www.ccdenligne.ca/en/international/un/canada/consultati -
[Cached Version]
Last Visited: 1/26/2009
Alan Kessel Director General, Bureau of Legal Affairs, Foreign Affairs Canada
Allan Kessel began by noting that for the most part the development of the international human rights framework has occurred over the past 60 years, following the Second World War and the creation of the United Nations.
The process, he noted, that was strongly supported by Canada.
The process was commenced with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly December 10, 1948, which contains a combination of both civil and political rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights.
The following years led to further negotiations on these particular rights, eventually resulting in two further legally binding instruments, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
These, Kessel pointed out, were drafted during a period after the Second World War, which was characterized by ideological squabbling and made the negotiation and elaboration of these treaties very complex.
He made the point that, "this was a volatile period, a time when human rights activists had to put their lives on the line to get the very basic things that we consider essential today."
It is important to keep in mind that as things have developed, the UN system sees economic, social and cultural rights as being in a progressive state of development, and therefore they can be addressed over time, by a process known as "progressive realization."
Civil and political rights, however, are seen as rights of an individual against unlawful and unjust action of the state, and therefore very different, insofar as they are immediately realizable.
For example, a state could not argue that it needed a period of time to figure our how to stop arbitrary arrest!
Kessel then moved to look at other human rights instruments, the first of which was the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, (CERD) in 1965.
...
Importantly, Kessel pointed out that the CERD and the CEDAW do not set out new rights, but rather they target specific racial discrimination on the one hand and discrimination against women on the other in all spheres of life.
The CRC does address specific issues that affect children, and in this way does create some new rights for this group.
This is an important distinction to keep in mind, Kessel suggested, as we proceed with the development of the new disability treaty.
From this overview of the structure Kessel then moved to speak about reporting and monitoring mechanisms, which he noted are different under each treaty.
In general, treaties require state parties to submit periodic reports on implementation progress to a UN committee set up under each treaty to review these reports; the committees are commonly known as 'treaty bodies.' This process is particularly onerous for developing countries, which often don't have the resources to meet these reporting expectations.1
Nevertheless, once reports are submitted to the treaty body, they review the report and then they ask for delegation of that particular country to come and answer key questions that have arisen with respect to the implementation.
Following the review, the UN committee issues something called 'concluding observations' that summarize their evaluation of the progress, and they make recommendations and suggestions on further measures which the country might take to more effectively realize the Human Rights in question.
Like other parties, Kessel noted, Canada has had some difficulty in submitting its reports on time to these various committees, due to the extensive information that's required, particularly in Canada because we have a federal system.
We actually have to get reports from the ten provinces and three territories, and they need to be fed into an overall report; so the process is difficult and time consuming.
With respect to an individual complaint's mechanism, Kessel said, the process is based on the concept of exhaustion of domestic remedies, meaning you have to have done everything possible within your own domestic jurisdiction before you can move to the international sphere.
...
There are certain basic things that we all bring to the table, and Mr. Kessel concluded by saying that truly effective International Human Rights Law isolates those things, and gives them life in the form of an international treaty.
...
Alan Kessel Department of Foreign Affairs
28 online sources [ view sources ]
Profile is not claimed [ claim profile ]
