Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 16 - Evidence - February 26, 2007
OTTAWA, Monday, February 26, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 4:10 p.m. to monitor issues relating to human rights and, inter alia, to review the machinery of government dealing with Canada's international and national human rights obligations.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, this is the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. We have been given an order to monitor issues relating to human rights and, inter alia, to review the machinery of government dealing with Canada's international and national human rights obligations.
Before we get to the hearing portion, we have had a resignation of our vice-chair, Senator Carstairs. I want to go on record, I am sure on behalf of all the committee, to express our gratitude for her advice, commitment and involvement with this committee and the various studies that we have conducted.
As chair, I want personally to thank Senator Carstairs for being available, giving her advice, supporting this committee and also for coming on Mondays, which is always a difficulty for senators. Today, with the storm in Toronto, we are missing a few members who will be coming. Senator Carstairs was diligent in her tasks, and I know that I can speak on behalf of all of the committee members in expressing our appreciation to her.
In my conversations with Senator Carstairs, and she can certainly speak for herself, she has indicated she will continue to follow our work very closely as she continues to work as vice-president of the Committee on Human Rights of Parliamentarians at the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Her commitment to human rights issues will continue, and we will look for her guidance, advice and involvement from time to time as she is able.
I now turn to the election of the deputy chair.
Senator Carstairs: Since I am a member today, I nominate Senator Fraser as the deputy chair.
Senator Munson: I second that motion.
The Chairman: I would be delighted to have you second it. If there are no further nominations, I declare Senator Fraser elected as the deputy chair. Welcome.
Senator Fraser: Thank you very much.
The Chairman: This is a good opportunity, and I am sure it was discussed between Senator Carstairs and Senator Fraser that we are continuing our study on the human rights machinery, which has been an ongoing study of this committee. We commenced with Promises to Keep, which was a look at international machinery and how Canada was dealing with this national and international interplay. We produced several reports as a result of that study. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights transformed itself under the UN reform that is presently occurring into the United Nations Human Rights Council. The council is evolving and there are ongoing issues still to be dealt with, but we thought it was an opportune time to look again at this international machinery as it affects human rights and to provide advice either internationally or, more particularly, to our government as it works within the confines of the United Nations council.
We are pleased that we have two witnesses to start today. I understand they have selected to start with Mr. Prasad, Human Rights Advisor for Action Canada for Population and Development, ACPD, an organization that had been attending the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and now continues to follow the United Nations Human Rights Council closely.
I will then turn to no stranger to the human rights field. He has been supportive of our committee and has made various presentations throughout our hearings — Mr. Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. Amnesty International has been involved with the United Nations human rights commission and now the council for many years. We will seek his guidance and historical perspective on the new council.
[Translation]
Sandeep Prasad, Human Rights Advisor, Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD): Madam Chair, Action Canada for Population and Development is an organization devoted to the defence of human rights. ACPD focuses on health, sexual and reproductive rights and the issue of international migration.
[English]
ACPD has been on site every year since 2001 for the UN Commission on Human Rights, engaging with governments and other civil society organizations. ACPD continues its presence at the council and has been on site for council sessions and for working group meetings relating to its institution building, with a particular focus on the review of the system of special procedures.
I will focus my comments on the first of the four questions set for today's discussion, which is whether the council is responding effectively to the concerns expressed about the commission.
The reasons often cited for the discrediting of the commission were that its work had become overly politicized and selective. Certain countries avoided scrutiny due to political alliances and many issues were actively ignored, for example the commission's refusal to deal with human rights violations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
With respect to the council, as many media reports indicate, there are some warning signals that this politicization and selectivity remain. However, there are also indications of changes for the better. Certainly, the existence of the new universal periodic review or UPR mechanism is a promising step to ensure that no state can avoid at least some level of scrutiny.
There have also been gains, at least in this initial year, as far as civil society participation, which now includes participation in interactive dialogues with special rapporteurs and the ability to raise issues in the ``other issues'' section of the agenda.
The main message ACPD wishes to convey is that, at this stage, it is too early to tell for certain whether this council will be an improvement over the commission. We find ourselves still in the midst of six institution-building processes that will finish at some point this June. Much of the answer to this question will depend on what the three working groups responsible for these processes are able to build as far as the council's structures. The effectiveness of the UPR and the continuation of these gains in NGO participation will depend on this outcome.
In this institution building, there certainly have been negative developments, but there are some positive ones as well. I wish to highlight some in both categories, with particular reference to developments in the working group reviewing the system of special procedures, which is where ACPD focuses its work.
When I use the term ``special procedures,'' I am referring to the system of 41 special rapporteurs, special representatives, independent experts and working groups that were created by the commission and now have been transferred to the council. They are recognized as one of the most effective tools for human rights protection and promotion developed by the commission. In fact, Kofi Annan referred to them as the ``crown jewel of the system'' during his recent Human Rights Day address. ACPD agrees with this characterization.
To strengthen the special procedure system, certain key areas must be addressed. First, the individual communications tool of special procedures must be maintained and strengthened. This is the urgent appeals tool by which special procedures can communicate with governments on behalf of individual victims of human rights violations. Second, protection gaps must be addressed to ensure that all human rights issues are covered within the system. By protection gaps, I mean areas of human rights where there is no mandate coverage within the system. The existence of these gaps is a reflection of selectivity. Third, methods of follow-up to the implementation of all recommendations of special procedures must be developed. Fourth, state cooperation with the special procedures must be enhanced. Fifth, the independence of mandate holders must be maintained.
On the issue of protection gaps, there is now convergence within the working group that these gaps must be filled. The last round of negotiations ended with a clear direction from the facilitator soliciting concrete proposals to close and prevent protection gaps. How this will be done remains to be seen, but it is one encouraging element.
On the issue of follow-up, it is well recognized that the lack of systematic and effective follow-up to recommendations of special procedures severely hampers the effectiveness of the system. There is now agreement at this stage that steps to ensure effective follow-up need to be taken, and this is another positive sign.
With respect to enhancing state cooperation, it remains to be seen what concrete steps will be taken, but NGOs and a number of states, including Canada, have advanced some constructive proposals in this respect.
On the side of worrying developments, I will highlight two. In December, the council adopted a resolution requiring the working group reviewing the special procedures to draft a code of conduct for mandate holders, despite their already being subject to a code of conduct since 2002. What will be in this additional code of conduct and how it will impact on methods of work, such as the individual communications tool, remain to be seen. I believe the African group will be releasing its draft very soon.
The selection of mandate holders has been another hotly debated issue. At this stage, it seems there will be some form of election, despite the politicization this will bring. However, even on this, there certainly are innovations that may minimize the politicization, including a Brazilian proposal involving a rigorous pre-selection process and Japan's proposed refinement of this that would involve placing only one pre-selected candidate before the council for confirmation rather than having the council elect from a slate of pre-screened candidates.
In conclusion, the institution-building process is still underway. Our take at ACPD is that there have been enough positive elements in this process to remain optimistic.
Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada: It is indeed a pleasure to be back amongst the members of this committee. Amnesty International has long welcomed and in fact I would even say celebrated your work. We think you were a particularly important addition to the parliamentary scene when this committee was established, and we have followed and tried to support in whatever ways we can the important work you have underway. The fact that you have turned your attention to the questions you have asked us to address today is more indication of how important it is, because these are questions that are not being examined and addressed in a parliamentary fashion in any other quarters.
A year ago this time, the human rights community waited with baited breath as the final debate about the tremendously important and long overdue reform of the United Nations human rights system played out.
As committee members will know, after a series of reports and responses to reports throughout 2004 and 2005 considering and proposing comprehensive United Nations reform proposals, world leaders had, at their September 2005 summit marking the United Nations' sixtieth anniversary, agreed to an overhaul of the United Nations' human rights machinery, including the strengthening of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, improvements to the effectiveness of the UN treaty monitoring process and, perhaps most significantly and not without contention, the decision to create a new UN Human Rights Council to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights.
In my remarks, I will touch upon those latter two initiatives — treaty body reform and creation of the new Human Rights Council — starting with the council.
The decision to create the council in particular caught the imagination and fuelled the hopes of human rights advocates around the world. The Commission on Human Rights, established in 1946, had for six decades been the world's pre-eminent human rights body. I think it is important to acknowledge that, while much attention is given to its failings, in those six decades the commission achieved a great deal and made incredibly important contributions to the global human rights landscape.
However, for all of its good work, unquestionably by 2005 the commission had become largely discredited as politicized and ineffective. At its yearly session, governments had become more focused on shielding each other from human rights scrutiny rather than on ensuring that human rights concerns worldwide received the consistent and thorough attention required. The decision therefore to disband the commission and replace it with a body that could and should be stronger and more effective was indeed momentous.
There was much debate and considerable politicking over the months that followed that September 2005 decision until March 2006 when the decision to create the new council was finally confirmed and the details fleshed out. Innovations included elections for the new council requiring a majority vote in the United Nations General Assembly backed up by public human rights pledges from governments standing for election, bringing a sense of rigor and scrutiny to the elections that was never there before; raising the new body's position within the UN system to the level of a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly, a level above the previous commission; agreement to launch a new process of ongoing review — the universal periodic review or UPR — of the human rights records of all countries in the world; and the decision that the new council would be a standing body meeting at least three times per year, rather than the commission which had met only once annually.
This new council, to which of course Canada was elected to be one of the first slate of members, met for the first time in June 2006 and has now completed three regular sessions and four special sessions. What does the record to date tell us of the council, Canada's role in the council, and the council's potential to live up to the great hope and promise it stands for?
As Mr. Prasad noted, there has been mounting criticism that the new council appears to be possibly new in name only and has not been able to shake the politics that plagued the commission. Three of the four special sessions that the council members agreed to convene in 2006 dealt with the human rights situation in the state of Israel. The fourth, rather tepidly, dealt with Darfur. There was nothing special from the council regarding human rights crises in any other parts of the world. Is it a true, impartial reflection of the state of human rights in the world last year that 75 per cent of the council's special attention should have gone to Israel, 25 per cent to Darfur, and no other crisis merited attention? Clearly not. Is the council beyond salvation? Again, I would echo what Mr. Prasad said: not yet.
This first year has primarily been spent focusing on getting the council's procedural house in order, which is vitally important. It is not the jazzy, exciting stuff, but it is what lays the ground for an institution that will be sustainable. Two major pieces of work in particular have been preoccupying council members, and I would like to highlight some key points here because this is the work that may ultimately make or break the new council. One is a vital innovation, the institution of a universal periodic review of all countries' human rights records. The second, which Mr. Prasad has already touched on at length, is the hope for strengthening what is perhaps the crown jewel or the backbone of the UN human rights system — the system of special procedures. If something strong and effective can emerge from those two processes the council will truly stand to make significant new contributions to global human rights protection.
I will start with the universal periodic review, UPR. One of the most frequent criticisms levelled at the previous human rights commission was its selectivity and double standards in how it handled concerns about human rights violations in particular countries. Some countries were often and quite easily singled out and criticized. Others with equal or graver human rights concerns consistently escaped scrutiny. The key, all too frequently, was not the severity of the human rights concerns but rather the political adeptness and might of the country in question.
Universal periodic review aims to change that. Now, all countries are to come up for review on a regular, rotating basis. If done correctly, this could, in an unparalleled manner, mean that the council would actually have the means to promote human rights in all countries consistently, objectively, transparently and even constructively. That said, there is still considerable debate underway about how the universal periodic review will be conducted.
Let me highlight some crucial elements that Amnesty International believes will determine the UPR's success or failure.
First, the UPR must be more than a once-every-few-years afternoon chat with a government about its human rights record. It must be part of a continuous process including solid advance preparation, thorough interactive dialogue, meaningful outcomes and careful attention to follow-up and implementation.
Second, a successful UPR process will need to be backed up by strong, independent human rights expertise that will help to focus the review on the key human rights issues in any given country. That should include making use of the work of the special procedures system and thus underscores how important it is that the current review of the special procedures ensures that they emerge strong, independent and effective.
Third, every state should be reviewed once every three years. That is the Canadian government's position, and we endorse it. It is the only timetable that makes sense, given that members of the council are supposed to be reviewed when they are on the council, and membership terms last three years. It is also a frequency that makes sense for something so vitally important as human rights. Anything longer is, quite simply, too long.
Fourth, the UPR process must be transparent at all times and in all ways, including the information used as the basis of the review, the review process itself, the interactive dialogue, the outcome and the follow-up and implementation.
Finally, Amnesty stresses that the UPR should be seen as one among several tools open to the council for addressing countries' situations. It should not be seen as the only tool. There is a concern here that everyone's hopes are so focused on a strong UPR process emerging that the other tools that have long been open to members of the commission, which can certainly translate into continued use within the council, will be forgotten.
Canada has been a strong proponent of UPR. In fact, Canada was one of the earliest and most forceful proponents of this new approach. Amnesty International welcomes that role and counts on Canada over the coming months, which will be decisive months, to maintain that strong position. Much work remains to ensure that UPR will be all that it can be.
As an aside, I want to highlight that Canada's attention to UPR should not, cannot, be directed only at the international stage. Once UPR is up and running, Canada itself will have its human rights record reviewed. In fact, it might be one of the first. Given that Canada has been a champion of this process, it will be vitally important that we do it well.
Canada has a long history of participating actively in UN-level review of its human rights record through the treaty body process, which I will come to in a moment. Canada takes those reviews seriously. However, it has become clear that there is a significant and very troubling implementation gap, such that compliance with the recommendations that emerge from UN-level review is often lacking. I do not need to underscore that to this committee. You have pointed to that concern in a number of your reports.
A significant part of the problem is that Canada has no meaningful coordinating process or mechanism that cuts across departments at the federal level as well as between the federal, provincial and territorial levels of government to oversee implementation. Instead, UN recommendations seemingly disappear into a black hole, only to emerge largely unimplemented for the next round of review.
That is not the model that Canada can afford to demonstrate as the new UPR process gets up and running. A key piece of making UPR work will be for Canada to deal finally with the long-neglected domestic problems in our own ability to implement and comply with UN-level human rights recommendations.
I will turn briefly to the other significant area of debate and negotiation within the council: the review of the special procedures system. As Mr. Prasad highlighted, over many years an impressive and growing array of experts, including special rapporteurs, special representatives and working groups, had developed within the commission. Some were focused on certain countries: Burundi, North Korea, Belarus and Cuba are current examples. Others focused on thematic concerns: torture, violence against women and the right to health, for example.
While there was a notable unevenness in the degree to which these experts received cooperation from governments and also unevenness in the quality of their work, overall the special procedures system was seen as perhaps the greatest success of the old commission. Their work over the years has been helpful in researching and documenting human rights violations around the world, proposing specific recommendations for change at a national level, identifying regional and even global patterns of human rights abuse, and highlighting the need for wider changes, including at an international level.
There were concerns about the system. Many governments felt threatened by the work of these experts and have consistently sought to weaken and undermine their effectiveness. Over the years, for instance, several country-focused special rapporteurs have had their mandates discontinued by a commission vote, not because the human rights concerns have magically disappeared but, rather, because the country concerned had finally been able to rally enough allies to its side and win the commission vote. Other governments, including Canada, have expressed concern about a continuing expansion in the number of experts, sometimes with unclear mandates, sometimes with politicized mandates, and have pressed for the system to be rationalized and better coordinated.
Moving from the commission into the council, the special procedures system has been retained but it is subject to review. I very much underscore and endorse all of the recommendations that Mr. Prasad has put in front of you as to the sorts of things with which Canada should be moving forward.
I would like to expand on a code of conduct, which was highlighted by Mr. Prasad and which is a worrying concern now because it is indicative of the intention some governments have of trying to find ways to undermine, erode and undercut the independence of the special procedures.
A few countries have countered with an interesting proposal, which is that there is need of a code of conduct for governments when it comes to the special procedures system. It is here where we see the greatest problems. There are government that treat these UN appointed experts with contempt. They ignore them, undermine them, will not allow them into their countries, insult them, offend them — all of which is wholly unacceptable for UN-level designated experts. Those issues need to be addressed in a government-focused code of conduct. We understand that some countries, such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein, have started to show an interest in this. Having Canada join its voice and add its energy to that initiative would be positive.
I will say another word about Canada's role within these trying but important times at the council. These first eight months have been difficult, often contentious and divided. That is of concern because the council is dealing with these mundane but terribly important procedural issues that will lay the foundation for what the council will ultimately become and ideally we would hope to see all governments united behind positions that advance human rights as forcefully as possible. The easy return to divisive and disproportionate attention to human rights concerns in Israel also does not bode well, pointing to an easy return to the politics that were much of the commission's undoing. All of this is against a backdrop where some groupings, such as the African grouping, have adopted even firmer and less flexible approaches than previously to rigid block voting on issues.
All of that does not add up to an easy or encouraging environment. In such a context, therefore, Canada is perhaps one the countries better situated than most to be able to work across geographical divides, to reach out to moderates in other groupings and to build coalitions that can counter some of these worrying trends. We have certainly been pressing Canada to devote considerable diplomatic attention to that.
I want to address your other topic of concern: reform of the treaty body process. I will not sketch the picture of how much reform is needed. I am sure that is well known to committee members. The fact that the UN 2005 World Summit outcome document signalled this as an area for attention and that Ms. Arbour in her work has signalled it as a priority of concern make it clear. The system is backlogged, under-resourced and made up of some exceptional members of committees but others who are clearly less than exceptional, who are not independent or who do not possess the required expertise. The treaty bodies themselves are treated with variations of disrespect, disinterest and contempt by governments who do not ratify the key treaties, do not recognize the full breadth of treaty-monitoring powers, make little effort to submit reports to the committees to review at all, let alone on time, and ignore the recommendations and views formulated by the committees.
I will provide some examples. At any given time there are still over 1,000 reports to treaty bodies that are overdue. There are a number of countries with 15 or more overdue reports. Malaysia, currently a member of the UN Human Rights Council, has ratified only two United Nations human rights treaties: the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The current chair of the migrant workers convention treaty body is Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United Nations — far from independent, obviously.
All of that aside, this is a struggle worth pushing ahead with. The treaties themselves are crucial. They are the very backbone of international law with respect to human rights. There is no question that the major gap with respect to the treaties is implementation, compliance and enforcement. It is easy enough to sign on and ratify. It is quite another thing to force governments to live up to their obligations. A strong and effective system for monitoring those treaties is thus essential.
You have asked particularly about the High Commissioner for Human Rights' proposal to possibly create one all- encompassing unified body that would be responsible for the entire breadth of treaties. This proposal has been made for a number of reasons, including a response to the complaint of a number of governments that numerous reporting requirements to a growing number of treaty-monitoring bodies has become cumbersome and onerous and needs to be rationalized. This concern is increasing with the upcoming addition of further committees once the disappearances and disabilities conventions enter into force.
The reaction from states, from NGOs and from the treaty bodies themselves has been cool, all likely for differing reasons. Amnesty International has not unequivocally said that we think this is a bad idea. We have expressed concern that moving to one overarching approach to treaty monitoring risks downgrading the special attention currently given to the rights of particularly vulnerable sectors of society, such as women, children and racial minorities. Primarily, though, we have urged that, before moving to such a dramatic change, real work needs to happen to address some of the chronic shortcomings of the system and that the current attention to and momentum for reform gives a valuable opening for doing so. For instance, one area desperately in need of attention is the need to improve the quality of the membership of the treaty bodies. That pertains to one overarching unified treaty body mechanism, and it pertains to the treaty bodies we currently have.
We recognize that elections will almost certainly continue to be the way members are chosen, which is unfortunate because it does bring politics into the process, but nonetheless the system can be significantly improved. Processes can be strengthened at a national level so as to attract the best possible candidates. Canada has some good examples to demonstrate to other states in that regard. States need to be pressed not to vote for members who are not independent from government or who are clearly not expert.
Discussions are continuing and are looking at lesser versions of unifying, including possibly merging the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, but not merging all of the committees; or a merging of committees functionally for the purpose of receiving individual complaints but leaving the committees separate for the wider work of periodic review of countries' records.
As you likely know, the High Commissioner for Human Rights is organizing a July meeting in Berlin to consider these and other possibilities. Amnesty International continues to participate actively in the discussions and urges that any approach to reform be sure to tackle the underlying structural problems that have thwarted the treaty body system to date. Otherwise, we will just have one, big, unified body that incorporates all of the problems that currently exist independently.
I will end with a note about Canada in the treaty bodies, which goes back to some of the comments I made around periodic review. Internationally, in this process of reform, Canada has played a constructive role, but nationally Canada continues to come up short. As I said earlier, it is long past time for Canada to substantially overhaul its own engagement with the UN human rights treaty system. We have one of the best records out there when it comes to ratifying treaties and when it comes to submitting reports, and usually submitting them on time. After that, things fall apart. Canada's approach to complying is, to put it mildly, obscure and confusing. As the years go by, more and more important treaty body recommendations are ignored, without convincing explanation by Canada, and we risk becoming another example of a state that does not take this important system seriously.
This is becoming more and more evident in the impatient tone of many of the treaty bodies now as their concluding observations following review of Canada's periodic reports underscore the many recommendations that lie unimplemented and frustrations with the federal-provincial argument that Canada consistently puts forward to explain or excuse non-compliance.
While Canada continues to participate in international-level efforts to reform the treaty body process, national attention is desperately needed as well, in three ways. First, we should ratify all of the remaining human rights treaties, including the migrant workers convention, the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and the new disabilities and disappearances conventions. Second, we should recognize the individual petition power under all treaties, including the new ones but also including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a convention ratified by Canada many years ago but whose individual complaint procedure has never been accepted or recognized by Canada.
Third, at a ministerial level, we believe it is time to convene a long-overdue meeting of federal-provincial-territorial ministers responsible for human rights in this country. We have not had such a meeting since 1988, which we think is a scandal. Such a meeting could go some way towards helping to kick-start a process of fashioning a more effective, better coordinated, more authoritative and transparent process for ensuring full compliance with Canada's international human rights obligations. Unless our political leaders get behind this question in Canada, we will never see the progress that is needed.
The Chairman: Thank you. You have echoed a comment that we made in our initial report, that it would take ministerial-level involvement to change the dynamics.
Senator Munson: In relation to the universal periodic review that you talked about extensively, you mentioned the word ``compliance.'' How do you make countries comply to recommendations that would come under the universal periodic review? What kind of teeth would be behind those recommendations?
Mr. Neve: That is the eternal question within the UN system, because within a system of international law, with some exceptions, compliance is almost always totally reliant upon good faith and states cajoling, encouraging and pressing each other to comply.
Consideration is being given to whether there should be sanctions of some kind for significant non-compliance — at the very least, perhaps the mild or not-so-mild sanction of not being able to stand again as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, if a country so desires. That is one option being considered.
We hope that this will become one of the most high-profile human rights processes within the UN system, and we expect that that in itself will be a significant deterrent for countries that are concerned about their international record and that to date have been able to escape that level of international scrutiny.
We know that even powerful countries like China, for instance, which often seem beyond the reach of international pressure of any kind, care about what the UN says or does not say about their human rights record. That was evident in the amount of diplomatic energy and capital that the Chinese government devoted year after year at the UN Commission on Human Rights to successfully fending off efforts to bring a resolution at the commission criticizing China's human rights record. Does that mean that once China comes up for universal periodic review, there will magically be easy compliance on China's part? We are not that naive. We know that there will still be significant battles ahead, but we think that this process gives us a degree of leverage that has never before existed within the international system.
Senator Munson: We were told two weeks ago that the UN Human Rights Council has had four special sessions, three with Israel and one with Darfur. It was interesting to note some of the language echoed at the time. In relation to Israel, the council expressed ``shock.'' However, when it comes to Darfur and the Sudan, the council expressed ``concern.'' Who holds a pen on those discussions or on the discourse that happens there? When words like that are used, people have a tendency to look the other way, which they have, of course, with Darfur. What really has changed?
Mr. Neve: That was an area of real concern. They started with a disproportionate reflection of the global human rights landscape by suggesting that three quarters of their special attention should have gone to Israel. Amnesty International prominently and frequently criticizes Israel for its human rights record, but do we think that means that Israel should have taken up 75 per cent of special sessions of the Human Rights Council? Clearly not, and we shared that concern. The word we used to describe the Human Rights Council's approach to Darfur was ``tepid,'' precisely because of that concern about wording and other concerns about the resolutions that the council has adopted around Darfur. It is troubling. We and other organizations have stressed that unless the council starts to get a handle on that disproportionate attention to Israel and ensure that there is consistency in how countries' situations are handled, then it will not even get out of the starting blocks when it comes to convincing the world that there will be a different credibility this time around.
As to who holds the pen, it is governments. These resolutions are the result of the back and forth in negotiations that happen amongst governments. In an effort to see if a resolution can become acceptable to all such that it will be adopted by consensus, the process sometimes leads to a watering down until you have bland language that everyone can support. That can be a problem, although consensus is a strong thing to have.
Senator Munson: We are always concerned about something, but that is beyond watering down.
The issue of a Canadian ambassador on human rights was mentioned in our last conversations with Mr. Heinbecker and others. I would like to get both your views on that.
Mr. Neve: We would certainly welcome anything that brings increased, higher-profile attention to human rights within government. I think the timing makes a lot of sense. I know that within government, hard-working officials are reeling with the realization that the new era of the Human Rights Council is bringing a comprehensive, unending set of challenges and demands that last all year long, that are of a quantity and quality inordinately different from what was in front of government back in the days of six focused weeks in Geneva in March and April. There needs to be an increased level of resources within government to ensure that Canada can be a player at all times and at all levels within the council, as is necessary. There will be, in a variety of ways, need for elevated diplomatic initiatives to which an ambassador focused in this area could make an important contribution.
Mr. Prasad: To echo Mr. Neve's comments, an elevation of the status of human rights within the UN system, combined with the regularity of sessions, certainly calls for having a focal point at the ambassadorial level on human rights issues.
Senator Kinsella: Of course our distinguished chair was in the past Canada's ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, but you cannot have her from the Senate; we need her to keep her here.
It is almost a national disgrace of irresponsibility on the part of ministers responsible for human rights legislation across Canada, whether at the territorial, provincial or federal level, that in this field of public policy there has not been a meeting of the ministers for almost 20 years. Yet, looking back to the record of the first and last times they did meet — because I think they met only twice or maybe three times — a lot of fruit resulted from those ministerial meetings. I am glad that you placed on the record your support and encouragement for such a ministerial meeting to be held.
There are many things the ministers need to examine. They have the responsibility to determine what kind of a domestic model for treaty compliance is needed. After all, they are the ones with the public responsibility for compliance with the laws that their governments — whether provincial, territorial or federal — enact to ensure that they are treaty compliant.
Second, regarding the periodic reviews, under the various treaties now where periodic reports are submitted, the ministers are responsible for the public resources that are expended in the preparation of those reports in the various provincial, territorial and federal jurisdictions. If only from an accountability standpoint, that is another reason why the ministers should be meeting.
Since way back in the labour conventions cases, the constitutional convention exists that before Canada ratifies any international instrument in the fields that touch provincial jurisdiction, there will be consultation among all levels of government. As the witnesses have pointed out, there are a number of treaties that Canada should ratify, and others on the cusp of opening that require political decisions as well. That is another reason why the ministers should be meeting.
I would put the question to the ministers, maybe to force their thinking on this: Do we, in the absence of a national infrastructure, suggest that the Canadian Human Rights Commission should be given the mandate to provide the national mechanism that is needed? I would put that out as a challenge, not necessarily to advocate that particular model. We need some kind of effective instrument. Do the witnesses agree with that?
Mr. Neve: Do we agree with you challenging the governments on this? Absolutely. I am not in a position to say whether the specific idea about the Canadian Human Rights Commission is the best solution. It is an interesting idea and is exactly the kind of proposal that should receive serious attention. There are probably other models that could be debated and considered as well.
Senator Kinsella: From your perspective, how is Canadian representation doing within the system to date? Are there sufficient meetings prior to the Human Rights Council meetings? Are there meetings here in Canada with the non- governmental community prior to the new UN Human Rights Council meetings? Is that process continuing as it had existed with the former human rights commission?
Mr. Neve: As committee members likely know, it was a long-standing tradition to have three days of government- NGO consultations in advance of the old human rights commission meetings. We are having a series of meetings with a small group of NGOs and key people within the Department of Foreign Affairs to think about what the new era means for us. That tradition of pre-meetings made sense back when there was one session of the commission; then one consultation meeting a sufficient number of weeks in advance of the session was the right way to go. Now the council has ongoing sessions throughout the year.
Senator Kinsella: Are you hopeful that there will be a new model?
Mr. Neve: I think so. This year, as a stopgap, we did go with the old model. At the beginning of February there were two days of consultations and the last sessions of the two days were on this very issue of the future of consultations. On both sides — the government and the NGO community — there was a spirit of goodwill and commitment to coming up with something that will work.
Senator Kinsella: Given its new structure, do you think the United Nations will be better equipped to deal with the many non-state actors who have tremendous influence on the level of enjoyment of human rights or indeed who are often the perpetrators of the denial of human rights? I am thinking of international drug cartels, criminal organizations and terrorist organizations. In some circumstances, I also think of legitimate global corporations that, by their conduct, impede the promotion and protection of human rights. Will this new structure be better equipped, in a post- Westphalian age, to deal with these non-state actors, many of whom have more financial and other resources available to them than half the member states of the United Nations? Can this structure find the formula, or is there another structure? Do we throw our hands up in the air?
Mr. Neve: Part of the answer to that is still evolving. There is no question that innovations like the universal periodic review are very state-centric. That being said, it is up to states to determine what sorts of issues they bring up in the course of their review of other states. It is often state support or state negligence that lies behind the power of the non- state actors to which you referred. While they may not be accountable within a UN state-centred system, there are governments that give them shelter or tacit support who can and should be held accountable. The universal periodic review would be one way to bring it more to the surface.
Also, within the UN human rights system a process was launched a few years back and continues today to consider the possibility of a new approach to holding transnational corporations accountable for their human rights conduct. That process is still fraught with a lot of debate. There is nothing remotely close to consensus among governments, corporations and NGOs as to where that exercise should go. I think it will still be several years before we see the end of that, but it will point the way forward for at least one of the actors you have highlighted.
Mr. Prasad: The approach to human rights at the council is still state-centric, much as it was at the commission, despite the existence of special procedures mandates on the various issues that you have identified. I think it is still a question of what will be built in the council structures.
Senator Dallaire: You should be optimistic, however, that there is so much friction between states and much manipulation and behind-the-scenes fiddling going on by states in regard to the results or the actions that this mission could ultimately take. It is encouraging. If everyone ignored it, the whole exercise would be lost. There is a sense that this can evolve more positively.
We have a fundamental law of the nation that is 25 years old and has not been reviewed, which is our Charter. We have significant questions about its application. Consider our Aboriginal people. There are a million of them, and that is not an insignificant minority. We have the complexities of many ethnicities coming in with the cultural and religious frictions they will bring that need to have arbitration and solutions. Our foreign policy is based on going to foreign countries to assist them with bringing in human rights and good governance and so on, even to the point where we bring in troops to support that. We are involved more and more with trade, and the population wants to see companies being far more responsible in regards to human rights. They want clean, transparent companies that take action. With all of that, why is human rights a secondary duty to another minister? How is it that the governance of this fundamental element of the nation, which we believe is the essence of many of our values, is being done by another minister when he has time and with secondary staff that are not mainstream? Why do we not have a minister, a politician, held accountable for human rights in this country?
Mr. Neve: I think political will is probably a key piece of the answer there. Obviously, if a degree of high-level political attention were given to human rights questions and concerns, both international and national in this country, it would be much more difficult for governments to shirk and ignore and soft pedal human rights issues in the way we often see. That is not to suggest that that is always the case. There are often many ways in which important and strong human rights decisions and initiatives are taken, but some of the fields you have highlighted particularly have been contentious. The rights of Aboriginal peoples and refugees and immigrants are good examples of where there is a lot of contention and friction, and it is easier to push the issues off into corners and not to use human rights language. When we work in the area of Aboriginal concerns, organizations like Amnesty International frequently talk about rights issues. Governments like to talk about those concerns being a social concern, a criminal law problem or various other language, which gives rise to a whole different set of responsibilities and solutions. That is big piece of it.
Mr. Prasad: I agree with Mr. Neve's comments. Much of the behaviour of states at the council level, and certainly during the commission, was about evading scrutiny and not about devoting attention to human rights. This is not different from your observation.
Senator Dallaire: I do not believe at all in commissioners. I do not see the ultimate power they can have to influence significantly. I think it is extraordinary that we have a minister for sports but not one for human rights.
Senator Fraser: This is a question for both of you, but sparked by a reference in your remarks, Mr. Neve, and it has to do with treaty body reform. You mentioned concerns that if Ms. Arbour's proposal for unification were to bear fruit, some rights, such as rights of minorities and women, might get shorter shrift than they do now. This has been a serious concern of mine. I know a bit about women's rights. It is so clear that, for a distressing number of governments and parliaments around the world, the rights of women are not only far down their priority list, but in some cases they are actively opposed. I would have serious concerns about bringing it all under one great, big umbrella where those governments would be the only ones with votes. Our government would also have votes, but there would not be a separate body with a mandate to examine these issues.
You both express cautious optimism — very cautious — about the prospects for this council, and you both have noted the need for, at the very least, some kind of administrative reform rather than endlessly proliferating bodies that we see so often on the international scene. Is that concern so strong that it is inherent that we should for the foreseeable future, for a good many years to come, forget about unification, other than perhaps some administrative tidying up, or are there ways you can see that the concerns can be addressed under Ms. Arbour's proposal?
Mr. Prasad: Action Canada for Population and Development fully shares the concerns you voiced about the loss of specificity around the various conventions under this unified treaty body proposal. The question would be how the expertise of the members in the current system would be maintained under a unified model. While the High Commissioner for Human Rights' plan refers to the fact that these will be taken into account, it is very short regarding how that will be done, and it does not actually detail any proposals in that respect. That is a large concern for us, particularly if each committee generates so many concluding observations every year with respect to every country.
Will the rights of various rights holders be able to receive that level of scrutiny within a unified treaty body? At this point, it is uncertain, unclear. It requires further elaboration. The chairpersons of various treaty bodies meet annually and have come up with numerous recommendations for harmonizing and streamlining their work. Those innovations need to be given some chance to play out.
Mr. Neve: We must go back and ask ourselves why the international community thought it was necessary to adopt specific treaties dealing with discrimination against women, children and racial minorities. The international community made those decisions fuelled by civil society, but those were government decisions because they recognized that those were sectors of society whose rights were of a particular degree of vulnerability such that focused, elevated attention was necessary. We could not count on the general treaties. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights dealt with all those issues. They talk about non-discrimination and gender equality. There is nothing in those conventions that does not provide the kinds of protections to women, children and racial minorities that we are talking about, but the world recognized that those generic treaties were not up to the task and were not adequately protecting those sectors of society.
Two or three decades later, depending on which treaty you are talking about, has there been such an advance or degree of maturity come into the international system that we now confidently feel that the world has brought that home and protection of women, children and racial minorities is an integral part of how the international community would approach human rights work? Far from it. You have highlighted your own concern there, and I think it is well founded.
In our view, this is premature. Do I hope that, maybe years or decades from now, we would have an international community that has solidly integrated the understanding, perspective, analysis and importance of the rights of those sectors and others now being added to the human rights landscape? We have the new disabilities convention, for instance. That is another good example. For heaven's sake, it took six decades to get that treaty in place, and we would now feel confident to shuffle off the responsibility for protecting that treaty to some new, generic, unified body? I hope we do get there someday. Do I think we are there in 2007? No.
Senator Carstairs: I despair that Canadians do not get it, and I do not think many Canadians, let alone many Canadian governments get it, and then a little group of grade 6 students walk off a soccer field in Montreal because one of their team members is not allowed to wear a jihab and I think, wow! Our kids get it. That gives me hope for the future for how we will be in compliance.
I would like some practical advice from you. Obviously we share your concern about three out of four meetings being held on Israel and one held on Darfur. Should Canada be supporting a two-thirds vote necessary to get countries' issues raised a second time for a second meeting rather than letting the simple majority govern? Is that good enough?
My second question concerns an issue Senator Fraser raised. I could see where some bodies might be able to integrate. I could even, perhaps, see a treaty body that dealt specifically with minority groupings that might be able to focus. However, would it not be a better response to provide help to those nations that were having difficulty meeting their reporting procedures? Should we not be taking that step before we look at merging these things together?
Mr. Prasad: I will answer the first question that you posed on the two-thirds majority. Despite the legitimate concerns regarding this uneven balance and attention that the special sessions have shown, moving to a two-thirds majority vote would make it more difficult for special sessions to be held. One of the innovations of the council is that, even though the focus has been skewed, it has held four special sessions in seven months. That is a positive sign; the commission held only five special sessions in its lifetime. I would not be in favour of that proposal.
Mr. Neve: I absolutely share the concern about something needing to be done to ensure that special sessions are convened more responsibly. However, I share the concern that raising the bar in order to deal with the disproportionate attention given to Israel might at the same time mean that many other countries' situations, like Darfur and others, would not have a chance to get over that bar. That is a very good question.
Senator Carstairs: I would only consider it a bar if the country had not been dealt with already in a calendar year.
Mr. Neve: Right. Can I take it under advisement? I would like to have perspective from my Geneva-based colleagues who really follow the convening and the processes around the special sessions. I will make an undertaking to do that and give you their perspective. I know they have been frustrated and troubled, although also a bit energized, as Mr. Prasad highlighted, around the fact that special sessions were suddenly happening with a frequency we had never seen before.
With respect to the treaty body process, I think there are interesting options to explore other than the idea of one big behemoth of a unified body that does everything for all the treaties. That is part of what will be explored at the upcoming Berlin meeting. Is there partial unification we can look at to unite around particular themes or particular functions? I think those are interesting ideas to explore.
You are right in that regardless of where we go with unification, there are underlying critical issues that must be addressed, whether we remain fragmented, partially united or totally united. As I highlighted earlier, those issues include making sure that we have good membership on the treaty bodies. Not having good members is a major part of the problem; it is part of why things get so backlogged and why the quality of the work that comes out of some of the treaty bodies is not what it should be and is thus more easily ignored by some governments.
Your point, too, about focusing on capacity building and on providing resource assistance to governments to ensure that they are able to cope and that there are streamlined, sensible ways for governments to be able to report to the treaty bodies in ways that do not become desperately onerous is also a field of work that desperately needs attention.
The Chairman: There are many more questions that we can and should explore on this topic, and your expertise and your interest are welcome. Too little is understood about our international treaty obligations, and we need to identify opportunities for improvements for Canada and for the cause of human rights.
A balance is required between furthering progress on the issues and having a process that works. That has been one of the conundrums in the past; namely, you have a Darfur situation but you also have a procedure you have to follow that either helps you or does not. We have to make that match between the issues we care about and need to bring forward and the most effective way to do it. This is the start of an exploration and we thank both of you for your presentations. I think they have been very helpful. If there is anything you want to add, please do so as we hope to put in our report as quickly as possible but there is still some room for reflection.
We will hear now from our second panel on our agenda to monitor issues relating to human rights and, inter alia, to review the machinery of government dealing with Canada's international and national human rights obligations. We have two witnesses on this panel, Ms. Riddell-Dixon, from the Department of Political Science of the University of Western Ontario, and from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, we have Mr. Penny, Assistant Professor of International Law.
Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario: Thank you for this opportunity to share ideas with you. I was not sure I would make it because of the weather, but I did and I had the privilege of hearing the tail end of the last session.
My talking points, which I think you have in front of you, are divided into three sections to deal with the three areas of concern.
Senator Nancy Ruth: We do not have them.
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: When you get them, you will see they are divided into three sections to coincide with the three issues I was asked to address.
Since I heard some of the last panel, I will not belabour the ways in which the UN Human Rights Council is working well in terms of its advantages as a standing body or the fact that it has made some progress in procedural and substantive issues. Those points are listed on the sheets you will soon receive.
However, relating to the last discussion, I would like to highlight the fact that some of the most serious problems with the former human rights commission are continuing to persist, particularly in terms of membership. While the rules of procedure for elections have meant that the membership is not quite as flawed as it used to be, there are still significant human rights abusers getting onto the council, such as Algeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. That is the major problem that must be addressed, although it is obviously politically difficult and sensitive.
That, in turn, is spawning many of the other problems, including the fact that geopolitical debates are preoccupying so much of the time and leaving relatively little time for the other issues on the agenda. Most seriously, the UN Human Rights Council has failed to take concrete action for some of the most egregious human rights violations taking place in Darfur, Chad, Sri Lanka, Burma, Uzbekistan, Colombia and Zimbabwe. There is also the problem, which I know you have already discussed, of selectivity of targets and the fact that Israel is the only country whose record is regularly being assessed.
In order to attack the main problems on the council, one must look at the issue of membership. This would require holding members accountable to the pledges they make when they come onto the council in the first place and being willing to suspend the rights of membership for those who are gross and systematic violators of human rights.
The second issue I was asked to look at was Canada's role. I want to begin by talking about Canada's role in terms of its record on norm creation and norm implementation.
In terms of norm creation, Canada is a world leader. We probably proposed more resolutions at the UN Commission on Human Rights than any other country, and we did that on a wide range of issues. That is something to be proud of.
However, Canada's reputation as a promoter of norms in the area of human rights has been tarnished recently by the fact that we tried to thwart the passing of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, not only at the council but also at the General Assembly's third committee.
Canada's record of implementation does not match its record of norm creation. The 2006 report from the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights criticizes Canada for not implementing the committee's 1993 and 1998 recommendations.
The latest report of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women outlined a wide variety of areas where Canada is falling short on its human rights record. These areas include poverty among women, violence against women, the pervasive under-representation of women in political and public life and also the systematic discrimination against Aboriginal women.
In an age where the records of members of the council are increasingly being scrutinized, it is important that Canada have its house in order in terms of both norm creation and norm implementation. Clearly, there is work to be done on both scores, but I would say particularly in terms of norm implementation.
Canada is to be commended for supporting the participation of non-governmental organizations in the policy- making process at home and at international negotiations. NGOs play an important role in the democracy. For example, they facilitate the aggregation and articulation of citizens' concerns. This is particularly important in the area of foreign policy because they do not make election agendas.
The NGOs are also important in monitoring treaty compliance. Canada is to be commended for the fact that it has regularly included NGO representatives on its delegations. The government-sponsored mechanisms to facilitate NGO participation for most of the major United Nations conferences and summits in the 1990s have had positive spin-offs. In the short term — that is, in the time they were functioning — they enabled a far larger and more diverse group of NGOs to participate, and they also enabled those NGOs to do much more comprehensive studies and reviews of the international documents.
The long-term gains have been even more important. Many of the groups, particularly women's groups and domestic anti-poverty groups, have not had experience in the international arena. Their participation taught them how to operate internationally and showed them the advantage of using these international documents to promote domestic agendas. The government may not always like to be criticized, but they do have an important watchdog role to play in democracy. Hence, I would encourage Canada to participate and support meaningful NGO participation.
The third issue I was asked to address is the proposal to create a unified standing treaty body. The report certainly has its strengths and the existing system definitely has its problems. In terms of strengths, the objectives are laudable. The report effectively identifies some of the key problems in the current system and provides some solutions to these problems.
The overall most convincing arguments for this proposal are that it would reduce duplication at the national and international levels, that it would improve coordination, and that it would enhance consistency. However, the proposal is weak in providing concrete measures to ensure that its objectives are realized. I would like to go through some of these weaknesses because, if Canada is going to respond in a positive way, these questions need to be fleshed out and answered.
The proposal focuses on structural change and ignores some other critical variables, such as political will. There is an underlying assumption that if you had only one review process, countries would be much more willing to get the reports done and get them done on time. However, there is no correlation between the number of treaties a country has ratified and its record on submitting reports. There is no way you can say that the number of reports is a key variable determining whether a country will fulfil its obligations. I would argue that the key variable is commitment to the human rights regime and also the political will to comply with treaty obligations.
In most cases, the report fails to demonstrate that making such a radical structural change — in other words, going from the treaty bodies to having one unified standing treaty body — is actually necessary to address the problems with the current system. There are many problems with the current membership: members have varying levels of expertise, and there is inadequate geographic representation and, especially, inadequate gender representations on the treaty bodies.
However, the report does not explain why it is necessary to have a unified standing treaty body in order to address these problems. Why could you not simply improve the composition of the current treaty bodies and ensure that you have the necessary levels of expertise, the geographic representation and the gender representation? Likewise, the need for better coordination among the treaty bodies is well known, but again, do you need to have a unified standing body in order to have better coordination? Could you not just work on better coordination among the treaty bodies?
In terms of membership, the recommendations for establishing election procedures and requiring candidates to meet more detailed criteria are commendable, and membership would be a key factor in determining the effectiveness of the standing body and also of the human rights regime generally.
Again, the proposal leaves many pertinent questions unanswered. For example, how would priorities be established among the various criteria for membership, among geographic representation, gender equity and the need for various types of expertise?
The Chairman: As we have your paper, perhaps you can summarize it in order to leave time for Mr. Penny and for questions.
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: The points about specificity made by the previous speaker are very important. The problem of non-compliance is the Achilles' heel of the human rights regime generally, and these issues are not dealt with adequately in the proposal. Hence, I pose a range of questions to look at them. Finally, participation of civil society is said to be important. However, how can one ensure that one has greater quantity and quality of participation?
In conclusion, I hope that Canada resumes its role of promoting law creation, that it fulfils its human rights obligations as set out in the treaties it has ratified, and that it demonstrates strong leadership in finding answers and solutions to the questions and issues I have posed.
Christopher Kenneth Penny, Assistant Professor of International Law, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs: Honourable senators, it is an honour to be invited to address you this evening on the important, albeit very broad, subject of human rights within the United Nations system. I will make a very brief and general opening statement. I will leave it to you to flesh out some of those generalities with questions.
I bring to the testimony a note of cautious optimism but in a very long-term perspective about human rights within the UN system, and it is tempered by a healthy dose of short-term realism based on, in part, the political nature of the United Nations organization itself and in part on current global human rights realities, which are not as any of us in this room would like.
With respect to the UN Human Rights Council, it is too early to conclude with certainty about its ultimate impact on human rights, but it is safe to say that it is, at best, a modest improvement over the Commission on Human Rights and that significant structural and political limitations remain with respect to its functioning and to the achievement of its ultimate goals, and that is true with respect to human rights in general within the United Nations system.
That said, one should not lose sight of the organization's remarkable achievements. Human rights are approximately 60 years old, as we understand them. They are a modern creation and are a product of a process of incremental steps, and it is important to view the council as a product of that incremental process. Viewed within that light, the council is a further step, but a small part, in the incremental process and a comprehensive approach to human rights within the UN system. It has highlighted human rights and elevated the issue within the UN system far beyond the role played by the commission in the sense that it is now a subsidiary body of the General Assembly and not within the UN Economic and Social Council. It is imperfect, but it is slightly better than before, and it is much better than nothing. It is important to keep that in mind.
Given the stage we are at in the incremental process of human rights within the UN system, to turn briefly to the unified treaty body proposal by the High Commissioner for Human Rights and others, I would echo comments made by Alex Neve earlier that this is a premature suggestion. Given practical, political and substantial legal limitations on the establishment of such a body, limitations exemplified by the process that led us to the creation of the Human Rights Council itself, it would be premature to go down that road. Energies spent doing that could be better spent focused elsewhere.
In conclusion, I would like to refocus your attention on the responsibility to protect, which is one of the most important Canadian human rights initiatives of the last five years. Again, it illustrates the incremental process I was speaking of earlier. Its inclusion within the 2005 World Summit outcome document came at a price. It came as a watered-down concept of responsibility to protect. Certainly it was watered down from previous iterations by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. However, over time it can be expected to have a significant effect. Canada should continue to support it, not just rhetorically but in practice. That includes support for the Human Rights Council, which is an element, and I would suggest a key element, of the responsibility to prevent, which is the idea of, along with other human rights capacity-building and oversight bodies, identifying problems and building capabilities to address them before any need for the responsibility to react kicks in.
Where feasible, and where necessary, Canada should also be focusing on responding in a more coercive manner, but the key with the Human Rights Council and elsewhere is the responsibility to prevent.
The Chairman: Thank you. Both of you have taken different perspectives. There will be many questions.
Senator Poy: If you could wave a magic wand today, how would you hold member countries accountable to the norm that is implemented? If you had a wish list, how do you think it could be done? You can both answer.
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: The General Assembly resolution does have provisions. It is another case of having to have them implemented, but the provisions that I was suggesting are not particularly radical. They are from the General Assembly's resolution. There are provisions to suspend memberships. If I could wave that magic wand, I would have those provisions implemented.
Senator Poy: Do you think suspension of membership makes any difference to some countries?
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: When the Commission on Human Rights was first created, it did not get a great deal of attention. Then it started to do work and countries realized that things were going on there. Countries that did not want the agenda to move ahead realized that there were advantages to getting onto the commission. Those countries want to get onto the council largely for the wrong reasons, but they realize currently that there are definite advantages in derailing a process with geopolitical debates, protecting yourself and your friends, vilifying your enemies and ensuring that the process does not move ahead. There is some clout there.
Mr. Penny: I might step back from your question for a moment and ask with respect to accountability whether the broader issue is non-compliance. It is important to identify first why that non-compliance is occurring. Some states are not complying out of a deliberate choice of non-compliance, but a number of states are not in compliance with their obligations due to lack of capacity.
Stepping back and identifying which states are which is important. That is certainly a role that the council can and likely will play. One can then go on a different track and assist with building capacity and assist with compliance in other ways. For those states that are deliberately non-compliant, the act of presenting a report before the council or before another body can certainly lead to naming and shaming, which may have some impact on states that are not committed necessarily to their non-compliance, and for others there are more coercive mechanisms available. However, one should tread lightly with those mechanisms, because many times the mechanisms of enforcement available to the international community once one goes beyond the political and the diplomatic cause more humanitarian consequences than they solve. There is not a good answer for forcing compliance. The trick is to not get to that position in the first place.
Senator Poy: Is the only deterrent naming and shaming at this point? Can we not do any more than that?
Mr. Penny: The only general deterrent is naming and shaming. In extreme circumstances, other mechanisms are available. I would put to you that economic sanctions are a blunt weapon and that targeted sanctions are a quite ineffective weapon, and there is very little in between. In extreme circumstances, there is military or forceful action, but most egregious human rights situations will not be addressed in that way, and should not be.
Senator Fraser: This is a little bit of a devil's advocate question. If you were here at the end of the last session you will recall that I have grave doubts about the unified standard treaty body. Nonetheless, in justice to Ms. Arbour, I wonder whether she may not have, particularly in light of the way the council seems to be evolving, thought that the way to get any reform at all was to drop a bomb, and when people were rushing to say ``No, we do not like the bomb,'' they might at least budge rather more than they appear to have been willing to do yet. Do you think there is any plausibility in that?
Mr. Penny: It is an interesting question. The practical effect will be that, because realistically I do not see this as a viable option. If it will have any significant effect it will be by prodding states to make existing mechanisms much more effective. Whether that was intended or not, I believe that will be the effect.
Senator Fraser: I have a second, completely different question that has to do with Canada and examples of non- compliance here. Can you as expert observers give us any guidance on things that have been done here, or elsewhere for that matter, to prod Canadian governments into compliance with our obligations when those governments were demonstrably reluctant to comply? What does it take? We do not get many marches in the streets for treaty compliance, but there must be cases where we have made progress. What worked?
Mr. Penny: One of the members of your committee gives an example, and that is naming and shaming before existing human rights bodies.
Senator Fraser: That does tend to be effective.
Mr. Penny: It is one of the more effective processes in a democracy that is sensitive to its international image as a human rights supporter, as Canada is. It is probably the single most effective mechanism available to force Canadian compliance through international mechanisms anyway.
Senator Fraser: Coming back to women's rights, because that is an area I know a bit about, does it make a difference to have a senior minister responsible for the status of women? Should we have ministers responsible for human rights, as Senator Dallaire suggested earlier, or is it a different dynamic that we need to address?
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: One problem is the hierarchy that exists within Ottawa. The Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women will always be outranked by the Minister of Finance or others. That is an ongoing problem. Certainly one can elevate the importance of women's rights, but what has happened recently to the Status of Women Canada is disturbing: they are losing 40 per cent of their staff.
Within government, giving a higher profile is important. They are very strong, committed people working on women's rights in many different departments, but they are often isolated and their status within their own departments is not elevated. Hence, they are not given the status it would take to have more influence within.
The other aspect is publicity. How do you get media attention? If a high profile Canadian is willing to speak out on an issue and it becomes a media event, that helps.
One cannot always have high-profile people speaking, but I have been interested in the Make Poverty History project. They have managed to get the Toronto Star to agree to run a whole week on poverty. They managed to get The Hour, a TV program, to devote a whole hour to poverty. I do not know how they managed to do those things, but that is potentially a role model worth looking at, because they seem to be using different techniques than those traditionally used by NGOs to get significant media attention. They have also used rock stars like Bono and have had big extravaganzas. I do not know how they get there, but there are people in the NGO community who seem to be moving ahead. Perhaps you could talk to them and get some insights.
The Chairman: Naming and shaming is one thing, but I think that we are now in a society where leaders cannot control their countries in the way they could before. Identifying, bringing forward and educating about rights is part of the process of the council, I would think. Therefore, it is in the interests of stability and security, as well as human rights, to adhere to the international covenants that you sign, whether you are a country or person.
Are we not beyond naming and shaming? Was the council not set up in part so that we would get a more complex, if not better, debate and build our coalitions differently from the old way?
Mr. Penny: I would agree. The council will serve an important function. It can help identify those states that are working toward compliance but are not complying, not out of a desire to not comply but out of the incapacity to do so. Capacity building will be a key element in long-term compliance, as will the discussion that comes out of the council. One does not want the council to be politicized to the point where it is not in the interests of states that are unable to comply to sign onto these regimes to work toward the progressive realization of the goals in the treaties. The council needs to be fostering compliance rather than identifying non-compliance in a politicized way.
The Chairman: Identifying non-compliance would be the last resort, I guess, but up to that point, one would hope to work with those countries?
Mr. Penny: Exactly. There are no states in the world, Canada included, that are not in non-compliance with some of their human rights obligations. I am not sure that it is in anyone's interests to be naming and shaming within the council itself. The reports that come out of the council will be used indirectly by NGOs and other groups for that naming and shaming process, but I am not sure it would be consistent with the mandate of the council to be focused on non-compliance issues.
Senator Dallaire: What is the link between the reports or information that the Human Rights Council or, specifically, the high commissioner and the monitors in the field have and the International Criminal Court? Is there a direct link between the content of their reports and the International Criminal Court?
Mr. Penny: I am not aware of a specific link, but it certainly would be open to the prosecutor of the court to review those reports. The prosecutor has the jurisdiction in his own right to proceed with investigations of human rights abuses within the jurisdiction of the court. If reports from the council, or anywhere else, were to highlight egregious abuses that would fit within that jurisdiction, I am sure they could be used as a basis for further investigation.
Senator Dallaire: Has anything new come out of the new council and the links there? The old organization with its reports created some of the international tribunals, but there is nothing known of that sort of direct link to advance the priority of effort in the International Criminal Court.
Mr. Penny: There is no formal link of which I am aware.
Senator Dallaire: The NGO community, though large, is still an immature outfit. Because of the nature of their independence, they have not coalesced into a body that has the incredible potential power that it should have by throwing its weight around in the international sphere, beyond borders.
Is it within the realm of the world of NGOs to become a voice for human rights in a concerted effort, or are there too many NGOs that are too specifically oriented and not necessarily in the direct realm of human rights? My impression is that they are all based on human rights, but they do not throw that angle out. Would that be a possibility, or do you see a mutation of NGOs in that direction for the future?
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: Much has changed. I have studied the government-sponsored mechanisms that were set up for several conferences that Canada sponsored. One can see a transformation. Many of the groups from 10 or 15 years ago were extremely naive and ineffective.
I have just conducted another set of interviews with people involved with two different conferences and I have been impressed with how they have come together in various ways. At the domestic level, groups that used to deal with specific sets of rights, such as women's rights, indigenous rights or the rights of children, were fairly separate. However, because they came together at conferences and summits, and because Canada facilitated this process, many more groups were able to get involved. These groups have kept in contact and they now have developed networks between French Canada and English Canada, as well as between the different issue areas. They have also developed and retained relations with transnational networks. I was surprised to see how they have developed. Some of the women's groups that had no experience outside Canada are now actively working with key groups in New York.
It is early in the process, but there are signs that NGOs are coming together. How one ultimately involves civil society, though, is a huge problem. I do not think we will ever have ``the voice of civil society.'' There are strong voices, particularly in the south, who say this is not at all desirable. I think we will be stuck with a bunch of different voices, and that is probably how it has to be. The important issue is that a wide range of voices come to the table and are listened to.
I might add that Canadian negotiators have commented to me that because of the experience of the 1990s with all the summits and conferences, very often NGOs in countries where governments were not at all receptive will go to Canadian NGOs, knowing that Canadian NGOs are more likely to have the ear of government. Canada is promoting not only its own NGOs but is seen as traditionally providing access for NGOs that otherwise would not have access. I would like to see Canada continue with that process.
Mr. Penny: I would agree that there is a diversity of perspectives within NGOs, which I am not sure can be centralized in that way, and I am not sure that they should be. The council and other mechanisms allowing for participation of NGOs and the bringing of diverse views by NGOs before them is extremely important, but they are providing one type of perspective. I would put it to you that it needs to be balanced with other perspectives as well. The state perspective, as a representative of civil society — at least within an effective democracy — will be a key element within the council and within most of the interstate mechanisms to which NGOs will bring usually issue-specific focus.
However, there is such diversity. For example, I believe the NRA is an accredited non-governmental organization. There are a broad number of NGOs and I would hesitate to give a unified perspective on them.
Senator Dallaire: We all realize that there are wackos on the fringes of every concept and we have to watch out for those.
The Chairman: I am sure you do not mean Canadians.
Senator Dallaire: I would like to push one more point. As with Darfur, we are seeing the responsibility to protect created as a doctrine of the UN since September 2005. We see a genocidal government out there and we see the nation states inept at moving it. Could the NGO community not become a massive, supranational influence on elements such as the council? The council could, in fact, shift gears and not be solely responsive to nation states, but have another angle. Would that not be a progressive evolution, or would it just make things more complicated?
Mr. Penny: In some ways, it is a progressive evolution in the sense that NGOs are driving the attention to issues within Darfur. However, NGOs frequently have a very myopic perspective. I do not mean that to be negative, but they are typically quite focused. Darfur is a complex situation that I am not sure is amenable to solution with a myopic perspective like that.
Yes, it is important to bring the attention of the international community to the issue. That has been done and it has been driven by NGOs. However, caution in response to Darfur is warranted, and that caution is coming primarily from states and from the UN system.
Some of that caution is to be criticized, and should be criticized, but some of it is reasonable. There is no easy solution in Darfur. A military solution, for example, will likely not be possible in the short term — certainly the African Union is struggling and likely will continue to struggle.
Looking at it in that way, yes, it was important for bringing the issue to the table, and NGOs will be important for bringing issues before the council. However, the sober second thought given by states who are the main actors that will actually have to implement any response is warranted as well.
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: A mass movement by civil society helps, but even within Canada, government is very reticent to share power with civil society and NGOs. All the literature will show that NGOs exercise very little real power within our own country, and Canada is one of the most receptive to NGOs.
When you get to the international system, where the majority of countries are nowhere near as receptive as Canada is — in fact, many of them are very hostile — I think the power of civil society will be quite limited.
Senator Dallaire: I think they just need more journalists on their boards and they would be more open to influence.
The Chairman: There is also the whole issue of NGOs from a northern perspective or southern indigenous NGOs. That debate goes on all the time in the UN, as Senator Dallaire knows.
Senator Nancy Ruth: You can add my question to whoever is next and answer it then. You are both professors, and I really want to know what is happening with students. This is an NGO question, but we have an election coming and I am not reading much in the papers.
I am concerned because the last government cut some core funding; my government has cut more. Support for different voices is on the way down big time in this country. It is difficult to know how I can do anything about it. Where are the students?
Here is my understanding of how NGOs work. Senator Dallaire crosses the country week after week after week getting press, doing what he does, and what policy changes? My time goes back to when Senator Doris Anderson resigned. FAFIA, the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, works well because it has this huge Internet network that we all go into to find out what they are up to, but it is not influencing policy.
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: No; I entirely agree.
In terms of where the students are at, when my mother was at university in the late 1930s, 10 per cent of the student population was active. When I was at university in the early 1970s, it was 10 per cent. I heard it 10 or 15 years ago at Western as well that it was 10 per cent. The reality is you will never get many students that are really active.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Even in your courses?
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: It depends on what you teach. When I teach a course on the UN or on foreign aid or even on international law, I get people who are passionate. If I teach Canadian foreign policy, which is my field, I frequently find people who are only interested in lining their pockets working on Bay Street.
There are people in the class who do care. As a professor, I say at the very beginning of the year that I hope to teach some skills but I also really hope I can encourage them to be citizens who will try to make this world a better place.
Mr. Penny: I suppose it depends on what you consider to be activism. From the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, most of our students go on to do policy work. I can assure you that most are very concerned with these sorts of issues. They may not be on the streets, but they are actively engaged.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Would you call them radical in any sense of that word?
Mr. Penny: I would call them pragmatic.
Senator Dallaire: I have four of them and they are pretty close to radical.
Mr. Penny: There is much to be said for pragmatic radicalism and an understanding of the extent to which one can accomplish things.
The Chairman: That is a great introduction to Senator Munson.
Senator Munson: I am trying to keep it simple because I was always seeking simplicity in my former life. Journalism was mentioned. I asked serious and complex questions with the earlier witnesses; this question is serious but not very complex.
In the interest of simplicity, for the sake of the millions of people who watch CPAC and this program from time to time, and for the students, including my own sons, who are studying human rights and international law and who hopefully will be radical, I would like you to clarify some terms. You talked about Canada's role and record on norms creation, saying that in terms of norms creation Canada has been a world leader. I know what you are talking about, but I wonder whether the people we are trying to engage truly understand what that means. You said that Canada's reputation as a leader in norms creation has been tarnished recently by Canada's efforts to thwart the passage of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I wonder whether people understand that. Perhaps they would pay attention if it were expressed in a simpler way. What has Canada done and why is our reputation tarnished?
Ms. Riddell-Dixon: Canada has proposed many resolutions and has proposed wording that would advance the status of women and that would protect child soldiers, for example. We started off being very progressive with respect to the declaration on indigenous peoples. Canada is trying to get wording into international texts; they do not have to be legally binding texts, although those are stronger than declarations and resolutions. We are trying to create standards and measures of behaviour so that you know what the international standard is. Then you can look at a country's performance and see whether or not it is living up to the standards. You make countries aware that standards exist, because sometimes they do not know what the standards are, and you promote the fact that there are standards written down with specificity so that there is some point of measurement.
Then a declaration comes along regarding the rights of indigenous people, and Canada and Russia are the only two countries that vote against it. That is quite disturbing. Obviously, it does not enhance the development of standards by which you will measure a country's performance. Does that help?
Senator Munson: Yes, it helps a lot. I do not mean to be simplistic myself; this is for edification purposes and for people to comprehend what you say in school for the rest of us who are not there.
We must share this knowledge. To me, being in the Senate is daily knowledge about new issues. I am new on the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, and it is important to have a better comprehension of these issues for all of us around this table and for people who are watching what you have to say because you are the experts.
Mr. Penny: Canada has played a significant role in human rights norms creation, broadly understood in the sense of pushing for the establishment of an international criminal court, playing a very key role there. The other development I would highlight is responsibility to protect, which, again, while not a legal document, is a profound normative shift in understanding how to respond to human rights abuses. I would agree, though for slightly different reasons, that Canada is at risk of losing some of that reputation by not backing it up with deeds. There are a lot of words in the context of responsibility to protect, and, while there are some deeds, there could be more, both with respect to further support for the African Union, including volunteering a small number of troops for the UN mission in Sudan, should it ever be involved in the Darfur region, and with respect to focus on the specific questions of the day, putting significant money towards supporting the work of the UN Human Rights Council. Whether that money is for the council itself or for states and the capacity building needed to meet their obligations, it is a huge financial commitment, and Canada needs to step up there to ensure that states can actually fulfil their obligations and the council can fulfil its role.
The Chairman: On that note, we will have to end.
I want to thank both of our witnesses, Ms. Riddell-Dixon and Mr. Penny, for coming here and sharing different perspectives on the issues we are studying.
I appreciate that we are looking now more broadly at Canadian society and Canada's international role. We are struggling with these difficult issues of how to put consequences to a duty to protect. What does it mean for Canada? If we say we want to enter into Darfur, what will the consequences be for Canadians? Does it mean military intervention as a last resort, or diplomatic means? You gave us further debate on those and gave us a perspective and example rather than the broad procedures that we have been talking about. You have provided some context to think about where the council fits into our role in foreign policy and in our human rights advocacy.
On our final panel today, we are pleased to have officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, who are no strangers to this committee: Ms. Adèle Dion, Director General, Human Security and Human Rights Bureau; and Mr. Robert Sinclair, Deputy Director, Human Rights.
Adèle Dion, Director General, Human Security and Human Rights Bureau, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada: Thank you for your warm welcome. I will try to keep my comments fairly brief. We have circulated a text of the longer version of my comments in both official languages, so I will cover only a few of the highlights.
The UN Human Rights Council, as you have heard, replaces the 60-year-old Commission on Human Rights and is part of the larger UN reform effort. That is an important point to keep in mind because it is the most significant reform effort to date. The summit document that decided on its establishment put human rights on a par with security and development as constituting the three fundamental goals of the UN.
I would like to highlight the five primary new features of the council. One has been mentioned already at some length by previous speakers — size and composition. The Human Rights Council is smaller, being 47 members instead of 53 members. The rebalancing of seats among regional groups has meant significantly increased numbers for the Asia and Africa groups and a reduction from 10 to 7 seats for the Western European and others group. The main significance of this is that we no longer have the votes. I am sure this point will come up in the questions.
The new election process provides for election of member states directly and individually by secret ballot, while taking into account the contributions of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments during their campaign. The standing character of the UN Human Rights Council is one of the most significant changes. The council will meet for a minimum of 10 weeks over three sessions, plus additional special sessions.
I believe that senators have heard quite a bit about the universal periodic review, which is a major innovation that responded directly to the charge of selectivity that dogged the old Commission on Human Rights. Each and every member state would be subject to a peer review of its human rights performance, irrespective of its adherence or non- adherence to international human rights conventions. Canada has been a leader in setting out this model for practical and credible universal peer review, and work is well underway in Geneva.
Finally, elevated status is perhaps the most subtle of the key changes, but it could be the most important over the longer term. The new council's subordinate role to the UN General Assembly rather than to the Economic and Social Council is to be reviewed in five years when it could become a principal organ like the UN Security Council.
I will say a few words about effectiveness. The resolution establishing the council calls for objectivity, non- selectivity, impartiality, cooperation, genuine dialogue and a results-oriented approach. The initial eight months of the council suggest that we do have some way to go. The first two-week session was held June 19-30, 2006, when an effort was made to see if the council could organize a debate and reflect the results in a consensual presidential statement. The early effort made significant progress but ultimately failed because the content was not acceptable to some non-council members of regional groups. Following this failure, the Organization of the Islamic Conference presented resolutions on occupied Palestinian territories and on religious defamation, both with problematic aspects, and without any prior consultation had these tests adopted by a vote.
Between early July and mid-November, three special sessions were called by the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, all resulting in unbalanced outcomes adopted by votes. After three special sessions focusing on the Middle East, many states were eager to see some balance restored to the council's engagement by ensuring that a special session was convened on the human rights crisis in Darfur. Canada took the lead in espousing the imperative for such a session, followed by European Union member states. After some public prodding from Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the African and Asian groups signed on. The special session was held in December. A consensus decision to dispatch a high-level mission was agreed upon, and the mission will report to the council session in mid-March.
The three regular sessions that the council has held to date have tended to be hybrid events containing elements of both procedure and substance. On the plus side, the human rights special rapporteurs have been dealt with in a much more meaningful manner with dedicated sessions providing for significant presentations and interactive dialogue. Equally, NGOs have had provision to make statements at the end of each day's session, which is, again, a big improvement. The regular sessions have received substantive updates by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, providing for greater and more topical interaction between the commissioner, her office and the council.
I will mention three of the obvious challenges, which, I believe, Mr. Neve and other speakers have touched on. It is extremely difficult to be engaged in building an institution while simultaneously trying to make it function as if it were a fully developed mechanism. It is important to keep in mind that not only the 47 members of the council are engaged: a large number of interested UN states are active observers and the crucial community of NGOs and the national human rights institutions also have a vital stake. Despite the practice of individual election, as we heard earlier there is a considerable amount of block politics still on the council.
Finally, I have a few words about Canada's objectives. We want a strong, credible council that improves concrete implementation of human rights on the ground. International scrutiny, monitors and special rapporteurs' visits are all important tools.
The council must be more even-handed and transparent in its treatment of countries and evaluation of violations. The council must be able to respond to urgent and chronic human rights threats. It now meets in three sessions for a minimum of 10 weeks a year, practically year-round coverage, which raises valid expectations that it should be able to deal with situations on a more timely basis.
In addition to active discussions in Geneva, Canada is engaging on council issues in capitals through our embassies. We are building coalitions across regional groups. We are supporting select election campaigns of countries with good human rights records. We need the assistance and support of our key human rights partners: NGOs, parliamentarians, academic experts, the judiciary.
Building the new council and its institutions and practices is still very much a work in progress. We, Canada, are determined to do our best to achieve a human rights council that is worthy of the name.
Senator Fraser: Thank you for a very interesting presentation. I will zero in on the universal periodic review. You and the witnesses we heard earlier today all seem to agree that this is a major innovation, and in theory it should be a wonderful innovation. The idea that no one will be exempt from examination is exhilarating. I find myself wondering how we will make it work. How many members of the United Nations are there now?
Robert Sinclair, Deputy Director, Human Rights, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada: There are 192 members.
Senator Fraser: If we are aiming to have a review done for each of those every three years, I see serious practical problems arising to get the work done to any degree of depth that will be useful. Am I wrong? I would love to be wrong.
Ms. Dion: You are certainly right to be skeptical. I mentioned earlier that the council is seized with building its institutions at the same time that it is addressing serious human rights situations. A special working group of the council is dealing only with developing the modalities for the universal periodic review. It is still very much under discussion.
You have put your finger on crucial elements of the discussions: whether the review period will be every three years, four years or five years; whether each country will receive the same kind of detailed in-depth review every time; what the process will be, whether it will be a casual one-hour discussion or whether it will be a serious look at their performance. All of these items are under discussion at the moment.
Our delegation in Geneva is attempting to strike an effective balance where perhaps we will not be able to review every three years. Perhaps ultimately the review period will be every four years or five years. The bottom line for us is to ensure that this new mechanism when established remains effective and credible, and that the review of the country when it happens is transparent and comprehensive.
Senator Fraser: Would it be indiscreet to ask you whether this comparatively rigorous approach is widely supported at this time?
Ms. Dion: I will ask my colleague to respond as well because he has actually been in Geneva for some of these discussions. I would say that, in general, the universal periodic review does enjoy quite broad support, perhaps not always for the right reasons. As of right now, it enjoys general support.
Mr. Sinclair: To echo Ms. Dion's comments, the universal periodic review does enjoy general support. There is a working group on the issue of UPR that meets inter-sessionally. There is a facilitator from Morocco. The ambassador from Morocco heads that group and has produced papers to develop consensus on the UPR. Those are available through the Human Rights Council Extranet, so people can check on them.
We are getting closer to agreement on the regularity of the review, and I think four or five years is a realistic choice. At the outer end of the spectrum, some countries have said that less developed countries should be reviewed less frequently. I think we are overcoming that obstacle, and we are heading toward four or five years.
Senator Fraser: It is interesting to hear that there is fairly widespread support, but I take it we are not yet at the point of determining how rigorous the reviews will be when they are done or how far they will go in assessing. Am I right about that? That will be the hard discussion, I assume.
Mr. Sinclair: Yes.
Senator Dallaire: Is the council's funding a deliberate, separate funding? The answer earlier was incomplete, I think. Is the funding under the same principle as the general commitments that we have, or is that a different exercise?
Ms. Dion: The council is funded from the regular budget of the United Nations. It goes through the normal Fifth Committee process in New York. That regime essentially remains unchanged.
Senator Dallaire: Does that mean that any field work being done in a conflict zone is funded out of their budget, or do they get a special budget for that?
Mr. Sinclair: For one of the missions mandated by a special session, they did put out a request for voluntary contributions, but then they withdrew the request and found the funds elsewhere in the system.
Senator Dallaire: What is the link between the UN Security Council and the UN Human Rights Council? Ms. Arbour is part of the executive that works for the Secretary-General; she is also called forward to brief the Security Council. Is the link between the councils purely through the work of the UN Secretariat? Or is there another formal link?
Ms. Dion: No, there are no other formal links. They are both standing bodies of the United Nations system. They can refer reports to each other. It is formal in that sense.
Senator Dallaire: Is she still responsive to the Secretary-General, who ultimately reports to the Security Council?
Ms. Dion: Yes.
Senator Dallaire: She has as much power as the Security Council wants to squeeze onto the Human Rights Council; is that correct? Or is it that independent?
Ms. Dion: The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Ms. Arbour, as you rightly described, can appear before the Security Council to brief them and follow the direction of all the UN bodies. That in itself has actually been quite a progressive step that has only happened since Canada was on the Security Council in 2000. Before that time, the Security Council did not even call the High Commissioner for Human Rights or the High Commissioner for Refugees to brief the council. That is relatively new and it has done a great deal to create important linkages between the bodies.
Senator Dallaire: I was looking for the Security Council being a lobby body on the council.
Do you think the work you are doing internationally with Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada is a bit undermined by how we are handling our internal human rights scenarios, like Aboriginal issues and so on? Do you not feel that your six o'clock is a little vulnerable by presenting this marvellous image, but someone could simply knock you out at the knees?
Ms. Dion: Well, senator, as a public official I am really not in a very good position to answer that question. It has to be directed to my minister.
Senator Dallaire: You are doing your job properly by answering it that way.
It seems to me that, because you represent us in so many bodies, it is a question of credibility that is of great significance.
Will your title be changed from human security to something else soon?
Ms. Dion: Not that I am aware of. I am the Director General for the Human Security and Human Rights Bureau. The titles have changed as foreign policy evolves. I report to the Assistant Deputy Minister for Global Issues. As far as I know that is our current organization.
Senator Dallaire: Your ambassadorial background is skilful in these responses.
Senator Munson: Speaking of ambassadors, and I do not know if you can answer this question either, but either Professor Akhavan or former ambassador Paul Heinbecker said that having a full-time ambassador would be a good thing. Do you have any views or reflections on that?
Ms. Dion: This puts me in an interesting position; Mr. Heinbecker used to be my boss. I could say there has been no tradition at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada to have an ambassador designated especially for human rights. Of course there has frequently been a head of delegation at the ambassadorial or political level to the former human rights commission.
The model for having an ambassador on human rights varies from one country to the next and depends on the government, both the political and the bureaucratic structures. For example, our Norwegian colleagues, who tend to be like-minded with Canada, did have an ambassador for human rights at one point but abolished the position. The Dutch government currently has an ambassador for human rights but also has someone in their own foreign ministry who has my position. This is a decision to be made by the governments of the day, ministers in cabinet, but both models have their merits in my view.
Senator Munson: When the UN Human Rights Council met, we talked about the four special sessions. I would like to know how that works. How do you get your issues on the table? How do you push yourself to the front of the line to have issues dealt with? I am sure there are other countries that have important issues like Israel and Darfur.
Ms. Dion: Under the current rules of the council, a third of its membership has to request that a special session be held. The current configuration has 16 members. I mentioned earlier and I think previous speakers did as well that the Western European and others group lost our ability to push through votes of this kind when we were reduced from 10 seats to seven on the council and the Asian and African groups seat numbers were increased.
For example, when we called for the special session on Darfur in December, we had not only to garner the support of the remainder of the Western European and others group, essentially the European Union, but we also had to have significant support from the African and Asian groups. The African and Asian groups are two separate entities in their own right, but they are also members of the G77, or the non-aligned movement, which comprises all of the developing countries including African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
It is important at this point, particularly for Canada, to reach out to form cross-regional alliances. Unless we do that with moderate Asians, moderate Africans, moderate Middle Easterners and moderate Latin Americans, we will never be able to get council approval, either by vote or by consensus, for any of our initiatives, including a calling of special sessions.
My colleague might want to comment briefly. The whole mechanism of special sessions is also under review and under development, and it may well be that in the building of the Human Rights Council as an institution we might be able to introduce some modifications into the way the special sessions are called, perhaps the criteria for calling them, that might make the special sessions a more flexible tool.
Mr. Sinclair: As Ms. Dion mentioned, we have done some work on best practices for calling and running special sessions. Our ``non-paper'' on that focuses on transparency and advance notice, so that the special sessions are not called at the drop of a hat without any advance notice or preparatory work and they can have productive outcomes.
The Chairman: Following up on the point Senator Munson brought up, my recollection is that the former human rights commission took a long time finding its way; basically, human rights was not on the agenda of the United Nations as we now know it. Certainly the Security Council or other organs were not going to deal with it. The commission was almost the escape valve where you could openly discuss and confront each other about human rights records. It then became more politicized when the other actors found out how to use the commission to exempt themselves. At my time as the permanent representative, some countries did not care what we said, but there was a growing awareness that it meant something. They started to caucus and find other like-minded countries, which were not of like mind with us because they did not want to address human rights issues.
Is the new council at the point where everyone is trying to figure out how to deal with this new mechanism? We want to be sure that we are actually dealing with human rights, not human rights avoidance. Has Canada been vocal about that?
Ms. Dion: That actually is a very good summation of where we were and where we are. Yes, we have been very vocal, not only in the sessions dealing with the organization and institutional arrangements of the council, but in the high-level segments and in the corridor discussions. Again, several comments have been made about the tendency to try to work as blocks even though the individual council members are elected. We are working very hard to break that down, because until collectively we at the council break out of that mentality, there will continue to be an effort on the part of the less-than-stellar performers to try to practice human rights avoidance as opposed to addressing human rights issues.
The Chairman: Without going into it, there was always an East-West battle — individual, political and civil rights versus a communist block. We are now seeing different blocks emerging.
Ms. Dion: Yes, very much so. I hesitate to say it is a North-South dynamic because it is not always that, but as we move from standard setting and norm setting towards interpretation, which is where Canada wants to go, as Professor Riddell-Dixon and others have said, we have done a credible job in terms of norms or standard setting, but more can be done. We have this great body of international human rights law, but we are not doing so well at actually implementing it so that it makes a difference to people on the ground. Through the creation of this new council, we are trying to ensure that there is a stronger, sharper focus on implementation. In that process, we are getting a lot of push — not push back, but response — particularly from developing countries who are insisting that equal time and attention be given to implementation of economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights. We are seeing that dynamic a lot as well. It is perhaps more issues-oriented as opposed to the old cold war dynamic.
The Chairman: A dilemma within the commission in the past was the NGOs, of which there were more and more. They gained the right to address the commission, and that is being extended into the council. It was interesting to see the country dialogues, and then the NGOs and observers would speak last. The room emptied, to be quite honest. How is that being addressed now? Are the NGOs being taken more seriously? Have we put in any processes to give them more strength and voice?
Ms. Dion: I would echo Ms. Riddell-Dixon's comments about how much more organized and sophisticated NGOs have become. One important advance that the council has made is to integrate in a much better way the participation of NGOs. For example, they speak during every session. When the special rapporteurs are presenting their reports, there is a provision made for the NGOs to speak. There is not anymore the situation where all the NGO speakers are crowded to the least desirable speaking slot at the end of the agenda between 6 p.m. and midnight when the room is empty. They now have the ability to be much more credible and timely participants in the discussions.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Who is paying for the NGOs to get there, and how are they selected for the speaking time?
The Chairman: The process of accreditation is a UN process, and that has not changed for the council.
Ms. Dion: It has not changed. It is the same.
The Chairman: How are they selected for the speaking spots?
Mr. Sinclair: My understanding is that they put themselves on a list. They sign up, essentially.
Senator Dallaire: Canada took a dynamic, leading role with the International Criminal Court and really pushed the envelope. You saw a seemingly deliberate policy position by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada to go in and beat up on people and bring them along and nurture that.
My lexicon is not particularly parliamentarian yet, but I am working on it. I like action verbs, I am afraid.
With this new council, knowing the threats to advancing human rights and the blocks and so on, has Canada taken a similar dynamic, strong position in moving the yardsticks within that? I will be candid, if I may. In support of a Canadian trying to run the thing who is screaming for support, have we actually as a government said that we will help the system and pour in a lot of assets? Are we doing that for the effort?
Ms. Dion: I would say yes. As soon as the council was created, we ran for membership on the council. It is a smaller body. For example, the council members do not include the U.S., Australia or New Zealand, which are really our constituents, so to speak. We have to be outspoken and dynamic, and we are. We are pushing hard in Geneva and in capitals. We have doubled our funding to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the last three years.
Mr. Sinclair: Since 2005, we are the first to double our funding.
Ms. Dion: We are the first to double our funding. We have gone from being the twelfth highest contributor to being fifth, and we have made a long-term commitment to continue that. I would say that we certainly are playing a major role.
Mr. Sinclair: We have also instituted bilateral discussions with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which are very useful, and I would say that our upping of resources gets us more credibility within the system.
Senator Fraser: In your presentation, Ms. Dion, when you talked about the special sessions, you said that the proceedings were characterized by a lack of transparency, a return to block positions and a failure to respect even the minimum provision for consultation on the text of the resolutions. Are there, in fact, established provisions for consultation? In other words, did those who failed to consult break a rule or were they just discourteous and manipulative? You can find a diplomatic way to answer that, but did they actually break a rule?
Ms. Dion: I will turn to my colleague for help, but before I punt it to him I will say that part of the issue here is that because the council is in the early stages of institution building, while it is supposed to play within the standard UN General Assembly rules, it truly is not always clear what the rules are. When we referred to minimum provisions, we felt that it was quite an egregious lack of respect for transparency and the rules, because they dropped the text on us and immediately called for a vote.
In fairness to all concerned, there is considerable debate as to what the rules should be.
Mr. Sinclair: The one core rule that everyone latches on to is the 24-hour rule; that is, you should give at least 24 hours' notice. Beyond that, there are certain expectations or conventions of decorum in terms of providing people or delegations with a chance to feed into the process. Certainly, for Canada, that is part of our approach to the council and to special sessions, namely, that you must build in time to build the consensus that will get you to an effective, balanced outcome. Clearly that was not the case in this instance.
Senator Fraser: Did they give 24 hours, or was it literally, ``Here is a document and all in favour say yes''?
Mr. Sinclair: I am not sure whether or not it was within 24 hours.
The Chairman: Ms. Dion and Mr. Sinclair, thank you both for starting a debate as to where our foreign policy on the council should go. We appreciate your professionalism and we will continue to debate and perhaps debate it with the minister at a later time. Thank you for coming this evening.
I will close this portion of the committee and turn to an administrative matter. The committee is going to Geneva and we had put in a budget, which had been approved by the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration. It appears that the costs will be a bit higher from the commission for the usual incidentals. We also have a full complement of senators going. It may necessitate a supplemental budget, which the steering committee does not anticipate will be a significant increase, but it will be over the budget line. I am asking committee members if someone is willing to give the power to this steering committee to adopt, if necessary, a supplementary budget for the trip to Geneva. The amount will then be printed in the minutes of this meeting once we get the actual figure.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Was it $5,000? Take a guess.
The Chairman: Between $5,000 and $10,000. It is an expensive city and we have more senators subscribing. Is there any consensus to pass that motion?
Senator Fraser: Agreed.
Senator Munson: I so move. I am on the steering committee, though.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I will move it.
The Chairman: Senator Nancy Ruth moved it. We will get back to you on that.
I would remind all senators to contact the clerk for the finalization of your involvement in the travel.
The committee is adjourned.