This speech was delivered by CCLA General Counsel Nathalie Des Rosiers on Saturday, December 10, on the International Human Rights Day event hosted by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) Canadian Ethnocultural Council (CEC) with the participation of the Canadian Ethnic Media Association (CEMA)
“Human Rights Day began in 1950 to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted on December 10 1948. Observance began in 1950 on December 10 when the UN General Assembly passed resolution 423. It is officially a day “to celebrate the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… and to exert increasing efforts in this field of human progress”. The theme of this year’s day is “social media and human rights to reference ordinary human rights defenders who were empowered by social media and the internet throughout the world. (ex. Tunis, Cairo, Madrid, and New York).
An inspirational theme indeed. I want to touch briefly on two aspects of this theme: Our responsibility as ordinary citizens to bear witness and the power of regrouping to take a stand. I also want to discuss less visible threats to human rights, the threats that may not be photographed, threats that come from new forms of categorizing human beings as risks or mere labour providers.
Human Rights Protection is about challenging discrimination and ensuring the full participation of all human beings in governance.
To vow to eliminate discrimination requires a legal infrastructure to protect and help victims of discrimination, to ensure continued vigilance and to condemn and react powerfully against the experience of discrimination. Strengthening the legal system is essential to reduce discrimination but we must also strengthen our capacity to advocate against discrimination.
The right to equality is a paramount and fundamental right enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the various provincial and federal human rights acts. Yet, aboriginal people continue to overpopulate the jails, to be denied housing, immigrants are denied meaningful ways to participate, disabled persons cannot find jobs, racialized people are often overpoliced.
Discrimination is experienced in myriad forms: individuals may be denied employment, lodging or services, passed over for promotion, unfairly charged with crimes, unfairly sued, overcharged for services, treated poorly by insurance agents, restaurant owners or EBay vendors, defamed, become the victims of property crime or violently attacked. But discrimination is also profoundly internalized. It may prevent individuals from complaining, responding, arguing, expressing themselves, suing, running for elections or generally participating fully in their society. Because discrimination has such a powerful and pervasive effect, an effective response requires that all aspects of the legal system function fairly and adequately. Employment policies must be fair, consumer protection must be effective, policing must be measured, courts must be unbiased, and compensation systems must be available to provide a remedy. Indeed, strong democratic institutions – legal, cultural and social – are essential to ensure that even the invisible forms of discrimination are confronted and remedied.
Access to justice continues to be a significant problem for those who face discrimination. Denunciation of systemic patterns and of individual discriminatory patterns is essential and if the legal system is unwelcoming and inaccessible, a primary place for such denunciation is lost.
Indeed in times of war, be it the war on crime, the war on terror, the war on drugs, we ought to re-invest in the rule of law and anti-discrimination tools because we know that any war produces collateral damages on the perceived, created and imagined enemy. The War on Terror and the creation of the Enemy Combatant category have meant an increase in Islamophobia and anti-immigration discourse, and discriminatory attitudes toward people of the Muslim faith. The War on drugs has meant an increase in jail time for larger and larger numbers of people. Wars are often carried at the expense of the lower classes and the poor. In order to sustain the `war effort”, there is often the temptation to demonize the enemy and to encourage discrimination and unfairness. Just as the Second World War had a profound effect on Japanese Canadians, and the Cold War caused injustice to many socialist and communist sympathizers, so do the more recent “wars” have translated into discrimination.
Another indispensable tool in the fight to monitor and respond to discrimination is the compilation of statistics on discrimination. The compilation of accurate, objective data on discrimination in Canada is essential to developing a thorough understanding of the issue. Ongoing, detailed and timely statistical reporting is essential to developing a fuller understanding not only of discrimination, but also trends with regard to the full range of intolerance within Canada. We must investigate whether models of denunciation developed in the context of other pervasive forms of abuse, such as sexual and domestic violence and psychological exploitation may be applicable or distinguishable from the experience oIndividual and collective responsibility for discrimination start by noticing it – by bearing witness to injustice. This is what is celebrated today. We have to train ourselves not to become complacent, desensitized, blasé, or simply discouraged in the face of injustice and violations of human rights. Earlier this week, on page B 7 of the Globe & Mail, the recent OECD statistics about inequality were published – Canada has now one of the fastest growing rate of income inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor is getting larger, faster than elsewhere. This does not bode well for a human rights culture: when the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, harsher measures are developed to keep the status quo in place, higher fences are built, more security is hired, higher fear of unrest are created, and the ability to speak, to denounce, to act diminishes. There comes a point when income inequality is democratically unsustainable: the poor can no longer participate in governance, because they are unemployed, poorly housed, depressed, criminalized, branded as “trouble”, as “dangerous”. Our individual and collective responsibility to see the unfairness will be challenged. We must continue reenergize the human rights message in this context.
This brings me to a final point that I wanted to share with you. Although today we celebrate our accomplishments in the world of human rights, and the role of social media in transforming Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia, hopefully Syria, and other people living under dictatorship, it is also a world of risk management. The ten years since September 11th have not toned down the rhetoric of fear. We have created new forms of civil disentitlement: the right to mobility is contingent on demonstrating that one is not a security risk, has a valid immigration status and is not engaged in criminality. I suggest that new subtle forms of discrimination are slowly emerging as more and more is linked to a security assessment. More jobs require police checks, more travel demand security clearances. A new caste regime emerges where risk profiling determines entitlement. This could be justified, if it is fair and non-discriminatory. At this stage, I worry that risk assessment is often done in secrecy, that mistakes are made with little redress and that we are all at the mercy of a poor and debilitating risk assessment score.
Human Rights 2011 should be a day to reflect on the challenges ahead. We need more than ever organizations like yours, the Canada Race Relations Foundation and the Canadian Ethno Cultural Association, and the Canadian Ethnic Media Association, to stimulate, reactivate and energize our commitment to equality and human rights, I thank you for your invitation and wish you an inspiring Human rights Day 2011.”
