Gender-related killings of women 2012, para. 65

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Paragraph text: Until 1985 Canada had many discriminatory laws against aboriginal women and children; this has had an intergenerational impact, and has contributed to a legacy of violence, abuse and impunity. Today, a young aboriginal woman is five times more likely than other Canadian women of the same age to die of violence. According to a 2010 report, of 582 cases of violence against aboriginal women, 20 per cent involved missing women and girls, 67 per cent involved women or girls who died as a result of homicide or negligence, and 4 per cent fell under the category of suspicious death (usually declared natural or accidental by the police). Between 2000 and 2008, 153 cases of murders of women and girls were reported, and in 115 of these cases, the bodies are still missing. Aboriginal women and girls are more likely to be killed by a stranger than are non-aboriginal women. Approximately 50 per cent of such murders remain unsolved. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has expressed its concern that "hundreds of cases involving aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in the past two decades have neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention, with the perpetrators remaining unpunished".

Body: Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences

Topic(s)

Person(s) affected