By Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service
June 10, 2009
Canada told the United Nations on Tuesday more than half of the 68 recommendations other countries say will improve Canadian human rights standards are unacceptable.
In an address to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Canada rejected outright 14 of the recommendations issued in March, and partially rejected another 22.
Rejected advice touched on issues that included racial discrimination, aboriginal rights, fighting poverty and seeking clemency for Canadians facing the death penalty overseas.
Delivering the snub, Marius Grinius, Canadian ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said Canada had "sought to approach its review in an open and constructive manner."
In Ottawa, several human rights groups said Canada had missed an opportunity to set an example to abuser states of the way forward.
But the Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch noted many of the countries handing out advice have themselves, poor human rights records.
The so-called Universal Periodic Review is a key oversight component of the 47-member council, which the UN launched in 2006 after the earlier Human Rights Commission became top-heavy with human rights abuser states. All 192 UN member states will have undergone their first review by 2011.
"The UN's discussion of Canada's human rights record was hard to take seriously when those doing the lecturing were serial human rights abusers like Iran, Russia, Cuba and Algeria," said Hillel Neuer, UN Watch executive director. "Democracies like Canada also need to be scrutinized, but not by the anti-democratic regimes of Ahmadinejad, Castro and Putin."
But Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, argued the identities of countries making the recommendations were irrelevant if the issue was of concern in Canada. "Our focus has to be on the message, not the messenger," he said.
Neve noted several of Canada's "closest friends and allies" were the source of some rejected recommendations. Norway, Denmark and Austria, for example, were among countries encouraging Canada to adopt the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada has argued the document, launched in 2007, would allow for the reopening of historically settled land claims.
Canada rejected as superfluous a recommendation from Egypt which, despite its record of discriminating against gays and other minorities, had called for the training of judges and prosecutors on the nature of race-based hate crimes.
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