Missing Women’s Families Appeal To UN For Funding

Robert Pickton was convicted of killing six women when it’s believed that he could have murdered another 27. So where are his missing victims?

Perhaps they’re forever lost, but we must continue to find out why so many crimes of violence against women weren’t properly investigated. The BC Missing Women Inquiry was commissioned to give missing women voices and to hold police accountable.

Due to lack of government support, the Native Women’s Association of Canada is appealing to the United Nations in an effort to urge the Canadian government to provide more funding for the Pickton inquiry (scheduled for October 11). Seventeen families of victims and 30 women’s, community and aboriginal groups are to represent the missing women, but can’t afford to do so without this funding.

If the government is willing to help the found victims, certainly they should help the missing ones as well, especially when “more than 600 aboriginal women and girls in Canada” have been murdered or have disappeared over the last 20 years.

By failing to offer legal assistance (which is “unprecedented” in Canada), the government is effectively shunning aboriginal and other women’s groups. Consequently, they won’t have the legal power behind them to evidence discrimination; whereas police will be ready with lawyers, documentation and all that they need to disprove wrongdoing.

Although there’s no proof all of these incidents are connected with Pickton, the Native Women’s association has “documented the failure of police in different jurisdictions to investigate reports of aboriginal women’s disappearances when they are made by family members and friends.”

Let’s hope the UN appeal is just the wake up call that the government needs to give marginalized women an equal chance at justice. It may require money and effort, but when it comes to helping women and their families, it’s clearly worth it.

Discrimination “based on sex and aboriginality” can no longer be a barrier to justice. All women’s lives (and deaths) count.

Contact the author here: tinybart@morningquickie.com