Keynote Speech. Canada and the Inter-American Human Rights System

It is a great pleasure for me to deliver my keynote speech to you all at such a valuable regional symposium dedicated to the states of the Americas becoming better able to protect human rights in our region and ensure a commitment to reconciliation. I thank the Université du Québec à Montréal, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Prof. Bernard Duhaime for organizing this event, providing the venue and for inviting me to present this important topic to you: the Engagement of Commonwealth countries with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR or Commission), and more particularly, Canada’s involvement with and further engagement with our Inter-American System of Human Rights (IASHR). I will touch on subjects such as the IACHR’s continuing relationship with Canada, the important role Canada has played in the past in assisting the Commission in advancing its thematic mandates, as well as the instrumental role it could play in future years and decades. I believe this conference is quite fitting and timely. As the Commission celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2019, it is engaged in a process of reflecting on past accomplishments, as well as on areas needing improvement. As the Commission looks ahead to future objectives, it is fair to say that it hopes that Canada will play a strong leadership role in matters relating to human rights in our hemisphere. This can only be achieved through Canada’s deeper engagement with our regional human rights system. I am from a Caribbean Commonwealth country and the Caribbean countries have the perception that they are isolated from the attention and work of the Commission. This may be due in part to linguistic issues, but this alone is not enough to explain their lack of involvement. There are enough English, French, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking lawyers at the Secretariat of the Commission to meet Caribbean countries’ language needs. The Commission has to bear a good part of the blame for this reality and acknowledge that it does not sufficiently engage with these countries on the specific issues that they face and focuses almost excessively on Latin American issues. Caribbean countries’ perception is, therefore, understandable. Additionally, the composition of the Commission and its Secretariat reinforces both English and French-speaking Caribbean States’ feelings of isolation and/or exclusion. In the recent years, however, the Commission has been trying to reverse this tendency. For example, Caribbean States were made a priority in its 2017-2021 Strategic Plan of Action. However, it is important to point out that engagement is and must be a two-way street. If the Commission has not been engaging as much as it should have with Commonwealth Countries and Haiti, it is also in part because of these countries’ civil societies and State agencies’ lack of stated interest in and active engagement with the Commission. I take this opportunity to call on members of civil society organizations in Canada and Caribbean Commonwealth countries’ State representatives to engage with and make use of all of the mechanisms the Commission has at its disposal, both to denounce human rights violations and also to highlight accomplishments and good practices. I would like to highlight recent opportunities of engagement with English-speaking countries. First, a Period of Sessions was held in Kingston, Jamaica, in May 2019. The Commission heard matters from all OAS Member States, save for Jamaica since the Commission does not deal with matters related to the host country. Second, the United States recently halted the execution of Russel Bucklew as a result of both domestic and inter-American pressure. Indeed, the Commission granted precautionary measures to Mr. Bucklew and published an admissibility report that found …