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SFU Beats AMS to UN by Five Years

Posted By Alex Lougheed On November 29, 2009 @ 9:00 am In Investigative | Comments Disabled

We therefore call upon the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to investigate the widespread violation and disregard for international law in Canada, and further to employ all and every means available to pressure the governments of Canada and its provinces into compliance with the Covenant.

This was written in 2005.

You can read the whole complaint [1].

A former student SFU board member and Internal Relations Officer, when asked what came of the complaint, said the following:

I believe they said something about how they would consider it within some outrageous timeframe like the next several years. I suspect that what will happen is the next time the Committee gets around to doing a review of Canada, as they seem to do about once every 10 years or so, there will be a mention of the two complaints.

The only major difference between the resolutions is that the AMS one explicitly calls for a special rapporteur, while the SFSS calls for an investigation. The AMS one also requests an expedited process.

What does this mean? Well, the UN was already aware of the human rights violations in BC. It undercuts the claim of legal value to the report, as if the UN were to consider it and conduct an investigation, they would likely ask the AMS. That said, it probably marginally increases the chance that the UN will take the idea more seriously. The real value from it now comes the publicity generated, not much else.


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[1] You can read the whole complaint: http://blogs.ubc.ca/ubcinsiders/files/2009/11/human-rights-complaint-1.pdf

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