"I think that the genocide unfolding in Gaza is our wake-up call to stop seeing and expecting Canada to promote and enforce human rights and recognize and treat it as complicit in human rights abuses once and for all."
November 20, 2023
As a person who studied international law at university and who never considered anything more important than human rights, this opinion piece deeply resonated with me as I cannot fathom the genocide in Gaza unfolding in front of our eyes and our government’s inaction. I was often taught that international humanitarian institutions such as the UN were implemented after World War II to prevent history from repeating itself. I even learned that John Humphrey, a Canadian lawyer and academic, was instrumental in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, the Bosnian genocide and Rwandan genocide happened to name only these two, and Canada, multiple times in its history, has failed to live up to its standards here and abroad as it is itself a settler-colonial state that has mistreated its own Indigenous people. I think that the genocide unfolding in Gaza is our wake-up call to stop seeing and expecting Canada to promote and enforce human rights and recognize and treat it as complicit in human rights abuses once and for all.
Fatima Haidar
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME)