International AIDS conference calls for a focus on the human rights of people affected by HIV
AIDS 2010, the international conference on HIV/AIDS occurring this week in Vienna, Austria, highlights the critical connection between human rights and HIV, a dialogue begun in earnest during a similar conference in Mexico City in 2008. The conference also coincides with a major international push for expanded access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. (more…)
Amnesty International report states Canada has not adequately protected Aboriginal rights
Amnesty International’s recent report on The State of the World’s Human Rights mentions, among several issues, the prevalence of violence against aboriginal women in Canada and the lack of a plan to address it, and says the government is making “baseless claims” that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples does not apply to Canada [source: CBC].
Growing support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is mentioned as a positive international development, but the Canadian government has not yet endorsed the declaration. (more…)
Robert Whitaker updates Mad in America, the revealing history of psychiatric treatment
In Robert Whitaker’s Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, “one lone author bears moral witness to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people abused, tortured and damaged by the psychiatric establishment.” The book is a history of the treatment of the severely mentally ill in the United States from colonial times until today, and it may surprise many readers who assume that the modern psychopharmacology era has “revolutionized” the care of the severely mentally ill. The second edition of Mad in America has just recently been published. (more…)
Police raids on compassion clubs providing medicinal marijuana are a reminder just how challenging change is going to be
Police launched a major marijuana crackdown in Quebec last week, targeting 35 people in raids on marijuana compassion clubs. Five clubs in Montreal and Quebec City were hit.
In B.C., Maple Ridge RCMP arrested a man who is licensed by Health Canada to grow marijuana, making it the first such case in the Vancouver area where a legal grower has had the drug seized by police. (more…)
Vancouver’s ‘downtown ambassadors’ are the target of a human rights complaint due to ‘hundreds of illegal removals’
On Monday, May 31, 2010, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal began hearing a human rights complaint made by Pivot Legal Society and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) against the Downtown Ambassadors program, operated by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association and funded by the City of Vancouver.
The complaint, lodged by Pivot and VANDU in 2008, alleges that the Downtown Ambassador program repeatedly engaged in harassment and “removals” of individuals who are located on public space and who are, or appear to be, street homeless or drug users. The hearing is scheduled for three weeks. (more…)
Homeless and underhoused Ontarians launch a legal challenge against the federal and provincial governments
On Wednesday May 26, 2010 Tracy Heffernan, a staff lawyer for the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, launched a legal challenge on behalf of a group of five applicants, charging that homelessness and inadequate housing harms people, and that the failure of governments to provide adequate housing violates Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees everyone the right to life, liberty and security. (more…)
