Anne Bayefsky

Anne Bayefsky is a human rights scholar and activist. She currently directs the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and is a barrister and solicitor of the Ontario Bar. Her areas of expertise include international human rights law, equality rights, and constitutional human rights law.

Career

Bayefsky holds a B.A., M.A. and LL.B. from the University of Toronto and an M.Litt. from Oxford University. She has served as the director of York's Centre for Refugee Studies,^[1] project director for the university's Human Rights Treaty Study; member of Canadian delegations to international meetings, such as the UN Human Rights Commissions 1993-1996, the UN General Assembly in 1984 and 1989, the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, and in 1995, a delegate of the American Society of International Law to the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women.^[2] She was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute^[3]

Currently, she is a member of the International Law Association Committee on International Human Rights Law and Practice; Editor-in-Chief of the Series "Refugees and Human Rights", published by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague; and editor of Eye on the UN.^[3][4] She also sits on the Board of Advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a non-profit think-tank focusing on issues of United States and Israeli national security.^[5]

Anne Bayefsky has published extensively in the field of human rights, including a collaborative report with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2001, as well as the creation of bayefsky.com,^[3][6] a gateway to the United Nations' Human Rights Treaties aiming to enhance "the implementation of the human rights legal standards of the United Nations" on the basis that "Accessibility to UN human rights norms by individuals everywhere is fundamental to their successful realization."^[7]

Standpoints

Bayefsky has argued that Ontario's policy of fully funding Roman Catholic schools, while denying full funding to other religious schools, is discriminatory.^[8]

She has also argued that Human Rights Watch "fanned the flames of racial intolerance" in the lead-up to the Durban Conference by facilitating the exclusion of Jewish representatives from an NGO caucus, later covering up its role in the affair and misrepresenting the outcome to the media.^[9]

Bayefsky speaks out in defense of Israel. She was critical of "the Obama administration's response to Israel's announcement that it will continue to build new homes for its expanding population in disputed territory", calling it "hysterical", and asked, "Given that the United States is supposed to be committed to the parties determining ultimate legal ownership of the land in final status negotiations, what is going on?".^[10]

Awards

• 1992 Recipient of the Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights Research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.^[11]
• 2002–2004 Lady Davis Fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
• 1995–1996 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation grant in Peace and International Cooperation

Publications

• The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Universality at the Crossroads, Transnational Publishers, (softbound), c. 2001; Kluwer Law International (hardbound), c. 2001;
• The UN Human Rights Treaty System in the Twenty-First Century, Kluwer Law International, c. 2000; (co-ed.)
• The UN and the Jews^[12][13] in Commentary Magazine, February, 2004.
• Human Rights and Forced Displacement, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, c. 2000; (ed.)
• Self-Determination in International Law: Quebec and Lessons Learned, Kluwer Law International, c. 2000;
• International Human Rights Law: Use in Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Litigation, Butterworths, c. 1992;
• Canada's Constitution Act 1982 and Amendments: A Documentary History, Volume I and II, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, c. 1989; (ed.)
• Legal Theory Meets Legal Practice, Academic Printing and Publishing, c. 1988; (co-ed.)
• Equality Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Carswell Co. Ltd., c. 1985.

See also

• Israel, Palestinians and the United Nations
• Modern anti-Semitism
• Zionism

References

External links

• Bayefsky.com, The United Nations Human Rights Treaties
• Bio of Bayefsky at the Hudson Institute
• Bio of Bayefsky at Eye on the UN
• Human Rights Watch Coverup from NGO Monitor
• Bio of Bayefsky at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs