News

A new 'extracurricular' for Hong Kong students: (left) Yuki Shek, Kathy Tse, Josephine Lam, Kelvin Lai and Kary Choi

Story and Photos By David Kumagai, 3L

Four teenage girls sit in the middle of a major Hong Kong highway. Wearing yellow ribbons and yellow headbands, they bury themselves in textbooks as crowds line the barricaded roads.  

This little band of protesters, aged 16 and 17, has joined thousands of others to occupy Hong Kong’s financial district, clog the city’s main arteries, and defy Beijing.

By Promise Holmes Skinner, AYSP Coordinator and Aboriginal Law Program Coordinator

They came from all over Canada, some from the far North and some from remote communities, to learn about the law. This year, the Aboriginal Youth Summer Program drew 23 First Nations, Inuit and Métis high school students eager to meet one another in a big city and immerse themselves in law and legal issues affecting their communities.

The Faculty of Law’s Downtown Legal Services clinic will be able to expand its family law assistance for low-income Ontarians, thanks to a funding increase from Legal Aid Ontario (LAO).

LAO is providing more than $2 million over three years to six university-operated legal clinics.

This summer I have had the pleasure of serving with UN Economic and Social Commision for Asia and Pacific (UN ESAP) in Bangkok. As an intern with the Social Development Division, I focus on legal barriers to effective HIV programming in Southeast and Central Asia. I have had the opportunity to engage deeply with these issues. My work has required adaptability: I arrived just in time for the climax of the protests in Bangkok and the subsequent coup and martial rule. This meant avoiding the UN compound for a few weeks and occasionally evacuating my area of the city.