Sovereignty is no longer an absolute and Canadians should not use it as an excuse to avoid taking action where there are obvious signs of human rights abuses, said retired General Romeo Dallaire.
Dallaire spoke at Hart House last Friday at a dinner put on by the Canadian Network for International Surgery, and U of T’s Centre for International Health. The dinner was meant to launch CNIS’s STOP 13 campaign, which aims to highlight that fact that one out of 13 women in Africa will die during childbirth, and 13 per cent will die an injury-related death.
Opening remarks by Ronald Lett, the founder of CNIS, emphasized that Canadians living in such a privileged country need to “share that privilege” and provide funding to prevent individuals in developing countries from bleeding to death from injuries that are easily preventable and treatable.
Despite arriving an hour and half late, Dallaire moved the audience with a speech on the failure of humanity to uphold humanitarian ideals. Referring to the Rwandan genocide, Sudan’s devastating internal conflict, and the lack of effective funding for CNIS programs, Dallaire repeatedly concluded his arguments by asking “are some more human than others?”
Specifically targeting the under-30 audience members, Dallaire argued that we “are entering into a new world disorder” and it is time for “students to be a part of the leadership strata.”
Dallaire served in the Canadian Forces for 36 years, until 2000, rising to the rank of lieutenant-general. He was in charge of the UN assistance mission to Rwanda in April 1994, after the country’s ethnic Hutu president was assassinated. Nearly a million Tutsis and Hutu moderates were murdered by extremist Hutus in the subsequent slaughter.
Dallaire believes the “permitted genocide, global terrorism, nuclear proliferation and legal mercenaries” of vulnerable areas in Africa, the Middle East and north-east Asia have made the urgent need for an era of conflict resolution.
According to him, the human dimension of conflict resolution has three phases: conflict prevention, crisis response, and reconciliation and nation building. Given that the simplicity of the past has shifted, said Dallaire, we are mostly improvising crisis management.
“Canada cannot continue to act small time,” he said.
Dallaire left the audience to consider their responsibility to protect people from “hemorrhagic death,” or bleeding to death from preventable and treatable injuries caused by war, genocide or even simple road injuries, falls and burns.
Since 1995, CNIS has taught surgical practioners in developing countries numerous life-saving surgical techniques, such as hernia repair and caesarian section. However, the organization is always on the verge of bankruptcy, according to Lett, and currently has no funding for major projects.
Both Lett and Andrew Howard, Director of the Office of International Surgery, pointed to the fact that “Canada has not lived up to its global expectations” spending only 0.2 per cent of its GDP on international development assistance, far short of the U.N.’s goal of 0.7 per cent.
