Hon. Irwin Cotler
Born in 1940 in Montreal, Irwin Cotler currently serves as the International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He is an Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and longtime Member of Parliament, constitutional and international human rights lawyer, counsel to political prisoners and referred to as “Counsel for the Oppressed.”
Cotler is a member of many leading international legal panels and organizations, is Canada’s first Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism; and is the Special Envoy of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Community of Democracies on the case and cause of imprisoned Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza. As a parliamentarian from 1999 to 2015, Cotler was at the forefront of the struggle for justice and human rights, both domestically and internationally. He served as chair and member of many committees such as the first-ever Parliamentary Assembly for the International Criminal Court; chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Group for Human Rights in Iran; and co-chair of the International Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism.
A constitutional and comparative law scholar, Cotler is the author of numerous publications and seminal legal articles, and has written upon and intervened in landmark Charter of Rights cases in the areas of free speech, freedom of religion, minority rights, peace law and war crimes justice. He is the recipient of many prestigious awards and recognitions, including sixteen honourary doctorates, recognizing him as “a scholar and advocate of international stature.”
As Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 to 2006, Cotler launched Canada’s first National Justice Initiative against Racism and Hate; initiated the first-ever prosecution for the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act; initiated the first-ever law on human trafficking; crafted the Civil Marriage Act, the first-ever legislation to grant marriage equality to gays and lesbians; quashed more wrongful convictions in a single year than any prior Minister; initiated the first-ever comprehensive reform of the Supreme Court appointment process and helped make it the most gender-representative Supreme Court in the world; appointed the first-ever Indigenous and visible minority justices on the Ontario Court of Appeal; and made the pursuit of international justice a government priority.
An international human rights lawyer, Cotler has served as counsel to some of the leading political prisoners and prisoners of conscience of our time, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and leading human rights dissident Natan Sharansky. More recently, Cotler has served as international legal counsel to imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi; Venezuelan political prisoner Leopoldo López; imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh; and Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak. Professor Cotler has been, and continues to be, a leader and role model. Through his advocacy work both in Canada and internationally, he has transformed the lives of many.