Five years on, Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy is still not fully implemented. What now?
Why It Matters
Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy was introduced so women and girls have a fair shot at equality. Trying to prioritize women and girls without changing Canadian foreign policy and development practices will continue the cycle of poverty and inequality.
This journalism is made possible by the Future of Good editorial fellowship on women’s economic resilience, supported by Scotiabank. See our editorial ethics and standards here.
In 2017, the Government of Canada launched the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) with the main objective of ending poverty around the world. FIAP was developed to ensure that Canada’s international assistance addressed the inequalities that make women and girls the most vulnerable to poverty.
Five years later, FIAP has not been implemented as an official policy or integrated into Canada’s Official Development Assistance Accountability Act (2008).
However, FIAP priorities include investing, partnering, and advocating for efforts that have the greatest potential to eliminate barriers to gender equality and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
FIAP is addressed in the prime minister’s mandate letters to the ministers of International Development; Pacific Economic Development Agency; Foreign Affairs; and International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development. As outlined in their letters, the ministers are collectively responsible for championing FIAP with the support of partner organizations, developing public policies with an intersectional feminist lens, collaborating with women’s movements and experts in civil society, and improving transparency and accountability of Canada’s international development assistance.
So, how does Canada uphold feminist values and feminist policy?
Future of Good spoke to Carelle Mang-Benza, the policy lead at Cooperation Canada; Diana Sarosi, the director of policy and campaigns at Oxfam Canada; and Caroline Hossein, an associate professor of global development at the University of Toronto-Scarborough, to dive into the complex world of implementing FIAP.
Putting feminist policy front and centre
“There are challenges that come from the lack of policy coherence…and the objectives and actions are not always clearly aligned,” said Mang-Benza.
Mang-Benza said that discussions about a feminist foreign policy have been happening for years, but “it’s nowhere to be found. I mean, we haven’t seen a public document called feminist foreign policy.”
FIAP outlines six action areas where the Canadian government is committing to a feminist approach, including 1) gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, 2) human dignity, 3) growth that works for everyone, 4) environment and climate action, 5) inclusive government, and 6) peace and security.
“FIAP is actively being implemented and guides all of Canada’s international assistance,” read an email statement from James Emmanuel Wanki, spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada (GAC).
But while FIAP is supposed to provide a policy framework for the development presence Canada has around the world, its business presence does the opposite.
“There is nothing less egregious than human rights abuse by Canadian companies,” said Mang-Benza. “Long supply chains abroad –– mining, oil, and gas. They are human rights abuses that just simply do not match the language and the vision of FIAP.”
Consider textile supply chains. Women make up 75 percent of garment workers. In some countries like Bangladesh, they are paid as little as 60 cents CAD an hour, which is not enough to afford food for their families.
Oxfam Canada’s campaign, What She Makes, tries to address this issue by demanding Canadian fashion brands commit to paying its women workers a living wage.
“If [FIAP] truly wants to be feminist, then that can’t be something that you kind of put into your programming. It has to be front and centre as part of the agenda that we deliver worldwide,” said Hossein.
Keeping the Canadian government – and the social impact world – accountable
Since launching FIAP, the Canadian government has made several financial contributions and commitments to philanthropic institutions, international cooperation organizations, NGO initiatives, other countries’ governments, and local organizations.
Despite this, it is difficult to see where contributions have gone and what the impact was.
“There is sort of a lack of accountability of how these commitments have actually been implemented,” said Sarosi.
When asked for the breakdown of organizations getting funds or implementing equity programs among multilateral organizations, national women’s organizations, international women’s organizations, and local organizations, GAC did not provide specific names.
GAC did acknowledge that the Equality Fund, which received a $300 million commitment in 2019, provided 93 grants to women’s organizations and movements across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
GAC also wrote that between 2020 and 2021, Canada enabled close to 1,000 additional women’s organizations and networks to expand their activities and strengthen their capacity to advance women’s rights and gender equality.
“The issue of transparency is not specific to the FIAP,” said Mang-Benza. “It’s a government-wide issue, something that we’ve been addressing in our advocacy for overseas development assistance.”
There is a paper trail for the 2017 Women’s Voice and Leadership Program – unlike other FIAP contributions where it is unclear which countries and organizations are receiving funds.
The website shares that the Canadian government contributed $182 million over 32 projects within 30 countries and regions –– naming the organizations that are helping the communities abroad.
The Women’s Voice and Leadership Program was launched to support local women’s rights organizations and help protect human rights.
Oxfam Canada is the philanthropic partner for Women’s Voice and Leadership Pakistan, where the Canadian government committed $8.5 million.
As for what happened when the program was implemented, GAC said the program’s evaluation concluded that Women’s Voice and Leadership provided women and girls with the flexibility to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and strengthen their advocacy efforts.
Sarosi says decolonizing aid is an important priority for Oxfam Canada, but it has been difficult to practice because of GAC’s development regulations.
“The compliance that’s required by Global Affairs makes it always such an unequal relationship between Canadian organizations and local organizations,” said Sarosi. “I’m sure there are other ways that could be possible to lighten some of that and really reinforce that trust-based funding rather than compliance-based funding.”
GAC wrote that Canada is “committed to confronting structural barriers and systemic discrimination that limits women, girls and other marginalized groups from participating fully in work, education, healthcare, household, and political decision-making.”
Mang-Benza said that both the Canadian government and the development and humanitarian sector need to decolonize. “We have to be fair and look at ourselves,” said Mang-Benza. “Colonization didn’t happen in one day, so decolonization takes time as well.”
“Such transformative change takes time and patience due to the deeply-rooted nature of social norms and power relations,” wrote GAC.
It added that the Government of Canada expressed a preference to engage closely with civil society and women’s organizations to implement its policy commitments.
Mang-Benza spoke about how both the government and the development need to change their approach to global development to provide effective feminist practices.
“The feminist lens is really to challenge those structures of oppression where they are, but it’s not something that happens over time. It’s something we have to keep pushing and advocating for both in terms of mindset and practices,” said Mang-Benza.
Mang-Benza said the government and humanitarian assistance has a risk aversion to change because of long-held assumptions about local partners and a history of providing development with the same accounting obligations, reporting requirements, proposals, and funding practices.
“All of that stems from colonial mindsets and colonial practices. It’s the structure of the system that we want to change and that the FIAP purports to change too,” said Mang-Benza.
Prioritizing local voices in international assistance
“Canadians, and particularly policy elites have their own internal biases that they’re coming to terms with,” said Hossein. “As though we are experts on how to do more inclusive or fair forms of financial systems. However, in our own backyard, we’re having issues doing that.”
Hossein’s research focuses on women-led rotating savings and credit associations, where communities can manage and build their own financial services.
“We have all these immigrants and these women who are collectively organizing, showing you how to reach people from the bottom up and it’s not just transactional. They’re doing a lot of heavy lifting with civil society building,” said Hossein. “Isn’t that the whole point of development? For people to participate in their own economic livelihoods? But then it kind of interrupts that whole development, colonizing the mission of helping people who need to be rescued or saved.”
She said Canada’s development sector needs to take a ground-up approach. “What could be more inherently feminist than women who are taking self-help on their own terms?” said Hossein.
Part of FIAP’s goals is to partner with local organizations, but when the Canadian government makes contributions for FIAP programming, these local partners are not typically included in the announcements.
For example, at the Women Deliver Conference in June 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that starting in 2023, the Canadian government would invest $1.4 billion over 10 years to support women and girls’ health. Of that investment, $700 million would be dedicated to sexual and reproductive health rights.
At the Generation Equality Forum in 2021, the Canadian government announced that $100 million would be dedicated to international assistance funding for paid and unpaid care work.
However, there is no detailed information about which organizations overseas are on the receiving end of the assistance. “Whether those are really happening, there is very little transparency around that,” said Sarosi.
She said the more visible collaborations are with the larger philanthropic organizations and multilateral organizations like the World Bank.
From 2020-2021 Canada committed $423.24 million to the World Bank Group.
They also provided $34.1 million to the World Bank Group, for the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), cancelling the debts on behalf of countries in the Global South so the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and African Development Fund can provide financial support to low-income countries.
Sarosi said debt can be part of the reason why countries are unable to provide public services and social protection to their citizens. “That has a huge impact in terms of gender equality because a lot of those services would be so important to make a difference for the women.”
Sarosi said women’s organizations are continually fighting for more social services; “Making sure that women have access to social protection to be able to survive the next little while because the economic fallout from COVID is just so huge.”
The Canadian government stated that by the end of 2022, “no less than 95 percent of Canada’s bilateral international development assistance initiatives will target or integrate gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.”
GAC wrote that they are close to this goal. By the end of 2021, 93 percent of GAC’s development assistance targeted gender equality.
While this may be cause for celebration, the absence of legislating FIAP through the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act risks Canada’s international cooperation efforts and gender equality progress in the years to come.
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