A failure of leadership

"Politics is the true story of the state soliloquy but the human story."

Lloyd Axworthy 2003 that the first line of the book's opening chapter, a new world to navigate. Minister of Foreign Affairs once a little girl that Emma, a child soldier in Uganda was that he came to Winnipeg with her Lord's Resistance Army fighting experience to start talking about the call goes on. Out armed conflict and resolution of clinical and too complex language, and its place is a story with a brave teenager.

But what happens when the state is not to monologue, it defers and deflects, and the human story is stifled by a foreign system? So what is fiction?

When Omar Khadr was 13 years old, his father took him to Toronto in Afghanistan, where the boy was an al Qaeda training camp and two years later, found himself on the battlefield below the U.S. in retaliation September 11 bored to.

Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunal according to prosecutors, Khadr threw a grenade at Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer, was killed in what they say it was an act of war crimes. Last week, Khadr pleaded guilty to that and other charges, and he was sentenced to eight years in prison (40 pushed to the jury) in Canada, most of them.

Khadr's incarceration in Cuba over the years, the Canadian government has failed miserably to protect humans in the story. Yes, the Khadr family concern under the late patriarch had known ties to al-Qaida. Yes, he publicly stated that the things most Canadians feel disgusting. And yes, yes, gambling can be a political move in and Omar, who is now 24 years old will champion human rights.

And is anything but cruelty. It's funky. It is irresponsible, and it makes the country an embarrassment citizenship.

In 1990, Canadian Children's Rights (CRC), 54 in which a range of articles to protect children from exploitation for survival and development aimed at guaranteeing an equal chance to become a signatory of the UN Convention, and to respect their views . In 1991, Canada ratified the CRC. Over the years, Stephen Harper's government has ignored the responsibilities of Canada and even our own Supreme Court, which ruled the government should repatriate Khadr's put it in contempt.

Infractions not clear. Two CRC states that children will not discriminate against the article, no matter the type of family they come from. Three article says the best interests of children must be paramount. Article 38 says children will be protected from participating in war and conflict, and, perhaps most importantly, Article 39 further damaged by a mentally or physically responsible for the rehabilitation of children set.

Omar Khadr was a child soldier. No getting around it. By his father before his rights were violated, then by the Americans, and then again by the Government of Canada has been. The country owes him a debt of rehabilitation, at least not up to the failure of his father's nature is to protect against.

Up to the test in which a victim impact statement to the judge really listened to Speer wife caught up in the farce is wrong to indulge in fiction. Meanwhile, Canada's failure to lead, whether government or from opposition lawmakers, just as the shameful way up to offer another story entirely.

Ironically, the United Nations Security Council last month after losing a seat, the government dictators and violators of human rights groups as nothing more than a bunch rejected. One would think they'd feel at home in such company.