The United Nations Human Rights Committee released this report yesterday, which raises critical concerns about the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, and more.
Some of our feminist friends worked hard on submissions to this UN committee, including Sharon McIvor, Shelagh Day, and Gwen Brodsky.
Filed under Community News
“THE COLOMBIA CARAVANA: Supporting Human Rights Lawyers and Access to Justice in Colombia”
“Sin abogados, no hay justicia.”
(“Without lawyers, there is no justice.”)
The Colombia Caravana is a project of international lawyers and judges that monitors the human rights abuses and persecution experienced by legal professionals in Colombia. The Caravana first visited Colombia in 2008 at the invitation of the Association of Defence Lawyers, an umbrella organisation for Colombian human rights lawyers. Lawyers and legal professionals from Europe, Canada and Latin America travelled to Colombia to meet with and receive testimony from lawyers and other human rights defenders at risk of various forms of attack because of their work in 2008, 2010 and 2012.
Learn more about the situation for lawyers, judges and human rights defenders in Colombia and about international efforts to support these important actors and improve access to justice in Colombia.
The Honourable Carol Mahood Huddart and Vancouver lawyer Heather Neun participated as Canadian delegates in the 2012 Caravana, representing Lawyers Rights Watch Canada. The delegation prepared two reports: “Colombia: Protecting Access to Justice” and “Judges at Risk”.
Tuesday, 11 February @ 12:30 PM
Room 122, Allard Hall (1822 East Mall)
Filed under Law School
What are the obligations of governments and their lawyers, as respondents in human rights litigation? What are the implications of current litigation efforts being made by governments to exempt their conduct as service-providers from compliance with their human rights legislation? Equality rights litigator Gwen Brodsky will focus on the case of First Nations Child and Family Caring Society v. Canada, a challenge to under-funding of on-reserve child welfare services. This case is currently before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
Gwen Brodsky is a leading national and international expert on equality rights and the Charter. She has extensive experience arguing equality rights cases before tribunals and courts, and has acted as counsel in leading cases in the Supreme Court of Canada, including Andrews, Swain, Mossop, Thibaudeau, Gould, Vriend, Meiorin, Gosselin, Keays, and Moore. She has also appeared before commissions and treaty bodies of the UN and the Americas. She was the first Litigation Director of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF).
For the past decade, Dr. Brodsky’s work has focused on the inter-connections between equality rights, social and economic rights, and Aboriginal rights, and on the means of fulfilling them in constitutional and human rights contexts. She is counsel to the petitioners in McIvor v. Canada, a challenge to sex discrimination against Aboriginal women and their descendants under the Indian Act. This case, which is ongoing, has already resulted in law reform which has had the effect of making 45,000 Aboriginal women and their descendants newly eligible for Indian status. She represented the Native Women’s Association of Canada on the issue of the murders and disappearances of Aboriginal women and girls before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry in BC.
Tuesday, 21 January @ 12:30 PM
Room 122, Allard Hall (1822 East Mall)
Filed under Law School
