Canada's help not welcome:

Canada'shelp not welcome

Many recipients snubbing country over Iran policy
Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, December 01, 2008
UNITED NATIONS - More than half the countries receiving long-term overseas aid from Canada are among the bloc rebuffing a major, Canadian-led human rights campaign at the United Nations, analysis shows.

Thirteen "development partners" of the Canadian International Development Agency -- Ottawa's aid arm -- opposed Canada's position in a key opening vote of this year's bid to highlight Iran's human rights abuses.

Afghanistan -- Canada's biggest all-time aid recipient and treated along with Haiti as a special case outside the "development partner" program -- also sided with Iran.
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While backing Canada at the UN is not among Ottawa's criteria for picking aid recipients, CIDA says one of its goals in dispensing aid is to help "developing countries . . . promote democracy and human rights."

"CIDA is delivering on" this and other goals, the agency says on its website.

In descending order of CIDA funding last year, the 13 agency "partners" that voted with Iran to throw out the Canadian-led censure were Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mali, Senegal, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Pakistan, Zambia, Malawi, Bolivia, Cambodia and Nicaragua.

Among non-partner recipients of Canadian aid that voted with Iran was South Africa, which CIDA's planning report for this year and next says Canada will help to combat HIV/AIDS and build public institutions.

"For too long, supposedly friendly countries in the Third World -- many of whom rely on the generosity of Canada and other Western democracies -- have used their UN votes to undermine vital international human rights initiatives, without our diplomats ever holding them to account," said Hillel Neuer, Montreal-born head of UN Watch, a human-rights monitoring group in Geneva. "Effective Canadian multilateral diplomacy is impossible if Ottawa won't push the right buttons in its bilateral relationships."

There are few campaigns at the 192-member UN that any one country can call its own, so Canada's effective "ownership" of the Iranian human rights focus offers a rare opportunity to see which long-term recipients of Canadian aid share Canadian values.