2023: We need a year of human rights resolve

When it comes to human rights, it is hard to feel any regret about leaving 2022 behind. For there is no doubt about it, last year was a grim year for human rights pretty well across the board.

It was not, however, without notable beams of hopeful light. That hopeful light was reflected in the courage of resistance, and it shone through in the power of solidarity and community. That is what I am holding on to as 2023 unfolds; holding on to as resolve to seek out the openings for rights and justice which we can collectively wedge wider and carry further over the course of what will undoubtedly be another tough year.  

Yes, a time of despair

2022 was, above all, the year of Russia’s cataclysmic attack against the people of Ukraine, and blatantly defiant assault on the already fragile – some would likely say illusory – notion of an international rules-based order.

It is staggering to think that while, at this time last year, governments and commentators were talking of the risk of a Russian invasion, most of us were largely of the view that it would not actually transpire. Ten months and thousands of deaths later, that was clearly denial or misplaced naivety.  And yet, no matter the extent of the devastation or, more aptly, given the extent of the devastation, the determination of the Ukrainian people to resist has been an inspiring force beyond measure.

2022 was the year during which the Taliban consolidated their harsh rule in Afghanistan, and shattered any misguided thinking that they might be less repressive of women and girls this time around. While the world has at times seemed far too quiet as inequality and gendered violence have again become state policy, Afghan women and girls have been anything but.

It was a year of powerless and indifferent international responses to ongoing genocide against the Rohingya and Uyghur people. The repressive grip of the governments of Myanmar and China most assuredly seemed only to tighten.

In 2022, Syria’s devastating humanitarian and human rights crisis did not relent, and conflict in Tigray and Yemen continued in the face of seeming global disregard.

And 2022 was yet another year of apartheid and violence for the Palestinian people, which played out alongside determined efforts to silence those who dare to raise concerns about such human rights violations by tarring them with accusations of antisemitism. At the end of the year, truth and justice for the killing of Palestinian/American journalist Shireen Abu Aqla remains elusive, but the campaign for there to be accountability remains strong.

But also, a time of determination and even hope

Intertwined with cruel crackdowns, there have been hopeful moments in many corners of the world.

Nowhere is that more the case than in Iran, where courageous Iranians, led by young women and girls, took to the streets with their demands for equality and freedom, and refused to be cowed by the regime’s deadly response.

In Russia, even knowing that arrest and jailtime was a certainty, thousands of people have protested the war in Ukraine.

Little by little, some states are starting to find more backbone to at least tentatively stand up for human rights in China, witness the statement issued on behalf of 47 countries, including Canada, at the UN Human Rights Council in June.  Enough? Of course not. A step forward which may lead to more forceful follow up? One hopes.  

Although the backdrop is harrowing, there does seem to be slightly more wind in the sails of international justice, with greater recognition of the role that institutions like the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice can and must play in responding to mass atrocities. And some national courts showed a willingness to live up to the role expected of them in piercing impunity for human rights violations, such as the conviction by a Swedish court of a former Iranian prosecutor this past summer for human rights crimes dating back to 1988.

There was also, perhaps remarkably, hope in a number of election outcomes around the world.  Progressive presidents, Xiomara Castro, Gabriel Boric and Gustavo Petro assumed office in Honduras, Chile and Colombia. Serving as vice president alongside Petro, in Colombia, Francia Márquez became the first Afro-Colombian to hold high office.  In France and Brazil, the racist candidacies of Marine Le Pen and Jair Bolsonaro were thwarted (though with chillingly high levels of support and two rounds of voting). And in the US mid-term congressional elections, most of the candidates pandering to Donald Trump’s web of lies and hate were also defeated.

Encouraging electoral outcomes, but not without many notable and troubling exceptions, including the return of Benjamin Netanyahu, now heading the most right-wing government in Israeli history, and the election of Giorgia Meloni, who has never hidden her neo-fascist ideology, as Prime Minister of Italy.

Campaigning for freedom

Injustice is, at the end of the day, experienced by individuals; and calls on us to offer solidarity. In 2022 I stood with Dong Guangping’s daughter Katherine Dong as she demanded that the Vietnamese government disclose what happened to her father, a courageous Chinese human rights defender, after he was arrested and disappeared in Hanoi in August. 

I continued to lift up Kamila Telendibaeva’s unrelenting campaign for freedom for her husband, Huseyin Celil, a Uyghur Canadian imam and human rights activist who has been unjustly imprisoned in China for more than 16 desolate years.

I echoed the call of family members looking for Canada to take meaningful action to bring their loved ones out of the harrowing nightmare they have faced while abandoned in detention camps in northeast Syria. 

And I have supported Hassan Diab and his family, trapped in a labyrinth of injustice for over a decade, as they press the Canadian government to do more to fend off the Kafkaesque prospect of an in absentia trial in France in April 2023, on charges he was responsible for a horrific 1980 Paris synagogue bombing for which there is not a single scrap of credible evidence he was even in the country at that time.

Injustice does however give way to freedom. What joy this past year to be able to join in the celebration when Cihan Erdal returned home to Ottawa, after enduring two years of arbitrary detention and an unfair trial in Turkey.

On the homefront?

That’s abroad, but what about here in Canada?

Are we advancing with reconciliation and truly reckoning with the reality of decades of genocide against Indigenous peoples in Canada?  It is clear that there is still far to go. For even as there is encouraging progress towards resolving entrenched injustice such as the deep inequalities faced by First Nations children, there is government reticence to go the distance and ensure that every child receives the justice they are owed. And when a serial killer targeted Indigenous women, again, in Winnipeg, how despairing it was that the first response from police was to declare that it is not feasible to search the landfill where their bodies are believed to be. How can that be heard as anything other than that their lives do not matter, enough?

Against that backdrop, Cindy Blackstock’s clarity and conviction continues to punch through the morass of announcements and appeals; and the daughters of the missing and murdered women in Winnipeg were so right in calling out the state’s willingness to allow more unmarked Indigenous graves. And at long last, the Supreme Court of Canada includes an Indigenous judge, Madame Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin, an Abanaki woman, member of the Odanak First Nation.

Very close to home, one of the most catalyzing human rights events last year was of course the Convoy Occupation of downtown Ottawa for 3 ½ weeks in February.  Over the past several months I’ve had the honour, with fellow Commissioners Leilani Farha, Monia Mazigh and Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, to hear from dozens of Ottawa residents as part of the Ottawa People’s Commission on the Convoy Occupation. While some have come to express their support for the convoy, the overwhelming majority have shared accounts of violence, fear and abandonment during those traumatic weeks.

It has become abundantly clear that everything about the Convoy Occupation reflects a profound human rights failure. It is certainly evident that the city of Ottawa had no human rights framework in place to guide its response at community level.  At the same time, there is much inspiration and many lessons in the neighbourhood level mobilization and solidarity that ignited during that time.

The human rights lawyer in me was incensed and deeply troubled by Doug Ford’s resort to the infamous notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights in an attempt to obliterate the essential labour rights of educational workers in Ontario. Not the first time a premier had done so.  And it did not carry the day, unlike in Quebec where the clause remains in force in quashing religious freedom, equality and language rights.

Yet a catalyzing moment perhaps in recognizing that as we marked the Charter’s 40th anniversary last year, its wide-open human rights escape clause is becoming far too normalized; and that steps need to be taken to rein it in.

Human rights resolve

This coming year brings a notable human rights milestone as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will mark its 75th anniversary on December 10, 2023; three-quarters of a century since governments promised the world, in the Declaration’s first article, that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

A year, therefore, in which we truly must look to and draw on each other in bringing those stirring words to life.  Here are three imperatives I will be taking to heart.

First, more than anything, let us remember that the universal human rights promise is to and for “all human beings.” That means that we cannot and will not countenance any longer the despicable world of double standards and hypocrisy that has prevailed ever since the Declaration was adopted.

In early days of the global COVID-19 pandemic, there were signs that maybe we finally understood how important the universality of human rights is, for all of us. That if we provide healthcare or pursue an economy, for instance, that leaves so many people out, we are all imperiled and left vulnerable. As we enter into our fourth year with COVID, those lessons seem to be fading. We cannot let that happen.

The response to Ukraine over the past year, from so many nations, shows us what is possible when their is a determined drive to uphold human rights.  That refugees can be welcomed and protected. That substantial diplomatic, military, and humanitarian assistance can flow when a human rights crisis erupts. That multilateral institutions can be mobilized so as to build international resolve. That international justice can be pursued in an attempt to tackle impunity.

Not that these efforts have ended the crisis in Ukraine, clearly not. There is very far still to go. But action has been taken. Tough decisions have been made. Sanctions have been imposed. Resources have been committed. That has not by any measure been commonplace over these past 75 years.  And it is not commonplace in the world in 2023.  It is certainly not on offer for Yemen, for Palestinians, for Tigray, and for so many other neglected corners of the world. But it can be, it is possible.

Second, we have to stop compromising human rights. For too long we have heard governments tell us that other priorities have to come first, particularly trade and economic interests. Look where that has taken us with respect to Russia. Eager pursuit of commercial prospects, while downplaying glaring human rights concerns, emboldened Vladimir Putin as it became increasingly clear that there would be no consequences for the agonies that he unleashed in Chechnya, in Syria, in Crimea, and in Russia.

No consequences for that violence and repression, but ample lucrative deals for Russian oil and gas. In the end, that has been disastrous for human and rights and disastrous economically, particularly for European nations struggling to both cope with and curtail their dependence on Russia for heating fuel as winter advances. Whatever the near-term distractions and incentives may be, selling human rights short is always, in the end, a losing proposition. That is why the drive to put human rights at the heart of trade and to strengthen corporate human rights accountability is so vital.

Third, it is time to acknowledge that being true to human rights requires that we reckon with past injustice and deep structural wrongs. Committing to human rights is not just about poetic words and it is not just about looking ahead. It requires change and transformation, very often implicating how we live our own lives.

We cannot simply say that we now believe in upholding the rights of Indigenous peoples, are committed to racial equality, and will advance climate justice. We do need to make those commitments, of course we do. But we have to go much further. We need to see and accept that our own privilege and prosperity is on the table. For that privilege and prosperity is founded in genocide against Indigenous peoples, is infused with systemic racism, and was built upon reckless disregard for the destructive environmental impact of our hydrocarbon-driven economy.  

Making it right involves much more than new laws and policies for the future. It requires redress. Redress may be expensive, and it may involve sacrifice. But there is no other way to universal human rights.  Change is not just a matter of railing against oblique power structures that we condemn as being the sources of society’s injustices. Change is very much about us, and it both starts and ends with us.

Inevitably, this edges towards human rights resolutions for 2023. I know that I will strive harder to ask myself the tough questions about how my life intersects with and benefits from human rights abuse. Because it does. I will endeavour to make different choices. To demand different public policy and vote accordingly. And to engage with and support the popular and social movements that are forging those transformative paths.

As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights readies to turn 75 at the end of this year, we are surrounded by so much human rights failure, but also so many reminders of what believing in and committing to human rights makes possible. This year, every day, let’s ask ourselves, each other and those who hold and aspire to power, did we put human rights first?

  * Credit for image: Canadian Human Rights Commission.