Current Projects

Venezuela Accountability Project (VAP) 

Student Leaders: Adrian Piecyk (3L), Jason Quinn (3L) 

Partner Organization: Global Accountability Network (GAN) 

Building off work that commenced in 2020, this Working Group continues its partnership with the Global Accountability Network (GAN) on the Venezuela Accountability Project (VAP) to collect, compile, and analyse evidence of crimes against humanity committed in Venezuela. In partnership with GAN, VAP aims to gather evidence that may help form the basis of prosecutions before competent international, regional, or domestic tribunals.

GAN is a group of international criminal prosecutors and practitioners who supervise law students working on specific atrocity projects. GAN lawyers collaborate with local partners in conflict regions (currently operating in: Syria, Yemen, Ukrainian, Pacific Rim, and Venezuela) to determine research aims, project priorities, and promote meaningful social change. Working Group members learn how to engage in open-source investigations, research, and legal analysis regarding alleged war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.

As a project of GAN, VAP shares in GAN’s vision to seek accountability for atrocities by working with as many partners as possible (including Venezuelan grassroots organisations, United Nations bodies, and NGOs) to address the conflict in Venezuela.

Cameroon Atrocities Project (CAP) 

Student Leaders: Allison Zhao (MGA, 2L), Parker Hopkins (2L)

Members of the IHRP Cameroon Atrocities Project Working Group (CAP) contribute to the Cameroon Anglophone Crisis Database of Atrocities (Database), which seeks to securely store and verify digital evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses perpetrated during the ongoing Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon (a brief overview of the conflict is available here). Since its creation in 2019, the Database has recorded over 800 incidents, securely storing over 2000 pieces of digital evidence. The Database has also verified and published reports documenting specific atrocities, which may be publicly accessed here.

Incidents investigated by the Database and its researchers are forming part of efforts for justice, both domestically in Cameroon and internationally. More specifically, by compiling and investigating such evidence of atrocities, the Database aims to: 

  1. Secure evidence for future domestic and international accountability procedures and potentially for a national truth, justice, and reconciliation process;
  2. Counter the culture of impunity that has pervaded this crisis since it began in 2016; 
  3. Assist in advocating for human rights in Cameroon (the Database’s most recent cases were published by CHRDA and the Cameroonian press);
  4. Constitute an archive for scholarly research on Cameroon and the Anglophone Crisis and conflict; and 
  5. Serve as a deterrent to warring parties from engaging in further atrocities. 

 The Database is hosted at the University of Toronto and in addition to the IHRP, works with research teams from several universities around the world including Leiden University, the Edinburgh International Justice Initiative, and the University of Exeter. The Database also works with rights-advocacy organizations such as the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (2022, 2021 Press Releases), the Human Rights Center at the University of California – Berkeley, Bellingcat (2021 article), Human Rights Watch (2022 article), and Amnesty International. Please find media reports on the Database here: Forbes (2020), RFI (2020), DW (2019).

Members of this IHRP student working group contribute to the Database by using open-source intelligence (OSINT) methods to verify photo and video evidence submitted to the Database. Through CAP, students will work with satellite imagery, weather data, solar positioning data, social media, and other online tools to verify that submitted evidence indeed depicts real atrocities being committed at the alleged times and locations. The students will then compile their findings into a report, which may be used as evidence in any future legal proceedings that may occur after the cessation of the conflict.

Women's Human Rights Resources (WHRR)

Student Leaders: Julia Colombo (2L), Cathleen Ma (2L)

Partner Organization: Bora Laskin Law Library, University of Toronto Faculty of Law

In 1995, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law created the Women’s Human Rights Resources (WHRR) database, now available on the Bora Laskin Law Library website (here). The database is a tool used by academics and human rights defenders across the globe to access research that was previously only available in law libraries. The goal of this database is to make these sources more accessible to scholars, activists, and other stakeholders around the world. University of Toronto Professor Rebecca Cook, a women’s rights pioneer and founder of the database, drove the creation of the WHRR. In her words, the WHRR “is such an important way for students to advance the field of women’s rights.”

The database provides annotations for key UN documents and leading scholarly articles on a range of topics including armed conflict, the CEDAW Convention, economic globalization, Indigenous women, key treaties and texts, marriage, migration, property law and housing rights, race and gender, reproductive rights, social and economic rights, violence against women, and the World Conference on Women’s Rights. The WHRR database receives more than 15,000 hits per month, with diverse users from over 100 countries. Participation in this year’s group, will offer students an effective and rewarding way to develop legal research and writing skills outside of the classroom meanwhile gaining foundational knowledge on the latest developments in key areas of  women’s human rights on an international scale.  

Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan (GAA) 

Student Leaders: Manreet Brar (2L), Cassie Heward (MGA, 2L)

Partner: Ghizal Haress

Initiated last year (2023), the IHRP's Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan (GAA) working group produced research on the alleged international human rights violations of gender apartheid in Afghanistan, and investigated the potential role of the international community (including Canada) in enabling the current situation on the ground. Working with Ghizal Haress (a visiting scholar at U of T who served as Afghanistan’s first presidential ombudsperson but was forced to flee the country in 2021 following the Taliban's takeover of Kabul), students used their research to prepare a report with recommendations, which they presented to Canada's Special Representative to Afghanistan on March 28, 2024. 

This academic year (2024-2025), the working group aims to update and build upon the foundational report created by the 2023-2024 working group. The working group will strengthen the substance of the report by conducting interviews and compiling case studies to be added to the report. Upon completion of the report with the addition of case studies, the working group plans to further expand its reach by presenting their research findings and case studies to parliamentarians and international human rights organizations in Canada, with the purpose of encouraging action by the government of Canada. 

Through the project's work this year, 1L Law student volunteers will have the rare opportunity to gain trauma-informed human rights lawyering training and experience, in addition to drafting and presentation abilities.  

Israeli Apartheid: Canada’s Obligations (IACO)

Student Leaders: Aysha Khan (3L), Basil Abu Sido (2L) 

Partner Organization: Community Justice Collective (CJC)

This working group convened in 2024 to research and examine the obligations of Canadian institutions in light of the recent International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion (ICJ Advisory Opinion). The ICJ Advisory Opinion found Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian Territory to be unlawful and its policies and practices in that Territory a form of apartheid. 

In its first year, the working group will focus on the implications of the ICJ Advisory Opinion for publicly funded Canadian universities. They will undertake a critical assessment of how the University of Toronto’s institutional ties with Israeli universities that support Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory cohere with the spirit and substance of the ICJ Advisory Opinion. It will also consider what obligations the ICJ Advisory Opinion (along with other international legal instruments) confers on Canadian universities, and whether or not existing university policies are in line with international law. Students’ research will be structured to provide the basis for a research report.  

Working group members also plan to organize an event in the winter term at which international legal experts and grassroots human rights advocates will be invited to speak to the question guiding the project (“What are the implications of the ICJ ruling for publicly funded Canadian universities?”) and at which preliminary research findings can be presented. 

This project offers students the opportunity to engage with international human rights law through the application of a critical lens into Canadian obligations, as well as develop unique research skills through open-source investigations.   

Migrant Workers’ Legal Advocacy in Canada (MLAC)  

Leaders: Kabir Singh Dhillon (2L), Julia Ford (2L), and Yasmin (MGA, 2L) 

Project Partner: Migrant Workers Centre of BC (MWC)

Initiated this year (2024), this working group will build a toolkit that serves as a public-facing resource for lawyers and legal advocates representing migrant workers before courts, tribunals, and government decision makers. As IHRP Summer Fellows, the leaders of this working group found that there is currently no publicly available resource summarizing Canada's obligations and accountability under international law and what arguments can be advanced domestically with respect to migrant workers’ rights. This toolkit therefore aims to help alleviate some of the barriers for lawyers who are taking on these cases, increasing migrants’ access to justice. 

The toolkit will look to include summaries of Canada’s obligations arising from international law and human rights instruments, summaries of existing research, compilations of pinpoint citations from Government reports and publications, summaries of civil society and international calls for accountability, and summaries of pertinent jurisprudence (where it exists), under the supervision of counsel from MWC. 

The vision for this project is to create a comprehensive resource that is maintained and expanded in future years. Some aspects that can be developed in future years include the international protection schemes for women and children (e.g. under the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child), and the interaction of migrant workers’ protection with trafficking in persons (especially in the context of mixed migration movements).  

Equipping Human Rights Advocates (EHRA)

Leader: Jared Sloan (2L) 

Project Partner: Human Rights Action Group (HRAG)

Equipping Human Rights Advocates is a newly developed working group (initiated 2024) that will support HRAG’s work in preparing materials on international human rights mechanisms that can be utilised to train and act as a resource to human rights advocates who may not be lawyers.  

Over the course of 2024-25, HRAG is partnering with World Liberty Congress (WLC) and Alliance of Genocide Victim Communities (AGVC) to provide trainings for their respective networks of human rights defenders and activists, focusing on legal capacity-building and knowledge-sharing. The goal of the trainings - which will encompass topics such as (a) how to submit a targeted sanctions request to Global Affairs Canada, (b) how to prepare and lodge a communication with a UN special procedure, and (c) how to guard against instances of transnational repression and how to file complaints concerning such instances – is to empower human rights defenders and activists to leverage some of those international and domestic tools with minimal need for legal assistance. 

This project will enhance Law student volunteers’ understanding of international human rights and criminal law, international mechanisms, and movement lawyering, with an additional focus on Canadian government responsibility. 

In addition to analytical and legal research skills, this project will give Law students experience engaging with international human rights law and an understanding of how international law is relevant to Canadian lawyers.