Author archives

Rebekah Smith, Research Associate. Rebekah Smith is currently in her final year of the JD/JID program, a dual degree, at the University of Victoria's Faculty of Law. Rebekah's father is British Jamaican and her mother is Afro-Nova Scotian and Dutch. She currently lives on Ləḱʷəŋən Territory in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, but grew up on the lands of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. While attending law school, Rebekah has been a teaching assistant, research assistant, and a peer tutor. Prior to law school Rebekah completed her undergraduate degree in History and Philosophy at Queen's University. Over the past ten years Rebekah has been involved with non-profit organizations that promote access to justice, youth leadership development, and community building. Rebekah is pursuing a legal career because she believes that the law can be a tool to create justice, though she is alive to the reality that what is legal is not necessarily what is just. She is the current events coordinator and former president of the UVic chapter of the Black Law Students Association and is a member of the board of the British Columbia Chapter of the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers. She was the 2022 recipient of the Ann Roberts Humanitarian Award, an annual honour awarded jointly by the Faculty of Law and the Victoria Bar Association. In 2022, Peacemakers Trust appointed Rebekah as a research associate to participate in and advise on several initiatives, including Peacemakers Trust's initiatives regarding Indigenous Peoples. In 2022, Peacemakers Trust appointed Rebekah as a research associate to participate in and advise on several initiatives, including Peacemakers Trust's initiatives regarding Indigenous Peoples. Rebekah Smith's Publications "The Disappeared: Indigenous Peoples and the international crime of enforced disappearances," with Catherine Morris, Slaw: Canada's Online Legal Magazine, 20 March 2023, available online. "Neurodiversity in legal education," with Rachel Lewis, Law 360 Canada, 8 September 2022, available online.

The Disappeared: Indigenous Peoples and the international crime of enforced disappearance

Catherine Morris and Rebekah Smith of Peacemakers Trust Canada conducted extensive research on disproportionate violence against Indigenous persons in Canada that includes uncounted disappearances of Indigenous children, women, and men. Canada’s decades of failure to prevent and halt disappearances forms part of a long litany of grave international human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples. Continued reports of officially hushed-up violence lead to increasingly clarion allegations of genocide. The authors’ work on documenting enforced disappearance, failure to investigate and prosecute crimes against indigenous people has parallel application to the habitual failure of U.S. authorities to address crimes perpetrated against Native Americans.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Comparative/Foreign Law, Human Rights, International Legal Research, KM, Legal Research
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