Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There have been several versions of military commissions. The first was through an executive order. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court declared them illegal, so the new Military Commissions Act came along and was passed by Congress. That is also being examined by the Suprem

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I agree. Certainly the allegations against Omar Khadr and everyone else who's facing the military commissions are quite serious. It's our position, though, that the failings of that system are also quite serious. When someone faces any charges, but particularly charges of this n

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That is a question you really need to put to someone like Professor Craig Forcese in the context of the study he did. I cannot say either way. Part of it has to do with whether the evidence is admissible and so on. The evidence was collected under questionable circumstances, and

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I have just a small point. As I mentioned at the beginning of our remarks, Amnesty International has been campaigning on this case since his initial capture in 2002. One of the things we raised in the context of this case and in the cases of other people who were before the init

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'll start. On the question of whether or not he could be tried in Canadian courts, I would recommend that the committee hear from Craig Forcese, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, who did an extensive study on the Canadian legal system and what sort of trial and which

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  From our perspective, one of the things that has to happen is the recognition of the inadequacy of the military commissions. As long as that process is being treated as if it were a legitimate court, it's very problematic. Around that, of course, are all the obligations that say

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you. This is a welcome opportunity to clarify and elaborate on our concerns about the case of Omar Khadr. This is one of many cases of concern in Guantanamo Bay and other places of detention in the context of the so-called war on terror. Amnesty International is not alon

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. That was an immense series of questions. Sometimes we think there's a huge gulf between what we talk about as universal human rights values and what the average person in Afghanistan might. A number of organizations have done studies on what the Afghan people want in terms

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm sure you are all familiar with the now very well-known pillars of the Afghanistan Compact, namely security, governance, the rule of law and human rights, and economic and social development. Much attention has been placed on security as a precursor to the realization of the o

Foreign Affairs committee  It is a challenge to start to do disarmament and gathering, particularly in a context like that, where capacity is a question. I would remind people, in the context of the land mine campaign that was mentioned earlier, the scale of land mines within the world meant that it was

Foreign Affairs committee  What I would add to that is we do know that in this context and several others, in some countries technical assistance capacity to do this is a real issue, whether it's simply having the capacity to properly run DDR programs and gather the arms in the first place and safeguard th

Foreign Affairs committee  Each of our organizations or our heads of organizations have written directly to the Prime Minister.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm going to elaborate a bit on the human rights impact of small arms. The supply of weapons is an international problem with local consequences. Small arms are present in every country of the world. They are used in every single armed conflict, and exclusively in most. Unfortun