But Amnesty International isn’t accusing Canada of mistreating its own people, as Iran asserts. Rather AI says Canada has lost its standing as a world leader on human rights issues in part by taking a one-sided, pro-Israeli, posture.
AI Secretary General Salil Shetty said, “Globally, Canada’s reputation as a reliable human-rights champion has dropped precipitously.”
Among other things, Canada’s shift in the Middle East has included “unflinching refusal” to raise concerns about Israel’s rights records, and the government has stifled or defunded agencies that “promote the rights of Palestinians.”
But a new report goes on to cite other problems with Canada’s role, including a reluctance to sign new UN rights declarations, avoiding accountability for the treatment of Canadian detainees in Afghanistan, and a failure to stand up for the rights of Canadians accused abroad, such as Omar Khadr, the one Canadian detained in Guantanamo Bay.
The report marks a shift: Groups like Amnesty, which once viewed Canada as a paragon of their rights agenda, pushing initiatives like an international criminal court and protections for child soldiers, now see it as lackluster under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. But AI did not accuse Canada, as Iran does, of callous treatment of indigenous people and immigrant minorities, although it did criticize Canada’s failure to shrink the gap in the standard of living between aboriginal Canadians and most citizens.
Harper’s Conservative Party has taken the position that there has been excessive criticism at the UN and elsewhere of the rights record of Israel. But Shetty said Canada has lost the reputation for evenhandedness because it refuses to take Israel to task.
“Nobody’s saying that therefore we should not be critical of Iran or other places as the Canadian government is,” Shetty said. “Amnesty is very critical of the human-rights record of Saudi Arabia, of Iran, of all the people who are very vocally against Israel. But we should call a spade a spade.”
Fen Hampson, a foreign policy analyst at Carleton University, told the Globe & Mail, Canada’s largest newspaper, that Canada’s approach on human rights has shifted. While the Liberal Party government in the 1990s pushed a “humanitarian” concept of human rights, like the international criminal court and human security, the Conservatives consciously dropped that agenda and focused on criticizing autocratic regimes like Iran.
Hampson said Amnesty is exaggerating Canada’s global loss of reputation, but at least until the Libya mission it wasn’t seen in recent years as a leader on human security issues.