Rights and Democracy shutters its Geneva shop for good

In what is my last post on the Rights and Democracy saga for a while, I'd like to simply say a few words now that the Geneva office has been officially shut, according to the Star.

The whole affair stinks to high heaven. Somebody burgled an office in a secure building in broad daylight. The right hand doesn't seem to know what the left hand is doing. The Government and its appointees to the Board seem to have stirred up a sh*tstorm of epic proportions.

Which brings me to my main question: why bother in the first place? It it the duty of the Canadian government to go out into the world preaching human rights and democracy through a bespoke agency paid out of the tax purse? Because I seriously never heard of the shop until the lid blew.

I don't know what the use of R&D is or was. Yet I struggle to identify an area where they have made a difference. They might have had an influence in Haiti where they have a huge office, but their Afghan office hasn't prevented the country from slipping into the tin-pot near-dictatorship category.

Don't get me wrong, we have to strive for human rights to be respected worldwide and democracy to take hold in more countries. I don't think an outlet such as R&D is the best way to achieve it. If a government has these objectives in mind, it should have the balls to speak with own mouth and act directly in its own name.