During the third week of June the Untied Nations Human Rights Council held their fifth general meeting in Geneva. The council came up with many important decisions defending and protecting human rights in different countries. A huge success about this general meeting was that developing countries received fair and helpful ordersmore than the previous general meetings.
One of the most important orders was hiring a permanent position in the occupied parts of
Palestine to observe the Israeli occupying forces violations. This is a measure that agrees with the human rights law and international humanitarian law. This is a similar mechanism apply to other countries in the world where human rights violations are recorded. Israel commits many human rights violations every day against Palestinians. Israel on a daily basis destroy Palestinian farms, demolish there houses, humiliate and insult people crossing by an Israeli check point for no reasons. Another human right organization had announced few months ago that Israel has the highest human right violation in their prisons, because of all the torturing and investigating techniques they use against the Palestinian prisoners.
When the council came to discuss the permanent position issue I was disappointed and sad because of the action that Canada decided to take. During the discussion the Canadian delegation objected and opposed the assignment of a permanent position to observe the Israeli occupying forces violations. Canada delayed the concluding session by six hours, because the delegates kept arguing against the decision. It was really embarrassing to see that all of the forty-seven countries of the council voted for the decision except Canada opposed it. What made me sad is to see Canada representing the United Sates Israeli point of view by defending the Israeli violations and policies in the International Human Rights arena.
Canada’s position lately has been changing from a peaceful country to a country supporting the United States in everything. Most of you might agree with me that taking a side with the Americans is not the smartest thing to do, as the United States only cares about its own benefits and there are no morals in most of their decisions. It is really sad to see many Canadian soldiers getting killed in Afghanistan, which is another thing we were dragged to do by the Americans. I pray to those soldiers to come back home safely, as I don’t want to see more Canadians soldiers getting killed there.
From my position as a member of the Student Representative Assembly of McMaster University Student Union and being the University Affairs committee chairperson I encourage everyone to come out and vote during the provincial elections in October. Picking the right provincial government will reflect many things on the federal government that is in charge of this external issue in the Untied Nations Human Rights Council. However, we should vote for the members that will take in consideration the human rights issues. Having more justice regarding the human rights issues and including human rights issues in our educational system will see our province going somewhere better regarding human rights. This will be definitely later reflected on our federal government that will be having elections again soon.
