Bob Rae, who spent seven months in 2017 and 2018 examining the forces that drove over 600,000 Rohingya from their homes in Myanmar to refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, is being named Canada’s special envoy for humanitarian and refugee issues.
The announcement was made Tuesday in a news release by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in 2017 appointed Rae as a special envoy to Myanmar to explore the underlying causes of what has come to be known as the Rohingya crisis.
In April 2018, Rae delivered a report that made 17 recommendations for Canada’s response, including increasing humanitarian aid and welcoming more refugees from the region.
Rae’s report was welcomed by Amnesty International, but the Trudeau government did not meet his call for $600 million over four years to help hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims affected by the violence.
The so-called Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar led to Canada’s House of Commons in 2018 to unanimously declare the actions of the Myanmar military a genocide. Bob Rae, whose report on the crisis led to the declaration, has been named Canada’s new special envoy on humanitarian and refugee issues. (A.M. Ahad/Associated Press)
However, that September, Canada’s House of Commons voted to unanimously declare the actions of the Myanmar military against the Rohingya Muslims a genocide.
Two weeks later, Parliament formally stripped Myanmar’s civilian leader, Nobel Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, of her honorary Canadian citizenship for her refusal to condemn Myanmar’s military or to take action to stop atrocities–including rape and murder–committed against the Rohingya.
She became the first person ever to be stripped of honorary Canadian citizenship.
The announcement of Rae’s latest appointment comes as the CBC’s Brigitte Bureau reports that the Trudeau government has provided financing for police training and surveillance equipment to at least seven Southeast Asian countries with histories of human rights violations — Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand — to intercept irregular migrants and smugglers.
In May of last year, Bureau and Sylvie Robillard reported that the program began under the previous Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ostensibly to prevent “illegal” immigrants from making their way to Canada.
With files from CBC (Kathleen Harris, Brigitte Bureau, Sylvie Robillard), Canadian Press, Associated Press
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