discrimination, racism, sexism, and
colonialism that leads to these tragedies in the first place. We hope that
we can attain justice at the international level as we keep educating and
mobilizing at the grassroots,” the groups state.

-       30 -

The DEWC, established in 1978, exists to support and empower women and
children living in extreme poverty in the DTES of Vancouver, Coast Salish
Territories. The Centre is unique, in that it is one of the only safe
spaces within the Downtown Eastside specifically and exclusively for women
and their children.  It provides practical support to over 300 women and
children on a daily basis. The DEWC is also committed to long term
systemic change of the realities of poverty, racism, colonization,
violence against women, addictions, disability, child apprehension,
policing, and more which marks the lives of the women who access our space
and services. Many of the women who have gone missing, have been murdered,
or are survivors of violence in the DTES have been members of the DEWC.

The February 14th Women’s Memorial March Committee was founded in 1992
when a woman was found murdered on Powell Street. Since then, over the
past 20 years, the Committee has organized for justice for missing and
murdered women and raised local, national, and international attention on
the issue. An annual march on February 14th is led by women in the DTES
because women, especially Indigenous women, face physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual violence on a daily basis. Increasing deaths of
many vulnerable women from the DTES still leaves family, friends, loved
ones, and community members with an overwhelming sense of grief and loss.
Every year the list of women going missing also increases and we are
committed to justice.


-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group