John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights

No, not the organization but for the man that this organization is named after. Winnipeg is home to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and evidently, the City of Winnipeg is floating the idea around that the street in front of it should be named for Mohandas Gandhi. This column from the Winnipeg Sun argues strongly that the street should not be named for Gandhi; rather, it should be named for John Peters Humphrey.

Leaving aside that the columnist’s reasons for not wanting to name it after Gandhi (which are his own opinions, not ours; we neither agree nor disagree), why not name it after a Canadian human rights champion? John Peters Humphrey is arguably one of the greatest Canadian heroes of the 20th century for his role in establishing human rights as a normative framework in the post-war era.

For those who don’t know, John Peters Humphrey was the Canadian lawyer and academic who wrote the 400 page blueprint that served as the guide and inspiration for the newly created  UN Commission on Human Rights, led by Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt. The new Commission was supposed to create a new International Bill of Rights to protect and safeguard humanity’s rights after the atrocities that took place during the Second World War. He led a long and distinguished career in human rights advocacy for most of his professional life, overseeing over 67 international conventions and dozens of constitutions of countries. The UDHR remains one of the most important and influential documents of the 20th century, cited frequently and often for those in pursuit of social, economic, civil and political justice.

The fact that most people don’t know who this Canadian hero is sad but the City of Winnipeg would do well do name the street in front of the Canadian Human Rights Museum for a Canadian rather than Gandhi. Not that Gandhi wasn’t a great human rights hero in his own right–he just wasn’t Canadian. And let’s face it…John Peters Humphrey was pretty much the quintessential Canadian–he wasn’t the flashiest player in the room but he certainly was the most efficient.

In light that tomorrow will be Canada Day, let’s celebrate the achievements and contributions of Canadians!

Happy Canada Day!

Hello everyone! This has been a topsy-turvy week in the world of international and national politics as the BP oil spills continues, General McCrystal was replaced in Afghanistan by General Patreaus, Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of Australia was replaced by Julia Gillard who incidentally is also Australia’s first female Prime Minister (let us hope she is more Angela Merkel than Kim Campbell!) and most importantly for Canadians, the G8 and G20 Summits commence amidst protests, weapons charges and a fake lake.

Still, Edmonton has quite a few interesting things going on in which I will cover in this week’s MashUp.

Harbinger of truth sees hope for future

Willie Littlechild, who spoke at the National Aboriginal Day celebrations hosted by Creating Hope Society in partnership with the John Humphrey Centre and the Racism Free Initiative  this past Sunday (June 20th), has words of encouragement for Aboriginal communities about the future of Canada-Aboriginal relations. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission kicks off the first of its 7 major get-together to discuss the legacy of residential schools and to document

the truth of survivors, families, communities and anyone personally affected by the schools

Which is why, it is more important than ever, that Canada ratifies the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. When it was first signed in 2007, Canada along with Australia, New Zealand and the United States refused to ratify it. Australia reversed this position in 2009 and New Zealand in April 2010. The United States has promised to review their position on the Declaration and Canada also stated it was moving towards endorsement in the Throne Speech.

However, for a country whose record dealing with Aboriginal issues is less than pristine, Canada has a lot of work ahead. As Mr Littlechild said, it’s time for Canada to take action.

These bright young minds are the shape of Edmonton to come

Our friends over at NextGen presented their report to City Council earlier this week called “Engage Your City Your Voice Life in the Urban Core Report” that highlights their ideas for improving Edmonton’s downtown core as a growing urban metropolis. It details the views young people have on our city and the values they see in developing Edmonton. These values are environmental sustainability and urban density and likability and livability.

Go and read the report–it’s a great take on how to combine urban sustainability with social justice to create a city that could attract young people. As Paula Simons pointed out this week, Travel Alberta evidently has no idea where Edmonton is, let alone what makes this place an increasingly great city.

Standing up to Hatred

Community leaders joined activists in Lethbridge on June 24 to encourage citizens to “tear down the barriers of fear and hate” in an anti-hate rally. The mayor, police chief and others joined activists to condemn discrimination and hatred, encouraging everyone to embrace diversity. The anti-hate rally was inspired by an University student’s vandalized vehicle painted with homophobic slurs.

Congratulations on a successful rally and standing up for human rights, Lethbridge!

Governor General lands UN Post and launches Foundation

Michaëlle Jean, the current Governor General of Canada, has landed a UNESCO post as the UN’s Special Envoy to Haiti after her term ends in September and will also be launching her Foundation which focuses on engaging youth, particularly underprivilege, rural and northern communities. As anyone who knows anything about Michaëlle Jean will know, supporting underprivileged and marginalized youth has been one of the keystones of her tenure as Governor General, hosting coast-to-coast youth dialogues for this reason.

Ms Jean’s tenure hasn’t been particularly smooth since she presided over Canada’s rather tumultuous political position for the past 5 years and like almost all Governor Generals, widely praised or widely condemned depending on who you ask. But she was awesome at the 2009 Global Youth Assembly and her cause, both as Special Envoy to Haiti and her Foundation, are well worth supporting.

That’s it for this week’s MashUp. There won’t be a MashUp next week because of Canada Day (unless there is news so massive that we just have to blog about it) so Happy Canada Day everyone a week in advance and enjoy the weather!

Today is National Aboriginal Day and in celebration of that, we’re formally releasing our Circle Alberta Report. This Report is available for download from Scribd (login required) or you can contact the John Humphrey Centre for a hard copy. We can’t send this by email because it’s a massive file. This report will remain up on the main page of this blog for this week then it will be moved to its own page.

This comprehensive report summarizes the community dialogues that took place from April to December of 2008 as well as the dialogues that took place at the Circle Alberta Gathering (October 24-25, 2008). This report features recommendations for actions and best practices highlights.

[scribd id=33505010 key=key-275ouz26d5l4rlbpwjwz mode=list]

Hello everyone! As you may have notice, the blog has been woefully neglected these past couple of weeks but there are very good reasons for that. The John Humphrey Centre has been busy preparing for National Aboriginal Day along with our partners, so here is the announcement for those events.

Announcement

The John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights is pleased to announce that the Final Report from the 2008 Circle Alberta Project will be released on Sunday, June 20 in celebration of National Aboriginal Day. This report, called Circle Alberta: Dialogues on Aboriginal Futures–Strengthening Relationships for Shared Prosperity reports on the results of the Dialogues held in 8 Alberta communities from April-December 2008 as well as the conclusions from the Dialogues held at the formal Gathering, which took place at the Shaw Conference Centre on October 24-25, 2008. The report also has recommendations for actions and best practices highlights towards building a brighter, more inclusive and socially-economically viable Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal community.

Summaries of this report will be handed out at the National Aboriginal Day celebrations and will be available for download, on this blog, on Monday.

National Aboriginal Day Celebrations

Sunday, June 20, 2010, the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights and Creating Hope Society, as part of the Racism Free Initiative, is hosting a National Aboriginal Day Celebration. The day will feature J Wilton Littlechild, Cree activist, lawyer, athlete and international advocate for Indigenous rights and Lewis Cardinal, activist, communicator, politician as keynote speakers. They’ll be speaking briefly on the importance of the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (which Canada has not ratified) and the role such a document plays in our community.

WHERE: Centennial Plaza, behind the Stanley A Milner Library

WHEN: Sunday, June 20, 2010

TIME: 1:00-3:00 p.m.

There will be loads of activities including Metis Fiddlers and Dancers as well as Aboriginal youth performers and art. Come out and celebrate National Aboriginal Day with us!

And now, onto your regularly scheduled Friday MashUp!

Hate Attacks against Gays spike in 2008: StatsCan

In 2008, the rise of anti-gay violence doubled from the previous years and young people between the ages of 12 and 22 are responsible in 6 in 10 hate crimes; the majority accused are 17 or 18. Possible reasons for the spike is a backlash against more public displays of homosexuality, which may make some uncomfortable.

However, hate crimes itself appears to be also on the rise, with 16 percent for crimes related to sexual orientation, 55 percent motivated by race or ethnicity and 26 percent by religion.

Some former residential school students struggle with church presence at reconciliation event

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is hosting its first national event and for some former students, the presence of the various churches who were responsible for the abuses has some former students feeling rather conflicted.

The presence of the churches is undoubtedly necessary for a true reconciliation to happen and it is our sincerest hope that all survivors will find a measure of comfort where they can and celebrate their culture this weekend to the fullest extent.

The $600 billion challenge

You know how everyone complains that the richest people in the world don’t contribute to solving world issues? Well, if Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett have their way, that won’t be true anymore. In this fascinating article, two of the world’s richest men (and Melinda Gates) gathered a group of the world’s wealthiest billionaires to explore possibilities of getting these billionaires to donate 50% of their net worth to charitable organizations either upon their deaths or in their lifetimes.

Now, whether or not Warren Buffett and Bill Gates can get their fellow billionaires to commit is one thing but Buffett and Gates already invest considerable portions of their net worth into their philanthropic pursuits. If other billionaires follow suit, it would definitely be a game-changer, something that would shake up the charitable world.

That’s it for your Friday MashUp; hopefully we’ll see you on Sunday. Enjoy the weather and the weekend.

Hello there! I know today’s MashUp is really late and honestly, there isn’t that much news to report on. A quick run down of all the daily newspapers reveal that the most pressing issues on everybody’s mind is of course the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Iran sanctions, the North/South Korea conflict and for the rest of world outside of North America, the World Cup.

I did, however, come across this interesting piece from Vue Weekly, and the Tyee which aren’t of my usual sources for human rights news (although it will be now–bloggers are awesome!). The two interesting stories found this week came from Vue Weekly and the Tyee respectively.

No Easy Answers: Somali-Albertans face barriers to necessary services

Vue Weekly has a really excellent article on the challenges faced by Somali-Albertans (although this is really more like a Somali-Canadian issue) in particular regard to a) the disturbingly high murder-rate of Somali-Canadian youths and b) the lack of political motivation to actually do anything about it. The crux of the article is this:

Somali-Canadian youth who are being murdered are not immigrants but rather Canadians of Somali descent (technically, second generation immigrants although this would imply that they immigrated with their parents and sometimes this is not the case), which makes the murders a “Canadian” problem not an “immigrant/Somali”problem. It also means that a lot of services that the government puts into place for situations like this, i.e. extra support for immigrant children, ESL classes etc, don’t apply to these youth because they are Canadian born. But the systemic racism and the implicit/tacit lack of opportunities for youth whose parents might still be struggling, hampers the ability to recognize the issue as a systemic racist one as opposed to an immigrant issue.

This article is well worth the read, especially on its call to action on creating a task force to research the causes and solutions to why Somali-Canadian youths are so susceptible.

What do we owe our Guest Workers?

The Tyee article focuses on the issue of temporary foreign workers, which has fallen off the media radar since the recession began in late 2008. There is no denying that a considerable number of temporary foreign workers have been abused by the Canadian bureaucracies, employers and others, facing systemic racism. The Tyee article looks over the debate on whether or not foreign temporary workers should be allowed to stay and what the barriers are regarding their employment terms, their situation and what needs to be done to rectified to make this more just (if that is possible).

That’s it for your Friday MashUp. It’s going to be a busy weekend in Edmonton, seeing as how the Pride Parade is tomorrow so hopefully the weather stays nice and we’ll see you next week!

Thanks to everyone who responded regarding our website issues. We’ve had some people step up to help so we’ll keep you posted on what ends up happening. For now though, please refrain to visiting the JHC/HRC websites to avoid any accidental problems.

Program offers teens a place to discuss problems, find solutions

Alberta Justice has just announced funding for a new after-school prevention program to be offered at certain schools to act as community hubs to address issues such as mental health and drug problems, bullying and family violence. These services will be available in schools after class hours (evenings) and weekends, with the goal being prevention over reaction and restorative justice.

They haven’t decided which schools will get this programming yet and it’ll be interesting to see where they end up installing these programs. It’s also interesting they decided to take a restorative justice approach, which encourages perpetrators to own up to their crimes either by facing their victims or a panel of community members on how to make restitution to their community. Restorative justice is a concept that encourages responsibility and examining the whys and wherefores of the situation to address the issues instead of just punishing offenders.

Water Bill wouldn’t stop U.S. from draining Canada’s rivers, Expert Warns

“An act introduced last month by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon would prohibit the diversion, within Canada, of water from rivers that cross the international border”., says the Globe and Mail. This whole article is worth reading on the protection of Canada’s water resources, which is sure to become one of the major issues of our generation (if it isn’t already). The group consulted, which also includes members of the Council of Canadians, also believes that no domestic bill like this would stop the Americans if it truly came down to it–which begs an interesting question regarding sovereignty of resources.

We’re going to be talking a lot about water here at the John Humphrey Centre for months to come so be watching for that!

Have a great weekend !

Hi Everyone

Due to malicious activity, neither the John Humphrey Centre website (www.jhcentre.org) or the Human Rights City Edmonton website (www.humanrightscity.ca) is secure. Both sites have been compromised and may contribute to security problems on your computer. We are aware of the issue but frankly, fixing the problem is slow going because our IT guy is a volunteer and no one in our office is tech-savvy enough to resolve this problem on our own.

If you know of anyone who is willing to donate their web-developing skills to the John Humphrey Centre to help us resolve these problems, please have them contact Mandy at mandy (at) jhcentre (dot) org.

If you can help us out in any way, please contact us. We are a very small non-profit and things like this can easily overwhelm our capabilities to handle it. We appreciate any and all assistance.

Thanks.

–The John Humphrey Centre

Welcome to your Friday MashUp. There are a LOT of things happening on the international stage relating to human rights (and it seems like every Twitter and RSS feed coming up from different sources are all outlining how things are VERY BAD right now). As a result, I tried hard to find positive upbeat articles this week to share so if you’re sick of worrying over whether or not BP will ever get that oil spill cleaned up, North and South Korea will implode or any other half a dozen concerns out there, kick back and enjoy some good news for once!

Charter Challenge aims to force governments to create public housing

A coalition of social-welfare organizations is launching a challenge to try to force the federal and Ontario governments into providing affordable housing for those who are in need of it. They are arguing that Section 7 of the Charter applies in this case because “People who are homeless are perhaps the most marginalized, disempowered, precariously situated and vulnerable group in Canadian society.”

Section 7: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance to the principles of fundamental justice

You know, a federal mandate in this regard might help push a more cohesive strategy towards making affordable housing available, especially in regards to budget and I think there is definite need to look at affordable housing. Canada often has these weird gaps in social policy that just shouldn’t exist in our society with an economy as powerful as ours but it should be pointed out that while current housing crises are shouldered by municipalities (as pointed out by this article; see Homeless Connect here in Alberta about two MashUps back) anyways and I think that if this were to pass (we can hope and dream), the burden will still fall to municipalities to come up with and execute the strategy. That also makes sense, given that a one size fits all housing solution will fit no one, as these things often don’t.

But the other interesting question about this article is whether or not a Charter challenge like this would actually work. Does anyone know?

Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate drops by 36.9 per cent

A new report from the Sex Information and Educational Council of Canada says that better access to contraception, better sex education and shifting social norms have contributed to the decline of Canada teen birth and abortion rates by 36.9 per cent between 1996 and 2006.

A key reason for the decline, according to this article, is that that Canadians have a more relaxed attitude towards the “reality of adolescent sexuality”, which is an interesting turn of phrase and probably hits it on the head. If you have a more liberal attitude towards sexuality, the more likely it is you’d be okay with teaching about sex education including, and it must be stressed, abstinence.

Which makes you wonder what the Canadian Government is thinking if abortion is not on the table for maternal health. Sex education works if consistently applied.

And…that’s it. It was actually pretty hard finding positive news stories this week, to be honest but if you know of some, leave us a comment and share! Have a great weekend, everyone.

Hello everyone. Because this is a short week and we missed Recap Monday, I’m just going to do a combination post for today and the usual Friday MashUp on Friday.

Firstly–if you’re interested in the Youth Educators for Human Rights volunteer opportunity that will be taking place very soon on June 12, you can find all the details and sign-up form here. The link to the form can be found at the very bottom and by the time you read this, it should be updated to very large font size so you can’t miss it. Sorry if there was confusion before hand!

Secondly–don’t forget that on June 1st, the Alberta Native Friendship Centres Association will be having their first annual Walk for Friendship event. Please consider supporting this organization–it does great work and doesn’t get nearly enough attention that it deserves. Head over to their site for more details or check out our Feature Wednesday about it from last week.

Thirdly–if you’re a school, rural community or summer camp, the 2010 Rights in the Sun sessions are now available for scheduling. Please contact rits (at) jhcentre (dot) org to schedule your camp!

Finally, today’s Feature Wednesday is focused on Arabesque, a socially conscious hip-hop recording artist , who released a new video called “Understand” which focuses on the story of 4 immigrants, their journey to North America and the struggles they face here. Check out his video below!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPpzC5mCPuA]

That’s it for your Feature Wednesday/Recap Monday update. See you on Friday for MashUp!