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Currently viewing articles tagged with Human Rights.
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When the Respectable Become Extremists The Extremists Become Respectable
By any historical measure, whether it involves international law, human rights conventions, United Nations protocols, socio economic indicators, the policies and practices of the United States and European Union regimes can be characterized as extremist.
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No Running Water
116 First Nations across Canada – almost one in five – have running water that is not drinkable because of contamination. It’s a horrendous situation putting residents at increased risk for a host of health problems usually associated with the world’s poorest countries.
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Israel and the ‘A’ Word
While use of the apartheid analogy is mainstream elsewhere in the world, Israeli Apartheid Week is routinely criticized by Canadian politicians and media outlets. Canadian IAW activists, and their few public supporters, are put on the defensive and the debate becomes about whether organizers have the right to hold the events at all.
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Advocacy groups says it’s time for MP’s to work for Haiti
A national advocacy network for social justice in Haiti says it wants Members of Parliament to get involved in steering more Canadian funding toward humanitarian relief in Haiti and away from what it calls destructive interference in that country’s affairs.
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Cuban dissidents make noise—oops, news
U.S. government hypocrisy has grown so pervasive over the last decades that it provokes yawns and glazed looks. Senators denounce government interference in health care while partaking in their own top of the line government health insurance that they designed at taxpayer expense. Secretary of State Clinton demanded Pakistani leaders remove terrorists from their streets while self-proclaimed anti-Castro terrorists parade down Miami’s thoroughfares as freedom fighters, of course.
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New Clothes, Same Old Canadian Thinking
There are Aboriginal lawyers, doctors, judges, professors, teachers, architects, engineers, writers, musicians, artists, politicians, corporate executives, bureaucrats. In fact, Aboriginal peoples can be found in all walks of life today. But for most Aboriginal people in Canada, descendants of the first occupants of this land, whether they live in the cities or the country, poverty is an everyday reality. In this time and place, poverty means shame, constant worry and fear.
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International Women’s Day
Over the past century, International Women’s Day has evolved from radical protests for women’s political, economic and social rights to a day for celebrating women’s achievements. In Canada, nowadays, at celebratory luncheons and evening award galas, it is not unusual for organizations to cheer prominent women who have reached the heights of success in such areas as sports, volunteerism and business. Has International Women’s Day become merely a time to reflect on how far (some) women have come?
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25 Years, Ready or Not?
Twenty-five years ago Canada signed the most comprehensive human-rights treaty on women’s rights, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This was an enormous accomplishment for women around the globe who had worked for many decades to establish a human-rights treaty that specifically addressed the persistent and systemic discrimination against women. Canada was among the first to sign this treaty in 1980, and ratified it with the consent of all provinces and territories in the fall of 1981.
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Solidarity Across Borders
Canada tends to take pride in its humanitarian tradition of providing protection to thousands of refugees who fear persecution, or who are at risk of torture or cruel and unusual treatment. Despite this popular image, however, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) are both highly flawed institutions, which often fail to protect those seeking asylum.
For example, members of Solidarity Across Borders (SAB), a Montreal-based coalition of self-organized refugees and their allies, recently received a call from Lilia Diaz. Telephoning in tears from Mexico, Diaz told us that she and her family are living clandestinely in the constant fear of being discovered and attacked, since their deportation from Canada this past summer back to the country they had fled.
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The Politics of Money
Since the U.S.-backed overthrow of progressive Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the severe level of political repression launched by the new government has left tens of thousands of Lavalas (Aristide’s political party) supporters the victims of rapes, incarcerations, firings and murders. One tragic aspect of this story is the extent to which Canadian federal government money has been able to buy the support of supposedly progressive organizations and individuals. Today they continue to align themselves with Canada’s brutal pro-coup policy.
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