The Canadian partnership for International Justice (CPIJ) brings together leading Canadian academics and non-governmental actors to contribute to strengthening access to justice for victims of international crimes. The project is designed to provide cutting-edge research and co-create knowledge about more effective ways to hold individuals, states and corporations accountable for serious international crimes as well as to create analytical, practical and policy-oriented tools to assist legal practitioners and policy-makers within Canada and globally and increase victims’ access to remedies.
Project Partners: Canadian Partnership for International Justice, Lawyers Without Borders Canada/Avocats Sans Frontières Canada and the Canadian Centre for International Justice
Academic Advisors: Professors Joao Velloso, Penelope Simons and John Packer
Project Coordinator: Aboubacar Dakuyo, HRREC Member
Handbook on International Standards to Address Crimes of Sexual Violence
Under this framework, the Project that the Human Rights Clinic is undertaking with Lawyers Without Borders Canada/Avocats Sans Frontières Canada consists in drafting a Handbook that will help their staff, volunteers and partners to identify and address crimes of sexual violence. By using international standards established in the Rome Statute and regional human rights tribunals, the handbook will provide cases and standards that will help users identify these crimes in their work in the field.
ICC Legal Tools Project
The ICC Legal Tools Project is the leading information services on international criminal law. This initiative seeks to provide users with legal information, digests and an application to work more effectively with core international crimes cases. This tool equalizes access to international criminal law information, empowering practitioners and leveling preconditions for criminal justice in both richer and materially less resourceful countries.
Under the Canadian Partnership for International Justice, this project will contribute to the effectiveness of the global effort to hold accountable those responsible of the most serious international crimes, while enhancing Canada’s role as a global leader in this field.
Under this framework, the Project that the Human Rights Clinic is undertaking with the Clinique de Droit International Pénal et Humanitaire of Université Laval consists in doing research and selecting relevant international decisions, resolutions and doctrine to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Legal Tools.
Since the start of the project in 2016, the Human Rights Clinic has processed and catalogued more than 2000 documents from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda into the ICC Legal tools database as well as national legislations of Madagascar, Mongolia, Burundi, Bhutan, Niger, Seychelles, Togo and Vanuatu.
Research support to the Canadian Partnership for International Justice
Since 2018, HRREC restructured the clinical work for this project to better respond to partners Avocats sans frontieres and the Canadian Council of International Jurists’ needs and offer a richer experience to participating students. This included the elaboration of legal memos on questions submitted by these organizations. The Clinic produced research on transitional justice and military courts in Mali and international standards regarding contemporary forms of slavery and violence against women.
Amicus Curiae to the International Criminal Court on the Situation of the Rohingya
Between May and June 2018, organizations that are part of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice requested and received an authorization from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to submit an amicus curiae regarding the situation of the Rohingya in Myanmar. The amicus submitted focused on the legal issues arising from the Prosecutor’s request to determine if her office had jurisdiction concerning the Rohingya being deported from Myanmar to Bangladesh. In September 2018, the Pre-Trial Chamber determined that the ICC could exercise jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of the Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh.