Recently, Honduras became the eighth individual state to have a free trade agreement with Canada. Rabble’s Don Davies was quick to call out the government for providing “economic backing to an undemocratic regime that commits, or tolerates, wide-spread human rights abuses.”
This deal has become part of an ongoing discourse on the ethics of cooperating with morally reprehensible regimes around the world, but also seems to highlight the hypocrisy surrounding such a discourse, as well as the weakness of nation-focused approaches to human rights.
Economic partnership with Canada remains such a minuscule imperative for Honduras that, whether or not this partnership exists, Honduras’ domestic policy is unlikely to change. By opening up Canada’s markets to Honduras and vice-versa, we are not condoning the policies of the pseudo-democratic government, nor are we supporting them.
Similarly, by withholding a free trade agreement based on our amorphous moral code, we would not be encouraging Honduras or similar states to change their ways. The moral statements that we make, though they seem resolute and strong, bear little significance; a debate which centres around Canada’s enabling of the brutal Honduran government to commit various atrocities and human rights abuses, rather than taking a stand and making a moral statement, is unimportant.
The key to addressing human rights issues is multilateralism, not bilateral free trade agreements.
It would, however, be wrong to say that Canada is powerless against morally corrupt regimes, like in Honduras. A multilateral approach to dealing with human rights globally would involve cooperation from all states, a democratic consensus as how to approach such topics, and a concerted effort to put aside petty political agendas for the common good of the international community.
Human rights abuses in Honduras are not Canada’s problem. The international community must be far more prudent about applying its norms and developing its institutions to adequately deal with human rights issues, which are global in nature.
Empowering institutions such as the United Nations to implement elections monitoring, to add enforcement measures to ensure adherence to conventions, and to expand the scope of the UNHRC’s Universal Periodic Review would be a good start. This would ensure that human rights issues around the world are looked at equally, making human rights a dimensional issue — an ever-changing and evolving discourse in international relations.
Furthermore, Canada has its own issues with human rights to address — the NSA’s PRISM program which Canada supports, and the abhorrent discrimination against Aboriginal peoples, for example. Canada is in no position to criticize the human rights situation in other nations. Thus, a multilateral approach is not only the most effective way to deal with human rights, but it is the only morally defensible way.
When states imply the rhetoric of morality to condemn the actions of other states, it is almost always in the self-interest of the former. If Canada reversed its free trade agreement tomorrow, we would still import products from China and export weapons to volatile regions around the world.
The agreement is inconsequential, but the discourse around it is revealing. One thing is clear: civil rights are not commodities that Canada can export.
