Gender Report Card on the International Criminal ... - YWCA Canada

Judiciary – Key Decisions Victim Participation
Breakdown of participants by gender
During the period covered by the <strong>Gender</strong> <strong>Report</strong> <strong>Card</strong> 2010, the VPRS did not provide a
gender breakdown of the applicants for victim participation, but did provide figures on
the gender of those who had been formally accepted to participate in proceedings. 1704
This year, the VPRS provided no gender breakdown of victims who had been accepted to
participate, but did provide some limited information on the gender of the applicants for
participation. 1705 According to the VPRS, due to the amount of applications received and
the time allocated to process them, the VPRS sometimes decides to enter only limited or
basic data in the database and to go back over those entries and complete the missing
information when the proceedings so allow. 1706 However, despite the fact that the
application form for victim participation specifically requires the applicant to indicate
his or her sex, the VPRS does not consistently include this information as ‘basic data’. As a
result, for more than one-quarter of the applications registered by the VPRS between 30
August 2010 and 1 September 2011, the sex of the applicant is listed as ‘unknown’. 1707
The VPRS statistics and information relate only to the number of applications registered
by the VPRS, and do not take into account the applications for participation which have
been received but not registered by the VPRS. 1708 This means that the actual number of
applications submitted by victims wishing to participate in the proceedings may be
much higher than the figures provided by the VPRS and discussed in this <strong>Report</strong>.
1704 See <strong>Gender</strong> <strong>Report</strong> <strong>Card</strong> 2010, p 190-191.
1705 Based on figures provided by the VPRS by email dated 14 September 2011.
1706 Explanation provided by the VPRS by email dated 15 September 2011.
1707 The information provided by email from the VPRS states that a total of 2,577 applications for victim
participation were registered by the VPRS during this time period. The gender of 658 applicants (or 25.53%) is
listed as unknown.
1708 Explanation provided by the VPRS by email dated 14 September 2011.
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