NEWS RELEASES
APPOINTMENTS TO BOARD OF DIRECTORSOF RIGHTS & DEMOCRACY
November 26, 2002 (2:00 p.m. EST) No. 159
APPOINTMENTS TO BOARD OF DIRECTORS
OF RIGHTS & DEMOCRACY
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham today announced the appointments of Rebecca J. Cook, Alexander Wayne MacKay
and Charles Peter Turner to the Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy (International Centre for Human Rights and
Democratic Development). The appointments are for three years.
Rights & Democracy is an independent body established by an Act of Parliament in 1988. It provides individuals and
organizations in other countries with training, consultation and research services to promote the observance of human rights
and the full participation of all citizens in the democratic process. The organization's Board of Directors is made up of 13
members, including three from countries outside Canada. Its President is Jean-Louis Roy. More information on Rights &
Democracy can be found at: http://www.ichrdd.ca
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Biographical notes on the appointees are attached.
For further information, media representatives may contact:
Isabelle Savard
Director of Communications
Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs
(613) 995-1851
Media Relations Office
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
(613) 995-1874
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Rebecca J. Cook, a professor at both the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health at
Columbia University, has worked extensively in the area of international human rights law, with a strong focus on
reproductive and women's rights. For the past 30 years, she has worked as a lawyer and an academic in Canada, the United
States and the United Kingdom. She is the co-founder and former deputy director of the International Women's Rights
Action Watch. Ms. Cook also sits on the advisory board of several influential publications, including Human Rights
Quarterly and Reproductive Health Matters. She is also the ethical and legal issues co-editor for the London-based
International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. She was the director of the Law Programme for the International
Planned Parenthood Federation in the U.K. from 1973 to 1978. She is currently a member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics
at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine.
Alexander Wayne MacKay, President and Vice-Chancellor at Mount Allison University, is a native Nova Scotian and
former Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. A lawyer by training, he taught at Dalhousie
University's law school from 1979 to 2001. Mr. MacKay is a pioneer in educational law, having written five books on the
subject, and a noted commentator on constitutional and human rights law. In 1995, he was sent to Malawi by the
Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute to train magistrates and tribal chiefs to be judges under the African country's
new constitution. Mr. MacKay is the founding director of the Law Programme for Indigenous Blacks and Mi'kmaq at
Dalhousie University. After graduating from Dalhousie law school in 1978, Mr. MacKay was a law clerk to the late Bora
Laskin, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Charles Peter Turner is a lawyer and mediator practising in the rural Quebec community of Cowansville. Since the late
1960s, he has taught at various universities in Ontario and Quebec, mostly in the areas of human rights and international
law. In 1993, he acquired a diploma in international law from Cambridge University. Mr. Turner has been an assistant
professor of Business Law and the Law of Armed Conflict since 1997 at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario,
and is a frequent guest lecturer on international law at the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College. This fall, he is a
visiting professor of international law at the East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai.
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