A/HRC/41/42/Add.1 1970s. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, indigenous women represented 11 per cent of missing women in 2013 and 16 per cent of victims of homicide nationally between 1980 and 2012. 40 According to estimates, more than half of victims of sex trafficking are indigenous women and girls. Suicide rates are high among indigenous people, particularly for young people from First Nations (five to seven times higher than for non-indigenous young people) and Inuit young people (11 times the national average). 41 75. Indigenous women are disadvantaged within their societies and at the national level. They face marginalization, exclusion and poverty because of institutional, systemic, multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that have not been addressed adequately by the State. Universal access to social and community-based services and infrastructure is not adequate for indigenous people, particularly for those living in rural and remote areas, where access to safe and clean drinking water, education, health-care facilities, adequate housing and employment represents a challenge. 76. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the Action Plan to Prevent Family Violence and Violent Crimes against Aboriginal Women and Girls (2015–2020), which outlines concrete action on the prevention of violence, support for victims and protection. The Action Plan, however, lacks a holistic approach and does not fully address the concerns of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which in 2015 found that indigenous women had been subjected to grave human rights violations and emphasized the long-lasting social and economic disadvantages, biases and racism in the administration of justice, policing, data collection, jails and penitentiaries and social programmes (CEDAW/C/OP.8/CAN/1). Indigenous people in Canada have also been discriminated against historically, even under the law. The Indian Act is a colonial and patriarchal document at its core, embedded with historical racial and sex-based discrimination. Its treatment of First Nations women as secondary to men allows violence to be perpetrated against them. It works to systemically reduce the number of recognized First Nations people by discriminating against First Nations women and their descendants, denying them entitlement to Indian status on the same footing as their male counterparts. This discrimination and hierarchy among status exacerbates collateral violence within communities, as well as jurisdictional and logistical barriers for First Nations people to gain access to services. The 2011 and 2017 reforms to the Indian Act have fallen short of providing equality to First Nations women and their descendants, which further results in unequal access to benefits and services. 77. On several occasions, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Human Rights Committee and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have recognized that sex discrimination in the Indian Act is a root cause of violence and called for the urgent elimination of the legal provisions that discriminate against First Nations women and their descendants. Bill S-3 was passed in 2017 in response to the Descheneaux decision of the Quebec Superior Court, which found that the Indian Act unjustifiably violated equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Because the Senate of Canada insisted that the Government of Canada should go beyond the requirements of Descheneaux and remove the core discrimination embedded in the sexbased hierarchy between full status (Indian Act, sect. 6 (1) (a)) and partial status (sect. 6 (1) (c)), the Government included provisions in bill S-3 that would have that effect. Those provisions, however, were not brought into force in 2017. 78. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the decision issued on 14 January 2019 by the Human Rights Committee in favour of Sharon McIvor. The Committee held that the sexbased hierarchy between sections 6 (1) (a) and 6 (1) (c), introduced in the Indian Act and continued following the amendments of 2011 and 2017, violated the right to equal protection under the law without discrimination based on sex and violated the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of indigenous culture, guaranteed under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee also found that Canada was 40 41 14 See www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/missing-and-murdered-aboriginal-women-national-operational-overview. See www.canada.ca/en/indigenous-services-canada/services/first-nations-inuit-health/healthpromotion/suicide-prevention.html.