Canada rejected, fully or partially, more than half of the UN Human Rights Council’s 68 recommendations, including recommendations that we sign the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, create a national anti-poverty strategy, and intervene in cases where Canadians face the death penalty overseas. I could only find CanWest coverage of the event (i.e. the same story in half a dozen different papers) and no full text of Canadian ambassador in Geneva Marius Grinius’ explanation for this rejection, or documents on the UN’s Universal Periodic Review page for Canada yet, so all I know about it is what Stephen Edwards says in the National Post – basically, that there are lots of members of the HRC (i.e. Russia, Algeria, Iran) with terrible human rights records themselves, so it’s not clear that the body is legitimate. I’m going to have to agree with Alex Neve of Amnesty International that this should be about the message, not the messengers. But we’ll have to wait until there’s more information available to really evaluate the government’s position. Assuming that they provide some…

For now, check out the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s page on Canada’s great historical reputation for Advancing Human Rights Institutions

Tagged: canada rejects human rights council recommendations, canada rejects human rights recommendations, human rights in canada, un human rights council, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, universal periodic review