Rights and Responsibilities in a Global Context

Rights without borders

The hoodie you bought might have been sewn in another country. The phone in your pocket contains minerals mined on another continent. News of a crisis across the world reaches you in seconds. Our lives are connected to people everywhere, so their rights are connected to our choices too.

After the Second World War and the Holocaust, countries agreed that how a government treats its own people is the world's business. That idea created the international human rights system you will study today.

The international human rights system

• United Nations (1945): an organization of almost every country, set up to keep peace and promote human rights.
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948): 30 articles listing rights for all people, such as life, liberty, freedom from torture and slavery, equality before the law, freedom of expression and religion, education, and work. A Canadian law professor, John Humphrey, prepared its first draft. The UDHR is a declaration, not a treaty, but many of its ideas are now in binding treaties.
• Binding treaties Canada has joined include the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), the Refugee Convention (1951), the two International Covenants (on civil and political rights, and on economic, social and cultural rights, 1966), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989; Canada ratified it in 1991), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006).
• Ottawa Treaty (1997): a ban on anti-personnel landmines, led by Canada and signed in Ottawa; about 160 countries are parties to it.
• International Criminal Court (2002): tries individuals for the worst crimes. A Canadian, Philippe Kirsch, was its first president.
• UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007): Canada passed a law in 2021 to bring its laws into line with it.
• UN Human Rights Council: reviews every UN member's human rights record (including Canada's) in the Universal Periodic Review.

How it works: there is no world police. Countries agree to treaties, report to UN committees, and face pressure from other countries, courts and public opinion. Countries must also put treaties into their own laws.

Rights and responsibilities of global citizenship

Rights: human rights belong to everyone, everywhere, whatever their citizenship. Canadians abroad can ask for consular help, and people fleeing persecution have a right to seek asylum.

Responsibilities: global citizens

• stay informed about world issues from reliable sources (Lesson 3 skills);
• respect human rights and the dignity of people from every culture;
• make thoughtful consumer choices (for example, asking how and where products are made);
• support people in need through donations, volunteering or welcoming newcomers and refugees;
• participate: tell representatives what you think about Canada's foreign policy, aid and trade;
• care for the environment, which crosses every border.

Canada also has responsibilities as a country: keeping its treaty promises, and being held to account itself. For example, UN bodies have criticized Canada over issues such as drinking water on some First Nations reserves. Global citizenship applies at home too.

Human rights violations and responses: three case studies

These cases involve great suffering. Read them carefully and respectfully.

1. Apartheid in South Africa (1948 to the early 1990s). The government enforced a system of racial segregation and discrimination that denied Black South Africans the vote and many basic rights. Responses: South Africans resisted for decades; UN condemnations; many countries, including Canada in the mid-1980s, imposed sanctions; sports and cultural boycotts. Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, and in 1994 South Africa held its first elections open to all races, electing Mandela as president. Assessment: internal resistance led the change; outside pressure helped, but took decades.

2. The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (1994). In about 100 days, hundreds of thousands of people, most of them Tutsi, were murdered. A small UN peacekeeping mission was commanded by Canadian Roméo Dallaire (then a major-general, later a lieutenant-general), who warned UN headquarters and asked for more troops; he did not get them. Responses: the world largely failed to act during the killing. Afterward, the UN created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which convicted leaders of genocide. Assessment: justice came after the fact; prevention failed. The failure led to new ideas, such as the responsibility to protect principle, which Canada helped develop.

3. The Rohingya in Myanmar (2017 to today). After military operations in 2017, more than 700 000 Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority, fled to Bangladesh. Responses: Canada's House of Commons recognized the crimes as genocide in 2018 and Canada imposed sanctions on military leaders; in 2019 The Gambia took Myanmar to the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention, and in 2020 the court ordered Myanmar to take measures to prevent genocidal acts; Canada and several other countries later formally joined the case in support. Assessment: legal and diplomatic pressure is ongoing; most refugees still cannot return safely.