Media Room News Releases and Advisories

Backgrounder: Canada's Position on Health and Human Rights

Canada is determined that human rights have a full place in the decisions made at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).

In particular, Canada is working to ensure the WSSD agreement on health and sustainable development in the Draft Plan of Implementation (Paragraph 47) includes an explicit reference to the need for countries to take action "in conformity with all human rights and fundamental freedoms".

Although other countries support Canada's position on this issue, it is being claimed this matter cannot be addressed because the text was supposedly agreed upon and it is contrary to UN procedures to "re-open the text", despite the fact the Canadian wording or similar wording is widely used in international agreements.

Canada sees this as a broad and fundamental matter of strong and unwavering international commitment to human rights. Canada will continue to press strongly for the inclusion of human rights wording in WSSD decisions.

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