From Olive Groves to Courtrooms:
Redressing Israel's Settlement Policies in Canadian Courts
Bil’in Village Council v. Green Park International
The Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, in collaboration with U of T Faculty of Law’s International Human Rights Program, is pleased to present a public lecture by:
Maysa Zorob, Dylan Smith and John Reynolds from the Legal Research and Advocacy Unit, Al Haq
- and -
Mark Arnold, Lawyer Representing the Palestinian Village of Bil’in
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, Flavelle House, 78 Queen’s Park, Room BLH
Doors: 6:00 pm; Opening Remarks 6:45; Lecture 7:00
No RSVP required
Having exhausted the limited remedies in Israel, the villagers of Bil’in have brought their peaceful struggle for justice to Canada. With the assistance of Mark Arnold, a Toronto-based lawyer, its Israeli counsel, and Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization, the village of Bil'in has filed a lawsuit in Quebec against Green Mount International Inc. and Green Park International Inc. - two Canadian companies accused of violating international, Canadian and Quebec law by building settlements on Israeli occupied Palestinian land.
Speakers:
Al-Haq is an independent Palestinian human rights NGO based in Ramallah, West Bank that was established in 1979 to protect and promote human rights and the rule of law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Al Haq is the West Bank Affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. The organisation documents violations of the individual and collective rights of Palestinians in the OPT, irrespective of the identity of the perpetrator, and seeks to end such breaches by way of advocacy before national and international mechanisms and by holding the violators accountable. Al-Haq has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, is the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists - Geneva, and is a member of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Habitat International Coalition (HIC), and the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO).
John Reynolds is a member of the Legal Research and Advocacy Unit at Al-Haq. He holds a BBLS degree from University College Dublin and an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the National University of Ireland, Galway. He specialises in international humanitarian law and public international law (particularly its relation to the Palestine-Israel situation). He previously assisted Defense Counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and is an Executive Committee Member of Punho Forte-Ireland, a community-based organisation providing educational and social opportunities for disadvantaged youth in Brazil.
Maysa Zorob is a member of the Legal Research and Advocacy Unit at Al-Haq. A Palestinian-German, she holds an undergraduate law degree and an LLM in International and European Law from the University of Hamburg. Before working at Al-Haq, she served as Coordinator of the Law and Society Department at the Institute of Law, Birzeit University. She was a founding member of the Palestinian Student Association of Hamburg and a member of the German Palestinian Women's Association.
Dylan Smith is a member of the Legal Research and Advocacy Unit at Al-Haq. He holds a law degree from the University of Toronto, where he specialized in international human rights law. He has worked on human rights issues in India, Southern Africa, Romania, Geneva (Iraq), the United States and Canada.
Mark Arnold is a partner at Gardiner Miller Arnold LLP. He obtained his BA from Sir George Williams University in Montreal and a MA in sociology from the University of Manitoba. He obtained his LL.B. in 1983 from Dalhousie Law School, and his LLM in commercial litigation and alternate dispute resolution in 1999 from Osgoode Hall Law School. Mark is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a "Specialist in Civil Litigation". Mark represented the plaintiff in Bouzari v. Iran, where an Iranian-Canadian fought for the right to sue Iran for torture he suffered. He also filed a lawsuit against two Quebec companies building illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian village of Bil’in.
For more information, contact Sarah Perkins at s.perkins@utoronto.ca
