Search for Justice: A Conversation with Payam Akhavan

This presentation is co-sponsored by SFU's Department of World Languages and Literatures, Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, Department of French, School for International Studies, Gender Sexuality and Women's Studies, David Lam Centre, Department of Political Science, Cassidy Centre for Educational Justice, School of Criminology, Department of History, and Department of Sociology and Anthropology. 

Join us for a fascinating evening with distinguished human rights lawyer Payam Akhavan. Listen to him reflect on a career in search of justice before international courts and tribunals – as Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague and Special Advisor on Genocide to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

His extensive experience includes serving with the UN investigating atrocities in conflict zones like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Timor Leste – and defending genocide survivors throughout the world, including the Bahá’ís of Iran, the Yazidi of Iraq, and Myanmar’s Rohingya minority.

He is the inaugural holder of the Massey Chair in Human Rights at the University of Toronto. He serves as Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Global Affairs and is a member of the Advisory Panel on the Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 Tragedy. He is Special Advisor to the Prosecutor-General of Ukraine on international crimes arising from the 2022 Russian invasion. He is Counsel to the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, Honourary Canadian Co-Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, and Co-Founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre.