Tag Archives: Lectures

by | February 3, 2014 · 10:30 pm

Lecture: “Supporting Human Rights Lawyers and Access to Justice in Colombia”

“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.

Justice Carol Huddart, BC Court of Appeal (retired)

Heather Neun, Vancouver Labour and Human Rights Lawyer

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) 

View the current lecture schedule here.

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by | January 30, 2014 · 6:12 pm

Lecture: “The Feminization and Racialization of Poverty”

“THE FEMINIZATION AND RACIALIZATION OF POVERTY: Intersecting Legislated Policies of Dispossession”

Drawing on her past work as the Project Coordinator of Vancouver Status of Women’s Feminization and Racialization of Poverty Project, Benita Bunjun re-examines the deepening of poverty as experienced by racialized women (Indigenous women & women of colour) due to present and historical social and economic policies.

She draws on an intersectional critical race feminist analysis to specifically examine how welfare, immigration, and labour policies disproportionately impact racialized women within Canada, a white-settler society. During this era of colonial conservative ideology, systematic barriers faced by women living in poverty are further reinforced and sustained.

Due to limited economic resources, Indigenous women and women of colour remain forced to work precarious underpaid part-time jobs.  Social programs are being dismantled while regressive policies are implemented onto the bodies of dispossessed populations.  The processes of occupation, re/settlement, nation building, slavery, disenfranchisement, labour migration, and employment regulation continue to contribute to the depth of poverty and criminalization experienced by racialized women.  Bunjun will also share lessons learnt while coordinating such a project in regards to the non-profit industrial complex and Indigenous/settler of colour relations.

Dr. Benita Bunjun, UBC Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice

Benita Bunjun received her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at UBC. Her doctoral research entitled “The (Un)Making of Home, Entitlement, and Nation: An Intersectional Organizational Study of Power Relations in Vancouver Status of Women, 1971-2008” examines organizational power relations within feminist organizations with an emphasis on discourses of nation-building.

Dr. Bunjun is a past President of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women where she chaired the Intersectional Feminist Frameworks Working Group. She teaches at UBC and is currently an Advisory Committee member at the Centre for Race, Autobiography, Gender & Age (RAGA). She is a Collective Member of Vancouver Status of Women (VSW) and also coordinates the independent Research Project on the Academic Well-Being of Racialized Students.

Tuesday, 4 February @ 12:30 PM
Room 123, Allard Hall (1822 East Mall) 

View the current lecture schedule here.

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by | January 29, 2014 · 10:03 pm

Live-Stream of Marlee Kline Lecture

If you would like to hear Bonnie Sherr Klein deliver the 2014 Marlee Kline Lecture in Social Justice, but can’t make it to Allard Hall, you’re in luck! The lecture will be live-streamed at the following link:

http://mediasitemob1.mediagroup.ubc.ca/Mediasite/Play/2e740b9d2e9e416193b67657b86735161d

The feed will become active at 6:00 PM on Thursday, 30 January.

Bonnie Sherr Klein is a documentary filmmaker and long-time activist in the feminist and disability movements. In this lecture she shares her lived experience of disability as documented in her journal entries and film. She points out that disability inevitably touches us all, and proposes that human rights for people living with disabilities is not `merely’ a justice issue but an opportunity for all of us to be our most human.

Date: Thursday, 30 January 2014
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: UBC Allard Hall (1822 East Mall), Room 104

Click here to view the event poster (pdf).

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by | January 19, 2014 · 10:13 pm

Lecture: “Governments as Litigators in Human Rights Cases: Guarantors or Opponents of Rights?”

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, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, UBC Law 

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) 

View the current lecture schedule here.

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by | January 13, 2014 · 9:28 pm

Lecture: “Prostitution Law and Policy after Bedford v. Canada”

On December 20, 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Bedford v. Canada.  The Supreme Court held that the criminal prohibitions on bawdy houses, communicating in a public place for the purposes of prostitution and living on the avails of prostitution violated s. 7 of the Charter and were of no force or effect.  The declaration of invalidity was suspended for 12 months to give Parliament time to respond with new laws.

Janine Benedet, Faculty Director, UBC Centre for Feminist Legal Studies

Christine Boyle, QC, Professor Emeritus, UBC

Janine Benedet and Christine Boyle, QC each acted as co-counsel for women’s groups who intervened in Bedford, Professor Benedet for the seven groups making up the Women’s Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution and Professor Boyle for the Asian Women’s Coalition Ending Prostitution.  Each will offer some reflections on their participation in the case and the role of racism and sexism in constructing and maintaining the prostitution industry.  Professor Benedet will also offer some thoughts on possible next steps in the legal response to prostitution in Canada.

Tuesday, 14 January @ 12:30 PM
Room 122, Allard Hall (1822 East Mall) 

View the current lecture schedule here.

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