Droits humains

Les recherches sur le traumatisme chez les enfants réfugiés de la guerre s’intéressent généralement aux réactions symptomatiques, mais considèrent peu le vécu subjectif. Ainsi, il y a un risque de sous-estimer les conséquences psychologiques de ces événements. La présente étude vise à intégrer les éléments de l’histoire personnelle, la quantification des symptômes post-traumatiques et les expériences subjectives liées aux traumatismes évaluées au moyen du jeu libre et du dessin afin de décrire les conséquences psychiques de ces traumatismes chez deux enfants réfugiés. Les résultats révèlent qu’un des enfants manifeste des symptômes post-traumatiques, ce qui est appuyé par les caractéristiques de ses activités ludiques et les thèmes qui émergent du jeu et des dessins. Chez la deuxième enfant, il n’est pas relevé de symptôme post-traumatique ou de trace évidente du traumatisme dans le jeu et le dessin. Cependant, les thèmes des jeux indiquent un besoin de protection et le deuil de son enfance.

Ce mémoire a pour objectif de proposer des recommandations afin de mieux soutenir les jeunes personnes racisées, im/migrantes, réfugiées et/ou s’identifiant à un groupe culturellement minoritaire face à plusieurs enjeux les concernant. Dans le contexte des projections récentes concernant la part grandissante que ces jeunes prendront dans notre société, ainsi que la détérioration du climat social accentuant les discriminations, il nous parait important que le prochain plan d’action jeunesse puisse prévoir des mesures permettant de mieux les soutenir et favoriser leur bien-être et une place active dans la société d’accueil. Ce mémoire s’articule en deux axes principaux. L’Axe 1 traite de la lutte contre la discrimination. Des rapports récents rapportent qu’une proportion importante des jeunes de cette population ressentent un sentiment de discrimination au sein des écoles secondaires, les cégeps et les universités. Le manque d’interactions entre les personnes de différentes cultures et les propos racistes de certains acteur.ice.s scolaires joueraient un rôle important à cet égard. L’Axe 2 traite de l’importance de reconnaitre l’adaptation des services comme un droit. Les perceptions négatives à l’égard des services sociaux, la représentation de la santé mentale, les contrastes de valeurs entre professionnel.le.s et les membres des communautés culturelles minoritaires, les craintes face à la confidentialité des suivis, la méconnaissance des services offerts, les longs délais d’attente ainsi que les barrières linguistiques sont tous décrits comme des obstacles dans l’accès aux services. Face à ces enjeux, nos recommandations visent l’adoption de mesures pour prévenir la discrimination et la mise en place de mesures d’interventions auprès des jeunes ayant vécu de la discrimination, ainsi que l’adaptation des services à leurs réalités et besoins spécifiques. Plus précisément, nous recommandons une meilleure sensibilisation des personnes intervenantes et professionnelles de la santé et services sociaux, une adaptation des services pour une équité d’accès, une valorisation des apports et des expériences des jeunes, une action intersectorielle plus cohérente au niveau institutionnel, mais aussi à travers la collaboration avec les organismes communautaires. Nous recommandons également de travailler à la réduction des multiples barrières structurelles à l’accès aux services.

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Background: In Burkina Faso, a security crisis has displaced families within the country, fleeing high-risk areas. One of the major consequences of this displacement is the low use of sexual and reproductive health care and services, and the reduced empowerment of adolescent girls and internally displaced women (IDP). This research aims to analyze the situation and co-develop intervention strategies to strengthen the empowerment of these adolescent girls and IDP women for the use of these services by ensuring the continuity of this care.

Methods: This study is based on a mixed approach (quantitative and qualitative). The quantitative component is based on a survey of 1,474 randomly selected households in temporary IDP reception sites in the cities of Kaya and Kongoussi in Burkina Faso. Empowerment was analyzed in terms of motivational autonomy and exercise of choice in family planning. Descriptive analysis and multivariate logistic regression have allowed us to describe the empowerment of IDP women and adolescent girls and identify the determinants of the use of modern contraception among IDP adolescents and women. The qualitative component has enabled to co-construct intervention strategies to strengthen empowerment and also ensure continuity of care, using a participatory approach supported by a deliberative workshop.

Results: Out of a sample of 1,220, adolescent girls (12-19 years old) and women (20-49 years old) represented respectively 17.5% and 82.5%. The analysis showed that 42.5% of IDP adolescent girls and women were using a modern method of contraception at the time of the survey. The analysis also showed that 89.2% and 79.5% of adolescent girls and IDP women have low levels of motivational autonomy and exercise of choice in family planning, respectively. A poor perception of contraceptives side effects and possible difficulties with the partner or even the fear of having difficulties returning to fertility after contraception «  »damage » » women’s motivation to use contraception methods. In addition, the ability to discuss with the partner hinders the exercise of choice in contraception. Intervention strategies based on community dialogue and communication with IDPs and community members have emerged as those promoted to facilitate the use and continuity of health services.

Recommendations: Empowerment appears as a determining factor to enhance the contraceptive demand by adolescent girls and internally displaced women. Community dialogue and communication sessions on family planning for IDPs and the population must be well implemented.

The stopmtl.ca project uses a participatory mapping methodology to allow individuals to self-report their police stop experiences in the city of Montreal, Canada. Between July 14th 2021 and December 21st 2021, a total of 714 police stop experiences were contributed to the stopmtl.ca website. Of these contributions, approximately 28% (N = 197) were removed due to a programming error that led to the duplication of cases. Of the remaining contributions (N = 517), 21% were suspected fake data and 7% were excluded due to missing data. A total of 369 contributed police stop experiences were retained (71%). A descriptive analysis of the data suggests that most police stop experiences were reported by men (74%), individuals who identified as being White (55%), hetereosexual (70%) and being aged between 19 and 24 years (27%). A Black racioethnic identity was the second most frequent racioethnic identity (17%). In terms of spatial distribution, stop experiences were reported as occurring most frequently in the Côte-des-Neiges (13%) and Ville-Marie (12%) boroughs of Montreal. Nearly half of all reported stops were reported as having occurred in 2021 (49%), and most frequently in the summer months (May-August) (65%), peaking in July (33%). The most frequent activity individuals reported doing during their stop was being in a vehicle (42%), followed by walking (23%). Respondents could identify multiple reasons for which they believed they were stopped. The perceived reason for the stop most frequently identified was what the person was doing (39%), followed by their appearance (30%). Roughly equal proportions of police stops were seen as justified (41%) and as not justified (43%). There are several similarities between the characteristics of self-reported police stop experiences contributed to stopmtl.ca and police-recorded stops in the city of Montreal, Canada. Namely, there appears to be a comparable spatial distribution of police stops in both data sets, as well as some indication of a comparable social distribution (e.g., gender, age and racioethnic identities of those stopped). However, the self-reported police stop data is limited in several important ways. Namely, for self-reported police stops with available data on whether the respondent received a sanction following their stop (i.e., fine, arrest or charge) (N = 129), 42% were said to have led to a sanction. This limits the capacity to draw strong comparisons between self-reported data and police-recorded data (which excludes all stops leading to a sanction). Though criteria were applied to exclude suspected fake data, it is not possible to establish the veracity of self-reported stops. Nevertheless, these preliminary descriptive results provide a snapshot of who self-reported their stops and of the types of stops that led to self-reports. Furthermore, the data provide insight into citizens’ perceptions of their police stop experiences. Future directions for research, including planned validation analyses and a second wave of data collection are discussed.

This chapter, based on results from a qualitative research project commissioned by the Canadian Department of Justice, analyzes the availability of protection services for victims of trafficking in persons in Canada from the perspective of demand and supply.1 A first objective is to identify and highlight discrepancies between the “demand” for victim protection services versus the “supply” of community-based services. A second objective is to determine the root causes of these discrepancies. The voices of the NGOs who participated in the project will illustrate these dynamics. Policy recommendations to correct the imbalances between victims’ needs for services and NGOs’ ability to provide those services will conclude the chapter. 1. Despite the convention which usually places the word supply first when referring to supply and demand, the authors choose to inverse the terms in order to emphasize the demand aspect.

An overview of the phenomenon of human trafficking will situate the Canadian experience within an international context and the evolution of awareness and debates around trafficking among Canadian academics, policymakers and practitioners will be discussed. A brief description of the research project on which this chapter is based will be offered. The authors will specify the methodology applied and the results will be presented, discussing how the theory of demand and supply can be used to understand the dynamics surrounding community-based services for trafficking victims. The voices of NGOs, expressed through interview data, will illustrate the “demand” for services in terms of the needs of victims NGOs encounter and the “supply” of such services by community-based actors. An analysis of the gaps that exist between the demand and supply of services will precede the final section where policy recommendations will be offered to diminish the gaps in the hopes of better respecting the human rights of the victims of human trafficking.

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Community accountability is a model through which to redress anti-Black racism in health care and to create community-based participatory research about the health of Black Canadians. This article provides a case example of a study undertaken by a Black community collective in Quebec made up of researchers, activists, service providers, business leaders and their allies who sought community accountability in making visible the impact of COVID-19 on local Black communities. The principles articulated within the Black emancipatory action research approach () are used to ground an analysis of our research-activist process in order to illuminate how knowledge gained through the collection of data can be used to help inform Black communities about the realities, needs and concerns of their members, to advocate for rights and entitlements, and to work towards community accountability in research that empowers Black communities, both in Quebec and elsewhere.

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This article introduces a thematic issue of Transcultural Psychiatry that presents recent work that deepens our understanding of the refugee experience—from the forces of displacement, through the trajectory of migration, to the challenges of resettlement. Mental health research on refugees and asylum seekers has burgeoned over the past two decades with epidemiological studies, accounts of the lived experience, new conceptual frameworks, and advances in understanding of effective treatment and intervention. However, there are substantial gaps in available research, and important ethical and methodological challenges. These include: the need to adopt decolonizing, participatory methods that amplify refugee voices; the further development of frameworks for studying the broad impacts of forced migration that go beyond posttraumatic stress disorder; and more translational research informed by longitudinal studies of the course of refugee adaptation. Keeping a human rights advocacy perspective front and center will allow researchers to work in collaborative ways with both refugee communities and receiving societies to develop innovative mental health policy and practice to meet the urgent need for a global response to the challenge of forced migration, which is likely to grow dramatically in the coming years as a result of the impacts of climate change.

Une déclaration de principe préparée par la section de psychiatrie transculturelle de l’Association des psychiatres du Canada (APC) et approuvée par le Conseil d’administration de l’APC le 9 juillet 2020

Canada has no legislation prohibiting forced labour, relying instead on human trafficking penal dispositions; the two are intimately related. However, there was only been one conviction for human trafficking for the purposes of forced labour. Here, we offer an analysis of jurisprudence according to a model of labour trafficking focusing on the intersection of labour exploitation and coercion, particularly among migrant workers. We argue that Canadian human trafficking law remains incomplete and fails to address situations of forced labour. There is a need to think creatively about recourses. Labour and human rights law recourses are more accessible to migrant workers than human trafficking law, given the lighter burden of proof and the unlikelihood that courts will recognize the systemic coercion to which migrant workers are subject. Workers and advocates are understandably drawn to these alternative recourses, yet consequences for employers profiting from forced labour are disappointingly minor.

Internationally, human trafficking is usually defined officially as involving a range of exploitative scenarios: forced labor, sexual exploitation, illegal adoption, and organ sales are all commonly included. Each of these phenomena, while having some commonalities, also has many different characteristics. When the state or civil society tries to respond to “human trafficking,” it can be difficult to find an approach that works for all these scenarios. This chapter will discuss the strengths and weaknesses and the advantages and disadvantages of endeavoring to serve the differing populations of people affected by sexual exploitation versus labor trafficking. To substantiate our analysis, we will highlight the experiences of frontline workers by drawing on the findings of 79 interviews conducted in Canada with stakeholders and practitioners in the field. In the context of increased efforts worldwide to counteract trafficking in all its forms, with a notable growing attention to forced labor, this chapter will examine the challenges that arise from tackling diverse forms of trafficking, looking specifically at forced labor and sexual exploitation.

While there is increasing attention to the perspectives of people caught up in human trafficking – attention that has helped illuminate the cloudy nature of consent and agency in situations of human trafficking – the perspectives of children are relatively absent from the debate. Western notions of childhood downplay children’s agency and decision-making. In this chapter, the results of a study that explored the perspectives of over 50 West African children “rescued” by Nigeria’s NAPTIP, a governmental agency mandated to fight human trafficking and protect its victims, are shared. One theme that emerged strongly from the children’s narratives was the centrality of their quest for education, training, and other life opportunities as a factor that led them into situations of human trafficking, a situation likely to exist in other contexts as well. The children’s desire for education was often part of what led them away from home, kept them in their situations of trafficking, and made many of them unwilling to return home after being “rescued” by NAPTIP. These findings suggest a critical need to provide for children’s educational needs if we hope to combat child trafficking, as well as the need to provide meaningful alternatives to children we purport to “rescue.”

On les appelle mineurs non accompagnés, mineurs isolés ou encore enfants séparés. Ces dénominations différentes traduisent la difficulté à saisir la complexité et la diversité des situations qu’ils vivent, même s’ils ont en commun le fait d’être âgés de moins de 18 ans et d’avoir migré vers d’autres Etats sans un adulte qui soit responsable d’eux. Cet ouvrage interdisciplinaire réunit et synthétise onze contributions provenant de la sociologie, du droit, de l’anthropologie, de la communication, des sciences de l’éducation, de la psychologie sociale et du travail social.

While access to healthcare for permanent residents in Canada is well known, this is not the case for migrants without healthcare coverage. This is the first large-scale study that examines the unmet healthcare needs of migrants without healthcare coverage in Montreal. 806 participants were recruited: 436 in the community and 370 at the NGO clinic. Proportions of individuals reporting unmet healthcare needs were similar (68.4% vs. 69.8%). The main reason invoked for these unmet needs was lacking money (80.6%). Situations of not working or studying, not having had enough food in the past 12 months, not having a medical prescription to get medication and having had a workplace injury were all significantly associated with higher odds of having unmet healthcare needs. Unmet healthcare needs were more frequent among migrants without healthcare coverage than among recent immigrants or the citizens with health healthcare coverage (69%, 26%, 16%). Canada must take measures to enable these individuals to have access to healthcare according to their needs in order to reduce the risk of worsening their health status, something that may have an impact on the healthcare system and population health. The Government of Quebec announced that all individuals without any healthcare coverage will have access to COVID-19 related health care. We hope that this right, the application of which is not yet obvious, can continue after the pandemic for all health care.

In our study, almost half of immigrants without health insurance perceived  their health as negative, much higher than reports of negative self-perceived health in previous Canadian studies (8.5% among recent immigrants, 19.8% among long-term immigrants, and 10.6% among Canadian-born). Our study also suggests a high rate of unmet health care needs among migrants with precarious status, a situation that is correlated with poor self-perceived health. There is a need to put social policies in place to secure access

This article examines how the Canadian immigration regime socially organizes the everyday lives of queer and trans migrants with precarious status. Drawing from key findings from an institutional ethnographic study, this article maps out the disjuncture between the actual experiences of queer and trans migrants with precarious status and the ideological and textual production of precarious status by the Canadian state. Making explicit this disjuncture reveals how the Canadian immigration regime enacts structural violence upon queer and trans migrants. This article also engages with the response-based approach to violence in order to understand how queer and trans migrants actively respond to this violence. In doing so, this article highlights the ways in which queer and trans migrants respond and resist the structural violence integral to the Canadian state’s production of precarious status.

This article examines how the Canadian immigration regime socially organizes the everyday lives of queer and trans migrants with precarious status. Drawing from key findings from an institutional ethnographic study, this article maps out the disjuncture between the actual experiences of queer and trans migrants with precarious status and the ideological and textual production of precarious status by the Canadian state. Making explicit this disjuncture reveals how the Canadian immigration regime enacts structural violence upon queer and trans migrants. This article also engages with the response-based approach to violence in order to understand how queer and trans migrants actively respond to this violence. In doing so, this article highlights the ways in which queer and trans migrants respond and resist the structural violence integral to the Canadian state’s production of precarious status.

This Working Paper examines the concept of the vulnerability of migrants which has become a key term in the UN’s negotiations for a Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. The authors argue that the concept must be interpreted inclusively and related to the human rights obligations of states through the UN conventions. All too often migrants are vulnerable because of state action. States must ensure that they deliver on their human rights obligations in ways which reduce the vulnerability of migrants.

La plupart des travaux de recherche sur les migrants queer et trans ciblent leurs expériences postmigratoires. Cet article fait en revanche suite à une étude doctorale qui comprend des entretiens avec les participants et une analyse de textes au contenu politique ou médiatique pour rendre les dimensions historiques, géopolitiques, sociales et économiques qui façonnent dans le monde non seulement la violence homophobe et transphobe, mais aussi les migrations de personnes queers et trans des pays du Sud vers le Canada. Ces réalités sont analysées sous le prisme de la colonialité et à l’échelle de l’empire, afin d’historiciser la manière dont les vies des migrants queer et trans sont façonnées par des histoires oubliées de violence coloniale. Cette étude laisse penser que l’hypervisibilité du traitement « généreux » du Canada vis-à-vis des réfugiés queer et trans occulte la manière dont le régime frontalier empêche les personnes provenant des pays du Sud d’entrer dans ce pays.

In a time of mass displacement, countries across the globe are seeking to protect borders through coercive methods of deterrence such as immigration detention. In Canada, migrants—including children—may be detained in penal facilities having neither been charged nor convicted of crimes. In this paper we examine how we dealt with the series of ethical dilemmas that emerged while doing research in immigration detention centres in Canada. Using a critical ethnographic approach, we examine the process of our research in the field, seeking to understand what our emotional responses and those of the staff could tell us about detention itself, but also about what is at stake when researchers are faced with the suffering of participants in these spaces of confinement. The findings suggest that field work in immigration detention centres is an emotionally demanding process and that there were several pivotal moments in which our sense of moral and clinical obligations toward distressed detainees, especially children, were in conflict with our role as researchers. We also grapple with how the disciplinary gaze of the detention centre affects researchers entering the space. Given these tensions, we argue, spaces of critical reflection that can consider and contain the strongly evoked emotions are crucial, both for researchers, and perhaps more challengingly, for detention centre employees and gatekeepers as well.

Delivery of effective mental health and psychosocial support programs requires knowledge of existing health systems and socio-cultural context. To respond rapidly to humanitarian emergencies, international organizations often seek to design programs according to international guidelines and mobilize external human resources to manage and deliver programs. Familiarizing international humanitarian practitioners with local culture and contextualizing programs is essential to minimize risk of harm, maximize benefit, and optimize efficient use of resources. Timely literature reviews on traditional health practices, cultural beliefs and attitudes toward mental health and illness, local health care systems and previous experiences with humanitarian interventions can provide international practitioners with crucial background information to improve their capacity to work efficiently and with maximum benefit. In this paper, we draw on experience implementing desk review guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency (2012) in four diverse humanitarian crises (earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal; forced displacement among Syrians and Congolese). We discuss critical parameters for the design and implementation of desk reviews, and discuss current challenges and future directions to improve mental health care and psychosocial support in humanitarian emergencies.

This article maps the global governance processes on migration and assesses whether the human rights of migrants are effectively included and mainstreamed therein. It is argued that the lack of a comprehensive framework for migration governance and the insufficient focus on the human rights dimension in migration management have led to serious human rights violations in the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, and to a lack of oversight and accountability when these violations occur. The article commences with an examination of the legal and normative framework related to the three areas that have been the main objects of global migration governance: the refugee regime, international labour standards and transnational criminal law regarding human trafficking. It goes on to explore the complex institutional framework of global migration governance and how it has been mostly informal, ad hoc, non-binding and State-led. The article concludes with a discussion on the future perspectives for a human rights-centred approach in global migration governance. It is contended that there is a need to bring the migration dialogue inside the United Nations, as it already plays a key role in international cooperation, with human rights as one of its pillars.

Migration towards Europe has surged over the past few years, overwhelming government authorities at the national and EU levels, and fuelling a xenophobic, nationalist, populist discourse linking migrants to security threats. Despite positive advances in the courts and worthy national initiatives (such as Italy’s Operation Mare Nostrum), the EU’s governance of migration and borders has had disastrous effects on the human rights of migrants. These effects stem from the criminalisation of migrants, which pushes them towards more precarious migration routes, the widespread use of administrative detention and the processing of asylum claims under the Dublin system, and now the EU–Turkey agreement. Yet, this paper finds that with the right political leadership, the EU could adopt different policies in order to develop and implement a human rights-based approach to migration that would seek to reconcile security concerns with the human rights of migrants. Such an approach would enable member states to fully reap the rewards of a stable, cohesive, long-term migration plan that facilitates and governs mobility rather than restricts it at immense cost to the EU, the member states and individual migrants.

Children and parents seeking asylum are regularly detained in Canada, however little is known about the experiences of detained families. International literature suggests that the detention of children is associated with significant morbidity. Our study aims to understand the experiences of detained children and families who have sought asylum in Canada by using a qualitative methodology that includes semistructured interviews and ethnographic participant observation. Detention appears to be a frightening experience of deprivation that leaves children feeling criminalized and helpless. Family separation further shatters children’s sense of well-being. Children’s emotional and behavioral responses to separation and to detention suggest that the experience is acutely stressful and, in some cases, traumatic–even when detention is brief. Distress and impairment may persist months after release. Given the burden of psychological suffering and the harmful consequences of separating families, children should not be detained for immigration reasons and parents should not be detained without children.

From 2011 until 2012, members of the Canadian parliament debated three iterations of legislation relating to the detention of asylum seekers. The final bill, unlike its predecessors, exempted children under the age of 16 from mandatory year-long detention, opening the door to children’s prolonged separation from parents or invisible detention as guests alongside mandatorily detained parents. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, we examine parliamentary debates and seek to determine how speech acts within the Canadian parliament construct a (detained) migrant child. Our results suggest that parliamentarians invoke logics of human rights and humanitarianism and that a reconfiguration of these paradigms places the state rather than the refugee in need of protection, thus introducing a hierarchy of compassion. Within this discourse, children are rendered so vulnerable as to be voiceless, enforcing the corollary image of the threatening adult refugee, which ultimately allows detention of children to be framed as a protective measure. We hypothesize mechanisms that make such constructions possible and discuss the implications for advocacy efforts.

The issue of irregular migration is experiencing heightened attention in political, social and legal arenas. While deterrence and crime-control discourse and practices dominate current approaches to irregular migration, this article seeks to focus on the problematic neglect of the treatment of irregular migrants in destination countries, in relation to their ability to access fundamental rights and basic public services. This article will put forth an argument for the establishment of firewalls – a separation between immigration enforcement activities and public service provision. This article will canvass existing trends and practices that have both contributed to the erosion of firewall protections, and have built and maintained meaningful firewalls between immigration and public service provision.