Canada Must Not Undermine the UN’s Work in the Middle East

The United Church of Canada urges the Government of Canada, local communities of faith, and religious communities to support the work of the United Nations, and in particular, the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967, Dr. Francesca Albanese.

Dr. Albanese, who visited Canada last week, recently released her second report, titled “Genocide as Colonial Erasure,” on the current war in the Middle East. This report expands on Dr. Albanese’s previous report, “Anatomy of a Genocide.”

Her courageous call to uphold international law and to stop genocide in Palestine has been met with a campaign of discrediting her findings and calling her impartiality into question.

Upon her visit last week, a scheduled meeting with ministers on Parliament Hill was unexpectedly cancelled, with little explanation. In fact, Canada’s Permanent Mission to the World Trade Organization, United Nations and Conference on Disarmament, based in Geneva, labelled her antisemitic in a post on X.

UN Special Rapporteurs play an essential role in the United Nations system as independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective. The statement asks the government to:

• reconsider the decision not to meet with her during her visit to Canada and ensure that Dr. Albanese has unobstructed access to the groups she was scheduled to meet with, and access to Canadian government officials
• condemn politically motivated attacks against the Special Rapporteur
• publicly support the UN Special Rapporteur system, including specifically the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
• support and implement the following recommendations in Dr. Albanese’s reports

Read the full statement.