Mr. Speaker, “It's like putting a serial rapist in charge of a women's shelter”. That is how one newspaper described the fact that Syria will chair a UN Conference on Disarmament later this year.
The Syrian regime, with the backing of Iran and Russia, is one of the world's leading violators of human rights in general and a violator in terms of the use of illegal weapons to violate human rights in particular. What is striking about this situation of the Syrian regime chairing this UN conference is that the UN's own investigations clearly show the illegal targeting of civilians with illegal chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. The fact that these attacks on civilians with chemical weapons have happened at all is a grave challenge to the credibility of the international system, so I am glad that there was a punitive response taken by our allies. The UN's investigative bodies have identified this and pointed the finger at Syria, yet at the same time, the UN is going to welcome Syria to chair the UN Conference on Disarmament, which operates under and reports to the UN General Assembly. The conference will meet starting May 28.
This is a pattern we see in different UN entities. Some of the worst violators of human rights in general, and in particular cases, will seek positions of influence involving human rights at the UN, the particular area where they are violating those rights, in hopes of preventing, or at least dampening, criticism of their own activities. We saw this, for example, with the Saudi government getting a position on the UN women's rights commission. We should acknowledge that there have been some changes made in Saudi Arabia, but there is a heck of a lot more work to do when it comes to women's rights and other human rights issues.
At the time, I asked our Minister of Foreign Affairs what I think was a fairly simple question. Did she think it was a good thing or a bad thing that Saudi Arabia was on the UN women's rights commission? I asked the question multiple times. Her response was to explain some of the context around this election but not to actually answer the specific question.
I know that all members of this House believe that the UN plays an important role in the world, but I want to say to the government that appropriate criticism of that pattern of behaviour, of the way some authoritarian regimes use UN human rights bodies to try to whitewash their own abuses, is the pro-UN thing to do. If one cares about the UN, if one cares about the integrity of international institutions, it is necessary to speak out and criticize and act when we have these kinds of negative outcomes. It is with an eye to reforming and improving the UN to make it better that we should clearly identify when these perverse outcomes happen. Being pro-UN does not mean accepting these kinds of clearly unacceptable aspects of current processes as having to be in place going forward.
I want to ask the government this question again, because I do not think we got a clear answer originally. We heard comments about the situation in Syria in general.
The government had notice of this question, so it knows it is coming. Will it be boycotting this conference, given that Canada in the past has boycotted this conference when it has been chaired by rogue states? Will Canada do the right thing on May 28, and going forward, and boycott a disarmament conference chaired by Syria?