Catherine Morris
Executive Director, Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada
Catherine Morris is the Executive Director of Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada (LRWC), a committee of Canadian lawyers who promote human rights and the rule of law. LRWC advocates on behalf of human rights defenders in danger around the world. Morris is also the managing director of Peacemakers Trust, a Canadian non-profit for education and research on peacebuilding, including international human rights.
Media
Democracy continues to be undermined in Cambodia
IAPS Dialogue, Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies, University of Nottingham,, August 9, 2017Online
Cambodia’s elections are always a bell-weather of peace and human rights in the country.
In the 4 June 2017 local commune elections, seven million people, more than 85 per cent of registered voters, peacefully turned out to elect 12,000 representatives in 1,646 communities around the country. Observers found some noticeable irregularities, but in comparison with past elections, the polls went ‘smoothly.’ Yet the commune elections were no harbinger of peace. For months during the run up to the elections, long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) demonstrated a long-familiar pattern of violent threats and deployed another potent weapon – the law.
Canada's Forgotten Child Hostages
The Toronto Star, May 16, 2017Online
URL: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/05/16/canadas-forgotten-child-hostages.html
Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman were travelling in Central Asia when they were captured in Afghanistan in 2012. Their innocence, youth and citizenship in Canada and the U.S. made them ideal hostages. They — and their children — are innocent of wrongdoing or involvement in Afghanistan’s conflicts. This family is no less entitled to protection against human rights violations than diplomats, aid workers or journalists. Instead of inspiring public outrage at their captivity, they have been forgotten.
See publications at http://www.peacemakers.ca/leadership/Morris.html
The Impact of Mediation on the Culture of Disputing in Canada: Law Schools, Lawyers and Laws
Published by New York: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, and Hong Kong: CCH Hong Kong, 2013
Chapter 3, in Mediation in Asia Pacific: A Practical Guide to Mediation and its Impacts on Legal systems, edited by Wang Guiguo and Yang Fan.
Justice Inverted: Law and human rights in Cambodia
by Catherine Morris
Published by Routledge, 2017
September 13, 2016
Contemporary Cambodia remains haunted by Pol Pot’s 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime, which eradicated Cambodia’s traditional dispute resolution processes and colonial civil law system. The subsequent decade of Vietnam-sponsored rule in the 1980s entrenched centralized socialist governance and legal institutions that have stubbornly challenged reform efforts of the 1990s and onwards. Cambodian and foreign observers alike often mutter the French adage: “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” This chapter considers two decades of international human rights promotion and liberal legal development efforts in Cambodia with emphasis on courts, lawyers, and human rights defenders. Chapter 2 in The Handbook of Contemporary Cambodia, 1st Edition, edited by Katherine Brickell, Simon Springer, Routledge 2017.
URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291523115_Justice_Inverted_Law_and_human_rights_in_Cambodia
Biography
Catherine Morris has worked in the field of international human rights for two decades, and in the field of peace and conflict studies and practice since 1983, including founding, leadership, policy, research, and teaching in academic institutions and civil society organizations in Canada, Thailand, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bolivia, and Europe. She is an Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria.
Recognition/Reconnaissance
Victoria Bar Association Volunteer Award | Professional
Catherine Morris received the Victoria Bar Association Volunteer Award in 2015 for her work on the rule of law through promotion of international human rights.
Additional Titles and Affiliations
UN Liaison, Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada
Director Peacemakers Trust
Adjunct Professor Faculty of Law University of Victoria
Past Talks
Atrocity Crimes in Myanmar: Accountability and Responsibility
The Rohingya Crisis - Realities, Reflections, Implications & Imperatives
International Law Section of the BC Branch of the Canadian Bar Association, Vancouver, March 8, 2019
Truth, Lies, Reconciliation, and the Church in North America
Reconciliation: Christian Perspectives – Interdisciplinary Approaches
Bergneustadt, Germany, August 31, 2017
Human Rights in Transition in Thailand: Coups, Constitutions and Cases
Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) Round Table
University of Victoria, Canada, November 8, 2016
The Impact of Mediation on the Culture of Disputing in Canada
Event sponsored by the ADR section of the BC Branch of the Canadian Bar Association
Victoria, BC, April 2, 2014
International Human Rights and Access to Justice: International Right to Legal Aid
Access to Justice: Community Conference
Victoria, BC, March 7, 2014
Corporate Land-Grabbing & Fabricated Charges in Cambodia: What Can Canadian Lawyers Do?
Presentation to the Canadian Bar Association International Assistance Section
Vancouver, BC, February 12, 2014
Canada’s International Human Rights Obligations and Bill C-51
Panel presentation sponsored by the Canadian International Council
Victoria, BC, March 31, 2015