UN Indigenous Declaration adopted

The UN General Assembly voted in favour of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People last Thursday. Unsurprisingly, Canada, the US, New Zealand and Australia voted against the declaration. Let's put a little perspective on this ... Canada voted against this declaration ... despite the advice of everyone who would have something intelligent to say on the matter. Despite:

• A historical support of the declaration for 23 years.


• Support for the declaration from The Canadian Standing Committee of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. (A standing committee is a group formed by MPs to study and provide guidance for government policy)


• Support for the declaration from senior officials in Foreign affairs and Indian Affairs,according to documents obtained by Amnesty International through access to information.
  
  
• The unity of all opposition parties in favour of the declaration. That would be the MPs representing 63.7% of people who didn't vote for the Conservatives.
  
  
• Support from indigenous leaders for the declaration across Canada .. and well, the across the world.
  
  
• Other countries having constitutions, volatile situations with indigenous populations. These countries could have given the same excuses as the Conservatives. They didn't. They signed the declaration.

Now, some might point out that the declaration is non-binding. The Canadian government could have easily signed it to look good and then ignored it like we do with other declarations. I wouldn't use this excuse.

I think the Harper government knows exactly how dangerous declarations can be.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is/was non-binding. Now many parts of it are customary international law. It's not perfect and violations still occur, but it's there. It's a global rallying point for change and justice. And that's something.

Politicians have learned from this "mistake" of allowing non-binding seemingly harmless feel-good declarations in. It eventually causes problems. Which is why we now have four powerful countries with ongoing histories of disgusting abuses against indigenous populations having temper tantrums over the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Because heaven forbid we should sign onto something that would oblige us to do the right thing.