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‘Strictly UN Optics’: Quebec’s Magpie River Granted Personhood Status
A remote river in eastern Quebec has been granted personhood status, making it the first time in Canada that an entity of nature purportedly has the same legal rights as a human being.
Bestowing legal personhood on the Magpie River, which spills into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, is being lauded by the groups involved, but one expert describes the move as “strictly UN optics.”
Bill Gallagher, a lawyer and strategist who’s authored two books on the intersection of resource interests and indigenous rights in Canada, says granting personhood status to a river has more to do with aligning with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) than with empowering indigenous people economically.
Canada joins at least 14 other countries - from Bolivia to New Zealand - where rivers and ecosystems have won protection with 'nature rights', just like those used to safeguard humans.
For the first time, a river is granted official rights and legal personhood in Canada
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QUEBEC, Feb. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - The Muteshekau-shipu Alliance today announced the granting of legal personhood to the Magpie River, through the adoption of two parallel resolutions by the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the Minganie Regional County Municipality (RCM). The river is thus assigned nine rights, as well as potential legal guardians responsible primarily for ensuring that these rights are respected. This is the first such case in Canada.
The announcement was made in partnership with the International Observatory on the Rights of Nature (IORN), based in Montreal, Canada, which drafted the resolutions in collaboration with the Alliance. The two resolutions, more than ten pages each and crammed with references, rest on multiple legal bases in national and international law and will help protect the river.
23 febbraio 2021 18:31
Fonte: Adnkronos
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- QUEBEC, Feb. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ The Muteshekau-shipu Alliance today announced the granting of legal personhood to the Magpie River, through the adoption of two parallel resolutions by the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the Minganie Regional County Municipality (RCM). The river is thus assigned nine rights, as well as potential legal guardians responsible primarily for ensuring that these rights are respected. This is the first such case in Canada.
The announcement was made in partnership with the International Observatory on the Rights of Nature (IORN), based in Montreal, Canada, which drafted the resolutions in collaboration with the Alliance. The two resolutions, more than ten pages each and crammed with references, rest on multiple legal bases in national and international law and will help protect the river.