All individuals have human rights. Human rights are a universal standard that ensures everyone has the opportunity to live with dignity and freedom from harassment or discrimination.
Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, the United Nations (UN) has recognized that some groups still face barriers to realizing their human rights. As a result, the UN has developed additional legislative instruments to ensure that countries promote the rights of all people. In recent years, some of our work has explored how human rights legislation can be used to help people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) receive the support and care they deserve to achieve a good quality of life and wellbeing. These Conventions include the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
Canada’s Commitment to Uphold Human Rights
Because Canada has ratified these conventions, it has agreed to fulfill its duties by developing national policies that protect rights, provide access, support, and services, and ensure the participation of groups in society, such as individuals with disabilities and children. All levels of government must implement policies, legislation, programs, and services that accommodate individual differences while respecting each person’s dignity and autonomy.
However, despite the commitment of many countries, like Canada, to ensure that people from equity-deserving groups are afforded their rights under these conventions, their rights are not upheld and enacted equally. Many individuals with FASD and their families face pervasive human rights violations across their lifespans because of persistent deficit-based narratives about the disability, stigma, and systemic neglect.
Although we have focused on how the CRPD and CRC can address many of the inequities faced by people with FASD, other relevant international legal instruments can also be used in the context of FASD, such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which can provide essential guidance for ensuring that the injustices faced by Indigenous Peoples with FASD are addressed through support that acknowledges how disability intersects with race.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)
UNDRIP is a global legal framework that sets out the minimum standards for the survival, dignity, and wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples and their culture worldwide. The declaration contains 46 articles covering individual and collective rights. Its core principles affirm Indigenous rights to self-determination, self-governance, culture, language, identity, health, and education, as well as protection against discrimination and forced assimilation.
Canada initially voted against UNDRIP in 2007, later shifting its support and endorsement. UNDRIP became enshrined in Canadian law on June 21, 2021, requiring the government to take all necessary measures to align federal laws with UNDRIP and implement a rolling action plan with public reporting.
The Department of Justice Canada recently tabled its fifth annual progress report on the federal government’s and Indigenous partners’ progress in advancing the objectives of UNDRIP. This report covers April 2025 to March 2026 and provides updates on the 181 measures set out in Canada’s UN Declaration Act Action Plan.
The UNDRIP Act Action Plan is an important tool for holding Canada accountable for aligning its treatment of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples with global standards. This year’s report highlights Canada’s steady but uneven progress.
Report on the Implementation of UNDRIP and Intersections with FASD
Although the progress report does not explicitly mention FASD, many of its priorities closely align with CanFASD’s goals and advocacy work to advance and enact the rights of individuals with FASD and recognize how it intersects with other equity-deserving positions.
Indigenous Persons with Disabilities
One of the strongest areas of alignment in supporting the needs of individuals with FASD is the report’s focus on Indigenous persons with disabilities. It emphasizes the importance of culturally safe health services, trauma-informed care, mental health and substance use supports, gender-based violence prevention, human trafficking, criminal legal reform, and improved coordination across health and social services for Indigenous persons with disabilities.
Including the perspectives of individuals with disabilities (among other intersectional and equity-deserving groups) is essential in implementing the UN Declaration, including consultation and collaboration with Indigenous partners about the evaluation of the UNDRIP’s implementation. For example, Shared Priority 85 addresses the equality, non-discrimination, and intersectionality rights of Indigenous persons with disabilities and speaks directly to Articles 21 and 22 of UNDRIP. This connection reinforces the importance of ensuring that Indigenous people with FASD are considered and included in accessibility, health, and social service initiatives.
Culturally Safe Care
The report also emphasizes culturally safe and Indigenous-led health care, including mental health, prevention, substance use treatment, and wraparound support. This approach to support means including Indigenous elders and knowledge keepers, as well as women, youth, and individuals with disabilities, when planning supports and services that are culturally safe and Indigenous-led. This inclusion ensures that FASD prevention, diagnosis, navigation, and lifelong services reduce the likelihood of stigma toward people with FASD who are Indigenous, while simultaneously responding to the broader social and structural determinants of health that affect their health and wellbeing.
Gender-based Violence and Human Trafficking
The report also outlines commitments related to gender-based violence and human trafficking, which provide an opportunity to position FASD-informed approaches in strengthening existing federal initiatives by ensuring that information on consent, healthy relationships, online safety, trafficking, and available supports is accessible to people with neurodevelopmental disabilities, such as FASD.
Systemic Gaps in Jurisdictional Services
Finally, the report highlights persistent jurisdictional gaps across health care, social services, child welfare, and the criminal legal system. For example, the uneven access to Gladue reports across Canadian jurisdictions means that First Nations people continue to be overrepresented in Canada’s correctional settings. As this report on Gladue principles notes, FASD is complex and does not fit neatly within a single department or service system; thus, interdisciplinary collaboration is needed to respond to the unique complexities of FASD and ensure a needs-based approach. The report’s focus on cross-governmental coordination therefore reinforces the argument for a more integrated federal approach to FASD.
Moving Forward: The Intersection of FASD with UN Instruments
Overall, the most significant concern for us is that FASD is not explicitly included or considered in the existing frameworks that shape many of the systems where people with FASD face barriers. Examining how UNDRIP intersects with other human rights frameworks, such as the UNCRPD, offers a useful advocacy opportunity to encourage the Canadian government to include FASD in its implementation of the UN Declaration Act. Doing so would ensure that Indigenous people with FASD can access supports and services necessary to achieve good health and reduce gender-based violence, human trafficking, and involvement in the criminal legal and child welfare systems.
Explicitly recognizing FASD within these initiatives could help advance the Government of Canada’s commitments under Articles 21 and 22 of UNDRIP, as well as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action #33 and #34, to ensure that Indigenous people with FASD not only receive prevention, diagnosis, and lifelong support, but also ensure these supports and services are culturally grounded and informed by Indigenous-led approaches.
To read the full report, please visit the Department of Justice Canada website here.
For more information about FASD and human rights, please refer to our available resources: