The federal government is being asked to cooperate with a United Nations investigation into missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada.
The inquiry, announced yesterday, will be conducted by a UN committee that is composed of 23 independent experts from around the world.
Aboriginal women’s rights advocate Sharon McIvor says “Canada has not lived up to its obligations under international human rights law to prevent, investigate and remedy violence against Aboriginal women and girls”.
McIvor says “these murders and disappearances have their roots in systemic discrimination and in the denial of basic economic and social rights”.
Aboriginal women in Canada experience rates of violence three-and-a-half times higher than non-Aboriginal women — and young Aboriginal women are five times more likely to die of violence.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada has documented the disappearances and murders of over 600 Aboriginal women and girls in Canada over about twenty years, and it believes that there may be many more.