Loly Rico is the president of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. She is married to Francisco Rico-Martinez, with whom she co-directs the

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

-based

Faithful Companions of Jesus The Faithful Companions of Jesus Sisters (FCJ Sisters, French: ''Fidèles compagnes de Jésus'') is a Christian religious institute of the Roman Catholic Church directly subject to the Pope. It was founded in Amiens in France in 1820 by Marie M ...

Refugee Centre. Rico and her family moved to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

s in 1990 in order to escape

political repression Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereb ...

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

. In 2004, the Toronto City Council gave her the Constance E. Hamilton Award on the Status of Women. In 2008, Rico was given the Trevor Bartram Award by the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture. When

Joy Smith Joy Ann Smith (born February 20, 1947) is a Canadian politician. She served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba between 1999 and 2003, and was in the House of Commons of Canada from 2004 to 2015. Education and business career Smith was born ...

released "Connecting the Dots", a proposal for the

National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking The National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking is a four-year action plan that was established by the Government of Canada on June 6, 2012 to oppose human trafficking in Canada. In 2004, the government's Interdepartmental Working Group ...

, Rico criticized the proposal for being too focused on those who create the demand for sex trafficking, saying that it therefore did not sufficiently address victim rehabilitation. She recommended, therefore, that the proposal be amended to allow

human trafficking Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extrac ...

victims to become permanent residents of Canada and therefore be better guarded against being trafficked again. Rico became the president of the

Canadian Council for Refugees The Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR; formerly known as the Standing Conference of Canadian Organizations Concerned about/for/with Refugees) is a Montreal-based non-governmental organization that critiques the Government of Canada's public policy ...

in 2012. In 2013, Rico remarked that, "unfortunately, the government has been closing the door on refugees." Specifically, she criticized Jason Kenney,

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration The minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship (french: Ministre de l'immigration, des réfugiés et de la citoyenneté) is a minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet. The minister is responsible for Immigration, Refugees and Citi ...

, for having promised that Canada would resettle more refugees from 2011-2012 than in previous years, but not following through on this promise; instead, there was a 26% drop in refugee resettlement in Canada during that period, hitting a 30-year low.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rico, Loly Refugees in Canada Canadian people of Salvadoran descent Salvadoran emigrants to Canada Naturalized citizens of Canada Salvadoran women Salvadoran Roman Catholics Canadian Roman Catholics Salvadoran women's rights activists Canadian women's rights activists Activists from Toronto Minority rights activists Anti-torture activists 20th-century births Living people Year of birth missing (living people)