Report on State of Racism in Canada
February 14, 2007
The Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI), together with the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic (MTCSALC) and the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) has submitted a joint report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
The joint report is a community response to the seventeenth and eighteenth reports of Canada on the Status of Compliance by the Canadian Government, with respect to the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Click here for a copy of the joint OCASI, MTCSALC and SALCO report. [Adobe Acrobat pdf - 349 Kb, 53 pages]
The joint report is one of several non-governmental organization (NGO) reports submitted to the Committee. Reports were also submitted by African Canadian Legal Clinic, Amnesty International, Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, Global Afrikan Congress, KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, Lubicon Lake Indian Nation, Ligue des droits et libertés du Québec, National Anti-Racism Council of Canada, Center for Research Action on Race Relations (CRARR) and Canadian Council of Muslim Women.
Click here for all NGO reports submitted to the Committee.
Click
here for the report from the Canadian Commission on Human Rights.
The Committee will be examining these reports at the 70th session of the CERD
meetings in Geneva from 19 February to 9 March 2007.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention in 1965. Canada is
a signatory to the convention and ratified it in 1970. The Convention requires
countries to condemn all forms of racial discrimination, whether based on race,
color, descent, or national or ethnic origin, and to pursue a policy of eliminating
racial discrimination. Signatory countries are required to submit to the Committee,
regular reports on how rights are being implemented.
Follow the links below for the seventeenth and eighteenth periodic report submitted
by the Government of Canada:
English
report
French
report
The Committee is a body of independent experts, and monitors the implementation of the Convention by all signatory countries. The Committee examines each report and addresses its concerns and recommendations to the State party (signatory country being examined) in the form of "concluding observations". In addition to the regular monitoring, the Committee also examines individual complaints, and complaints between countries.