48th Annual Conference of the Canadian Council on International Law

The members of the CPIJ will present a panel on October 25.

On June 3, 2019, after three years of hearing thousands of stories of systemic and structural violence, Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls reached the “inescapable conclusion” that Canada as a state is responsible for an ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples. The Inquiry found that this ongoing genocide constitutes a root cause of the violence that is currently being perpetrated against Indigenous women and girls. Colonial violence is ongoing, not just a legacy of the past.

The Inquiry’s final report is supplemented by a legal analysis on genocide, which specifically tackles this issue. It upholds that the true nature of genocide is distinct from the popular notions of it. Colonial genocide, i.e., genocide perpetrated in a colonial context, is a slow-moving process, unlike the traditional paradigms of genocide that are the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda. A gendered lens allows to adequately frame the elements of genocide, and sheds light on the gender-specific impacts it has on women and girls.

This panel will discuss the place of colonial genocide in international law in the wake of the National Inquiry’s works, and foster discussions on the active decolonization process that is needed in order to address Canada’s ongoing colonial genocide.

Chair
Amanda Ghahremani, International Lawyer & Consultant

Speakers
Catherine Savard, Canadian Partnership for International Justice
Fannie Lafontaine, Université Laval
Pamela Palmater, Ryerson University
Michèle Audette, National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

Look up the program.

Professor Valerie Oosterveld will also participate to a panel on “Perspectives on Gender: Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in International Humanitarian Law Today”.