Canada expected to bid for UN Human Rights Council seat – National | 24CA News
Canada is throwing its hat within the ring for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, pledging to advance points from on-line speech to entry to abortion.
Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly will announce this afternoon Canada’s candidacy to take a seat on the council for 2028 to 2030, by way of an election that may doubtless happen in 2026.
Two authorities sources accustomed to the matter, who weren’t approved to talk publicly earlier than the official announcement, say Canada is working on a bid that may spotlight six most important priorities, together with holding states accountable for locking up human-rights activists.
Advancing gender equality, LGBTQ rights, sexual well being and reproductive rights will probably be one other focus of Canada’s candidacy.
Canada plans to echo the Harper authorities’s deal with freedom of non secular beliefs, whereas tying it to anti-racism applications and advancing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples worldwide.
So far, Greece has introduced a run for one of many three spots that will probably be accessible to nations that sit in a grouping of 28 that features Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The Council investigates alleged human-rights breaches in UN states, dedicated by governments or societal actors.
It additionally points reviews on human-rights points basically, akin to Iran’s ongoing crackdown on girls’s rights.
Joly will push for a deal with human rights on-line, constructing on the Freedom Online Coalition, a bunch that pushes for individuals to specific themselves on-line and have their privateness protected.
Ottawa will doubtless additionally push to control platforms which were used to instigate violence. For instance, anti-Rohingya riots in Myanmar have been linked to inflammatory falsehoods circling on Facebook.
Another a part of the bid will probably be about responding to local weather change in a means that features defending individuals who face the brunt of shifting climate patterns and persevering with work to reform world financing for smaller nations who face frequent pure disasters.
Joly plans to strike a word of being humble whereas pushing the world to do higher, acknowledging Canada just isn’t residing as much as its personal human-rights obligations, akin to fixing disparities within the felony justice system and offering equitable providers to Indigenous Peoples.
An official accustomed to Canada’s coming bid says Ottawa is making a deliberate selection to have interaction in a flawed company as a method to result in change by way of multilateral establishments.
Groups like Human Rights Watch have been essential of the council for “electing serious rights abusers like Cameroon, Eritrea and the United Arab Emirates” to its ranks.
Russia left the Geneva-based physique after UN members voted to finish its membership shortly after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In 2020, the Trudeau authorities misplaced its bid for the UN Security Council after a years-long push prime rejoin that physique.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
