Thank you for setting up this inquiry and for inviting Cuso International to be present. We welcome the opportunity to acknowledge the effort and achievements of the Canadian government in safeguarding children and young people. We greatly appreciate the global leadership of the Canadian government, which it has been showing in relation to MNCH, gender equality, and child and youth issues.

Cuso International is a Canadian development agency that has over 50 years' experience working in inclusive partnerships to eradicate poverty through equitable and sustainable development. Every year we recruit, on average, 250 skilled Canadian professionals, such as managers, business development experts, midwives, and community workers, and place them with our partner agencies. Last year we worked in 27 countries, supporting 167 partners, and reaching one million beneficiaries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

As previous presentations to this committee have already shown, whilst progress on the MDGs has been made, it is still sadly the fact that 800 women die every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, that teenage pregnancy is on the increase, and a child dies every 27 seconds from mainly preventable diseases.

Prioritizing investment in MNCH is vital to ensuring and safeguarding the rights of mothers, babies, and children. Through our work with Canadian partners, such as the Canadian Midwives Association in Ethiopia and Tanzania, we have learned that along with financial reasons and distance to facilities, the attitude of health providers, especially toward women from poor communities, can be a major barrier to accessing care. Canadian volunteer midwives are well-placed to promote and share respectful care standards with their counterparts alongside clinical expertise.

Cuso International's work at the community level has also confirmed that raising awareness of community groups—for example, men becoming involved in parenting and being capable of identifying complications and seeking medical attention for their pregnant wives—can have a great impact. Equally important is addressing gender inequalities that give men, in too many countries, full decision-making power over family health matters.

Another important step to ensuring that the rights of children and youth are recognized is ensuring that all children are registered at birth. Without birth registration children are invisible and cannot enrol in school, are more vulnerable to abuse, child marriage, child labour, sexual exploitation. Cuso has pioneered work in Tanzania to increase the spread of birth registration by raising the importance of registration with parents and using mobile-phone technology to aid the process. We commend the decision of the Canadian government to support the scaling-up of birth registration. It is important to mention that most countries in Africa have not progressed much in reforming their civil registration and vital statistics systems, and this is a critical development issue to which Canada has much to offer.

Central to Cuso’s approach to working with children and young people is a firm commitment to the rights of children and young people. We see children and young people as active participants and agents of change and not simply consumers of services. Across the youth projects that Cuso supports in countries such as Nigeria, Benin, Peru, Bolivia and Myanmar, we actively work with our partners to put children and young people at the centre of service development and to support and encourage adult decision-makers to listen to and respect their voices.

The ILO states that 73 million young women and men across the world are without work. This unemployment phenomenon can also be linked to the growth of gang cultures and the rise of violent lifestyles, especially for young men. This is why in countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, Nigeria, Peru, and Bolivia we are implementing youth projects addressing poverty, social exclusion, and lack of opportunity. These initiatives have a strong emphasis on employment and business development and, increasingly, we are seeking to link these initiatives to impact investment opportunities.

It is worth stating the obvious, that the sense of achievement and pride that comes from young women and men starting their own business often transfers into other areas of their life and might, for example, lead to a young woman being better able to negotiate when she will get married and have children, and how many children she will have. It is also the case that young people who see economic opportunities before them are less likely to be attracted to gangs and criminal activity.

Cuso International delivers its programming through placing skilled volunteers from a variety of backgrounds with partner agencies. These highly skilled volunteers provide much-needed and cost-effective technical assistance. Recognizing that the Canadian expertise is rich and diverse, Cuso International has diverse mechanisms to channel professional volunteerism which includes e-volunteering, diaspora and corporate volunteering.

With respect to corporate volunteering, Cuso International's experience is that it is an effective and cost-effective way for the Canadian private sector to share much-needed expertise, skills and experiences, and has the added benefit of enabling them to further develop their learning and understanding of the people, contexts and cultures .

Our recommendations for the committee are as follows.

First, Canada should seek to ensure that the voices of girls, boys, young men, and young women are ever present in all decision-making about children and young people, and should support innovative practice that seeks to empower and give a voice to children and young people.

Second, Canada should continue to support the critical and cost-effective role of volunteers, or of organizations that deliver assistance through skilled volunteers, in the delivery of Canadian development aid, and should explore how new models of volunteerism can expand the opportunities for Canadians to contribute to global efforts to put an end to poverty and improve safeguards and protection of children and young people.

Third, Canada should recognize the value of inclusive partnerships and build on experiences that civil society organizations have gained through working directly with communities at the centre of development programs.

In conclusion, Cuso International wants to commend the Canadian government for its leadership in the call for global action to end the preventable deaths of mothers, newborns, and children, and its commitment to advancing child and youth rights.

Thank you.

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