Last Monday, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report at a public ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec.

One of the supplementary reports explains the legal reasoning behind the Inquiry's declaration that the disproportionate levels of violence suffered by Indigenous women and girls in Canada can be considered a form of "race-based genocide (...)  empowered by colonial structures, evidenced notably by the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, residential schools and breaches of human and Indigenous rights, leading directly to the current increased rates of violence, death, and suicide in Indigenous populations".

Among its findings, the report stated that Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be murdered or to go missing than members of any other demographic group in Canada.

After more than 3 years of meetings and gathering testimony, the Inquiry made 231 calls for action to government, institutions and the larger Canadian public to help address endemic levels of violence directed at Indigenous women and girls and what the report calls 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) people.

The website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has condensed the calls for action for easier understanding.

On the topic of the inquiry, the Bora Laskin Law Library at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law recently announced a new collection of documents about the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada:

"This collection of documents brings together reports, press statements, and various other documents that shed light on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. This collection was developed by the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action and has been subsequently expanded on by the Bora Laskin Law Library at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. ...

I.  Civil Society Reports
II. Government Reports
III. Secondary Resources
IV. United Nations Documents
V.  Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Documents"