Canada

TORONTO – United Way, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Amnesty International today jointly announced an incredible gift of $3 million from Alice and Grant Burton.

Alice and Grant Burton, long-time philanthropists from Toronto, will evenly split the $3 million between these organizations, allowing them each to significantly increase their capacity to fight local poverty, provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, and promote an end to worldwide human rights violations, respectively.

Grant Burton is president of Starcan Corporation and director emeritus at the National Arts Centre while Alice Burton is an artist whose works have principally been exhibited in Toronto, Montreal, and New York.

Jaya Bordeleau-Cass and André Capretti are the 2019-2020 Public Interest Articling Fellows at Amnesty International Canada. They will be posting updates about the Safe Third Country Agreement hearing throughout the week.

The brief and frustrating answer: it’s unclear what it takes. 

Submissions in the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) challenge continued to be delivered from November 4-8th at the Federal Court in Toronto. Earlier this week, counsel for the applicants – representing Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Canadian Council of Churches, and other individual litigants – provided a general overview of the requirements for a safe third country designation, why it is unlawful, and why the operation of the agreement violates the security and equality rights of STCA returnees.

Today marked the first day of a week-long hearing, in which the applicants - Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Council of Churches, and individual refugee claimants - are challenging the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement (the STCA) in Federal Court before Justice Ann Marie McDonald.

“Year after year, month after month, Canada willfully turns its back on refugee claimants at the border.”

The applicants’ opening remarks, delivered by Mr. Andrew Brouwer, set the stage for the day’s arguments, which reviewed the facts, the evidence and administrative law issues.

The Israeli authorities’ decision to prevent an Amnesty International staff member from travelling abroad for “security reasons”, apparently as a punitive measure against the organization’s human rights work, is another chilling indication of Israel’s growing intolerance of critical voices, Amnesty International said today.

Laith Abu Zeyad, Amnesty International’s Campaigner on Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), was stopped at the Allenby/King Hussein crossing between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on 26 October while on his way to attend a relative’s funeral. He was kept waiting for four hours before being informed he has been banned from travelling by Israeli intelligence for undisclosed “security reasons”.

WINNIPEG – Amnesty International’s annual global letter-writing campaign is taking aim at the devastating mercury crisis that youth in Asubpeeschoseewagong, also known as Grassy Narrows First Nation, have been fighting to end.

Young people living in the Indigenous Anishinaabe First Nation of Grassy Narrows in northwestern Ontario are fighting for a healthy future for themselves and their community. Over the past 50 years, toxic mercury has poisoned rivers and fish vital to Grassy Narrows. Because of government inaction, generations of young people have grown up with devastating health problems and the loss of their cultural traditions.

This year, Amnesty International is urging everyone to help demand justice for Grassy Narrows through the Write for Rights campaign by writing letters calling on the Canadian government to fully address the mercury crisis and end 50 years of human rights violations.

What: Press conference with youth from the Ontario First Nation of Grassy Narrows and Amnesty International

Our nations and organizations welcome the tabling of Bill 41, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, to provide a framework for implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in British Columbia. The Coalition for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples is urging all members of the provincial legislature to support the Bill in a non-partisan manner.

The Coalition for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples is made up of Indigenous Nations, Indigenous peoples’ organizations, civil society groups and individual experts and advocates. The Coalition has been deeply involved in the development, promotion and implementation of the Declaration. We are firmly convinced of the Declaration’s vital importance for achieving justice, reconciliation, healing and peace.

MEDIA RELEASE
UP FOR DEBATE 2019

October 17, 2019

OTTAWA – A broad alliance of women’s rights and equality-seeking organizations has officially called off plans to host a national leaders’ debate on women’s rights and gender equality, citing a lack of commitment from most federal party leaders.

In March, the alliance wrote to all party leaders, inviting them to participate in a national televised debate on women’s rights and gender equality – the first debate of its kind since 1984.

Months later, and only days away from Election Day, the only two leaders committed to debating women’s rights and gender equality issues are the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh and the Green Party’s Elizabeth May. While the Bloc Quebecois expressed interest, Up for Debate could not secure a firm commitment from the party’s leader, Yves-François Blanchet. The alliance did not receive an RSVP from Conservative leader Andrew Scheer or Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.