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FOREIGN POLICY

A Conservative rephrasing

Taking humanitarian out of international law, changing the words

Deletion of 'child soldier' aimed at Omar Khadr case: expert

Last Updated: Thursday, August 27, 2009 | 6:06 PM ET Comments74Recommend80

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Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo and are living in camps such as the one in Kibati shown in the 2008 photo. Canada has made subtle changes to its position on violence in DRC. (Karel Prinsloo/Associated Press)

There's a change in language taking place in documents and correspondence put out by Canada's foreign service.

Though it may be imperceptible to some, political hounds have noticed an unsettling transformation in language underway since the minority Conservatives took power in 2006.

Widely-accepted terms like "child soldiers," "gender equality" and "international humanitarian law" are disappearing. In their place are the phrases "children in armed conflict," "equality of men and women" and "international law."

While the government downplays the significance of the new nomenclature, critics are accusing the Tories of diluting Canada's longstanding and globally recognized human rights values.

"I think Canadians should be worried about this," Errol Mendes, who teaches constitutional and international law at the University of Ottawa, told CBC's The Current.

Mendes says the government has the democratic right to make changes to foreign policy, but that it's important to be transparent about the process and its motivation. "Do not conduct foreign policy on the sly and policy changes by stealth," he stressed.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon wasn't available for comment to CBC's The Current, but in an interview with Embassy magazine, he said the new phrases "don't change anything."

"It's our vocabulary. I've told my people that these are the policies that we carry out," Cannon told the Canadian foreign affairs newsweekly.

"In some circumstances, it's semantics; in other circumstances, we're going to be changing policies so that they reflect what Canada's values are and what Canadians said when they supported us during the last election."

What about Khadr?

Human rights advocates are particularly worried about how the new language will affect their battle to have Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr repatriated to Canada and recognized as a child soldier.

Omar Khadr, shown in a courtroom sketch from Jan. 19, 2009, is accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade during a battle in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15. (Janet Hamlin/Associated Press)

Khadr, the last Western detainee left at the U.S. prison in Cuba, was 15 when he allegedly killed a U.S. soldier in an Afghanistan firefight. The federal government is actively fighting to leave Khadr there, and has asked the Supreme Court of Canada to review previous court rulings that called for Ottawa to press for his return.

"To replace child soldier with children in armed conflict is to erase the kinds of important distinctions," Audrey Macklin, a lawyer and law professor with the University of Toronto, referring to children as victims or perpetrators in an armed conflict.

"To dumb down our language in a way that erases all those differences and doesn't pay attention to the specificity is to limit rather than expand our capacity to think about this important issue."

Mendes, in fact, believes the move away from the term "child soldiers" is "clearly designed" by the government to back away from support of Khadr.

Under the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, a document championed by former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, states are required to help children soldiers reintegrate in society, rather than prosecute them as criminals.

Not 'humanitarian'?

Deleting "humanitarian" from international humanitarian law also strikes Mendes as a blurring the line between two separate concepts.

Canada's Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon, speaking in the House of Commons in April, told Embassy Magazine that the new terms are mostly just semantics. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

"International humanitarian law deals with the basic rights of individuals in armed conflicts, the distinctions between combatants and civilians and protected persons," says Mendes. "International law is generally referencing inter-state relations."

In a document leaked to Embassy, a departmental adviser also outlined a suggested change in Canada's position to violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including the deletion of all references to "impunity."

It also edits the sentence "Canada urges the government of the DRC to take concerted measures to do whatever is necessary to put an end to impunity for sexual violence" to say instead "concerted measures to prevent sexual violence."

A history lesson

Some observers believe the linguistic shift is meant to appeal to a certain segment of Conservative supporters ahead of an anticipated election this fall.

But Morton warns the path paved by the Conservative's linguistic alterations could trigger a re-emergence of the types of insular attitudes present during the Second World War when Canada refused to take in Jewish refugees and interned Japanese-Canadians."There are people who don't like Canada to be a leading humanitarian. There are people who think that's revolting," Desmond Morton, a historian and former director of McGill University's Institute for the Study of Canada, told CBC's The Current.

The historian also cautions that the prime minister risks refusing to acknowledge current realities at his own detriment, pointing to former prime minister R.B. Bennett's alleged refusal to use the term Great Depression.

"By saying [Great Depression] and doing something about it, [then U.S. president] Franklin Delano Roosevelt becomes one of the great American presidents. Because he wouldn't talk about it and pretended it was somewhere else, R.B. Bennett becomes one of our more forgotten prime ministers."

"And if I was giving Mr. Harper advice … I would remind him of that."