People have the right to demonstrate peacefully and Governments should respect International Law

This was LAW before the convoy, all the politicians who VOTED for the emergency act to be implemented ARE in HUGE legal trouble!!!

29 July 2020 / Human Rights / Political and Civil Rights

How do you define lawful peaceful protest? The UN Human

Rights Committee has a clear answer - Please share!

People have the right to demonstrate peacefully and Governments should respect international law and let them do so, senior UN-appointed independent rights experts said on Wednesday.

The legal advice is from the UN Human Rights Committee, whose 18 experts monitor how countries implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The panel’s General Comment, notes that protesters have the right to wear masks or hoods to cover their face and that Governments should not collect personal data to harass or intimidate participants.

Focus on racial justice

The development comes at a time of worldwide protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and clarifies how “peaceful assembly” should be understood by the 173 countries which have ratified the Covenant.

Committee member Christof Heyns, said that it was a “fundamental human right” for people to gather to celebrate or to air grievances, “in public and in private spaces, outdoors, indoors and online.”

“Everyone, including children, foreign nationals, women, migrant workers, asylum seekers and refugees, can exercise the right of peaceful assembly”, he added.

‘Generalised references’ are not enough

ATT: The Committee’s advice also notes that Governments could not prohibit protests by making “generalised references to public order or public safety, or an unspecified risk of potential violence”.

In addition, Governments “cannot block internet networks or close down any website because of their roles in organising or soliciting a peaceful assembly”, according to the Committee. It also stressed the right of journalists and human rights observers to monitor and document any assembly, including violent and unlawful ones. General comment No. 37 (2020) on the right of peaceful assembly (article 21)*

Human Rights Instruments CORE INSTRUMENT UNIVERSAL INSTRUMENT International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ADOPTED 16 December 1966 BY General Assembly resolution 2200A (XXI) https://www.ohchr.org/.../international-covenant-civil...

PACTA SUNT SERVANDA— I. CONCLUSION Pacta sunt servanda is not only a central principle of public international law, it is a universal principle of law to be found in all major legal systems.

It is a principle of Canadian civil and common law. It is to be found in a host of federal and provincial statutes. For this and for the other reasons given, it is incumbent on the Canadian judiciary to adopt an approach to public international law that promotes respect for pacta sunt servanda by recognizing that Canada’s treaty obligations regulate the exercise of executive power in the domestic as well as the international sphere. https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/07/1069211

UN Special Procedures @UN_SPExperts UN expert @cvoule welcomes as groundbreaking an authoritative new interpretation that the right to #PeacefulAssembly extends to digital activities. He says it is particularly relevant during #COVID19, when so many peaceful gatherings have moved online http://ow.ly/P85X50ALdMP