Aboriginals to present grievances to UN

Education, women's rights among concerns

By Lee Berthiaume, Postmedia News

Aboriginal groups, angry at the way they have been treated by the government, are preparing to put their complaints before the international community next week when a high-level United Nations expert panel examines Canada's record on fighting discrimination.

"Obviously, we're not going to realize any solution within the domestic framework," said Grand Chief Stew-art Phillip of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs.

"As time goes on, I think we're going to see more and more communities reaching out to the international community."

Representatives from about a dozen First Nations organizations, including the Assembly of First Nations and various communities across the country, will travel to Geneva to meet with the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Monday.

They are expected to raise concerns about funding for education and basic services, the treatment of aboriginal women and children, and the implementation of land claims treaties.

The federal government and sever-al dozen First Nations groups already have submitted reports to the committee, which is made up of human rights experts from around the world who will report their findings to the UN Human Rights Commission.

The government defended its re-cord, pointing to a range of federal, provincial and territorial forums and programs that have been established in recent years to help deal with violence against aboriginal women and train communities to become more self-sufficient.

The First Nations organizations, meanwhile, laid out their own concerns.

"Today, indigenous women struggle to practise and defend their rightful place in society, and they are of-ten faced with poverty, inadequate housing, extreme violence and various barriers to accessing human rights," reads the report submitted by the Assembly of First Nations.

"Barriers to accessing a good education are presented at a young age with an inadequately funded First Nations school system and barriers to education often lead to exposure and vulnerability to poverty and violence."

"To date, Canada has been selective in choosing which human rights it will respect and protect and has been generally unwilling to acknowledge indigenous peoples' rights as human rights," adds a report from the Vancouver-based First Nations Summit. "Moreover, Canada has failed to fulfil its human-rights obligations and commitments regarding indigenous peoples."

The international community has previously shown a great deal of interest in Canada's treatment of its aboriginal peoples.

Craig Benjamin of Amnesty Inter-national said the contrast between Canada's record as a human-rights champion on the world stage and the way it treats its own aboriginal peoples presents a real problem not just for this country, but the inter-national human-rights system as a whole.


(2012-02-18/firstperspective)