Thank you.
I guess there are a number of things.
We often struggle as international human rights activists to convince the Government of Canada and Global Affairs to be outspoken at the United Nations Human Rights Council on country-specific situations. There's only really a subset of countries that the Canadian government engages on at the Human Rights Council. They're often much more comfortable with thematic issues that are bit softer, like violence against women and LGBT issues. Those are sort of easier issues. We hear again and again that they engage with this government bilaterally or they engage with that government privately, but they don't do so in a really public way. I don't think the government does enough at the Human Rights Council to really address country-specific situations.
We've certainly seen a change in that approach with respect to Ukraine, but it really is anomalous in a lot of ways. We would love to see more of that type of robust action by this government at the United Nations—at the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council in Geneva—and then also within the International Criminal Court. Canada is a founding member of the International Criminal Court, so it should really be at the forefront of accountability efforts. We've seen that in cases in which it has an ally—I mentioned Israel earlier—the government is not keen to move forward, even on accountability and justice for really serious international crimes. When you ask Global Affairs where Palestinians go to remedy the serious international crimes that they've experienced under the Israeli occupation, they have no answer. There's really nowhere for them to go.
We really need to take a principled stance for every country situation around these issues, whether it's an ally or not.
We've seen this similarly around LGBTQ issues where, in some cases, the government is very vocal. In other cases, we see that the approach is much more one of private diplomacy. Unfortunately, private diplomacy results in very little because the offending government can very easily drag the situation on for years. It's really not forced to take any action.
I think it's really important for the government to take a principled stance on these issues on the world stage and at the International Criminal Court and not promote a double standard. We see this as well with—