Beggar Nations Defecate on Canada and Human Rights

UNITED NATIONS — More than half the countries receiving long-term overseas aid from Canada are among the bloc rebuffing a major, Canadian-led human rights campaign at the United Nations, analysis shows.

 

Thirteen “development partners” of the Canadian International Development Agency — Ottawa’s aid arm — opposed Canada’s position in a key opening vote of this year’s bid to highlight Iran’s human rights abuses.

 

Afghanistan — Canada’s biggest all-time aid recipient and treated along with Haiti as a special case outside the “development partner” program — also sided with Iran.

While backing Canada at the UN is not among Ottawa’s criteria for picking aid recipients, CIDA says one of its goals in dispensing aid is to help “developing countries . . . promote democracy and human rights.”

 

“CIDA is delivering on” this and other goals, the agency says on its website.

In descending order of CIDA funding last year, the 13 agency “partners” that voted with Iran to throw out the Canadian-led censure were Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mali, Senegal, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Pakistan, Zambia, Malawi, Bolivia, Cambodia and Nicaragua.

 

Among non-partner recipients of Canadian aid that voted with Iran was South Africa, which CIDA’s planning report for this year and next says Canada will help to combat HIV/AIDS and build public institutions.

 

“For too long, supposedly friendly countries in the Third World — many of whom rely on the generosity of Canada and other Western democracies — have used their UN votes to undermine vital international human rights initiatives, without our diplomats ever holding them to account,” said Hillel Neuer, Montreal-born head of UN Watch, a human-rights monitoring group in Geneva. “Effective Canadian multilateral diplomacy is impossible if Ottawa won’t push the right buttons in its bilateral relationships.”

There are few campaigns at the 192-member UN that any one country can call its own, so Canada’s effective “ownership” of the Iranian human rights focus offers a rare opportunity to see which long-term recipients of Canadian aid share Canadian values.

 

Many Western diplomats have long said Afghanistan — where Canada has committed $1.9 billion over 10 years development aid, and where scores of Canadian lives have been lost — is in a tight spot because Iran’s proximity as a neighbour means Tehran has the potential to disrupt life in Afghanistan’s western provinces.

Less evident are reasons Western countries consider valid that explain why other countries are siding with Iran.

 

The Canadian side needed all the help it could get on the first of this year’s votes because Iran, in the 2007 and 2006 sessions dealing with this issue, almost won the day.

Voting so far has taken place in a key UN committee, and the issue is now headed for a ruling next month in the General Assembly plenary.

“Every president whose country benefits from Canadian largesse, yet failed to support our resolution for Iran’s victims of oppression, should get an immediate visit from the resident Canadian ambassador, with the firm message that Canadians will be watching the final votes in December,” added Neuer. “If a little accountability is what it takes to win support for imprisoned dissidents and women’s rights defenders, then so be it.”

 

Canada, which spends around $4 billion a year on overseas humanitarian and development aid, has led the annual censure campaign in the General Assembly since the 2003 murder in Iranian custody of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi.

 

It has become one of Canada’s most important diplomatic responsibilities at the world body, and international human rights advocates say victims draw enormous solace from the knowledge their suffering does not go unnoticed.

 

The Canadian-led draft resolution holds Iran’s Islamic regime to account for acts such as “torture . . . including flogging and amputations.” It also speaks of increasing discrimination in Iran against religious, ethnic and other minorities, particularly against people of the internationalist Baha’i faith, of whom there are 30,000 in Canada.

This first vote had been on Iran’s motion for “no action” on the Canadian-led censure draft, and while Iran lost, the margin was only 10 votes among 180 cast.

Afghanistan, South Africa and eight of the 13 “partners” that had voted for “no action” then went on to oppose the Canadian position in the actual censure vote.

Only Honduras and Ukraine among the CIDA partners backed the Canadian- led position throughout.

 

Haiti — which is getting $555 million over five years as Canada’s second biggest recipient of direct aid — also sided with Canada in the “no action” ballot, then abstained in the censure vote.

 

The 10 remaining CIDA partners arguably neither helped nor hindered the Canadian-led campaign. Abstaining on both were Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania. Niger abstained on the “no action” motion, then voted with Iran in opposing the actual censure.

The five CIDA partners that voted with Iran in the no action motion, and then shifted their support in the censure measure, were Bolivia, Kenya, Mali, Zambia, which abstained on the censure, and Cambodia, which registered absent.

 

Analysts say their motive may have been the distaste many non-Western countries have at the UN for country-specific censures.

 

 

But Iran was also pulling out all the stops this year to try to derail the Canadian-led censure campaign — inking oil and other deals with a number of small states to try to win their support. Media reports show Iran has emerging or past economic ties with at least Bolivia, Kenya, Mali and Zambia.

 

CIDA said at the launch of the development partner program in 2005 that it aimed at concentrating aid so there would be “increased impact in poverty reduction.”

CIDA funded programs in all 25 to the tune of $750 million from 2006-07, according to the most recent figures the agency has posted on its website. CIDA’s spending that year on programs in non-partner South Africa totalled almost $10 million.

 

Canada has spent aid dollars in a host of other countries that opposed the Canadian-led positions on Iran — but large chunks were for emergency humanitarian causes.

 

For instance, tens of millions of dollars have been spent to help the people of Darfur and southern Sudan in the face of Khartoum’s proxy or direct wars in those regions.

Calls and e-mails to CIDA Thursday and Friday for comment on the “partners” program went unanswered.