Georgette Gagnon

Biography

Georgette Gagnon, an international human rights lawyer, is a Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs. From 2010 to 2015, Ms. Gagnon served as Director of Human Rights for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and Representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights based in Kabul, Afghanistan.

In 2012, Ms. Gagnon was Director of Human Rights for the three-month UN Supervision Mission in Syria based in Damascus serving as a senior human rights advisor to Mr. Kofi Annan in his role as UN-Arab League Special Envoy for Syria. Previously, Ms. Gagnon worked with Human Rights Watch in New York as Executive and Deputy Director of the organization’s Africa Division (2004 to 2010) and with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia Herzegovina in Sarajevo as Director of Human Rights and Rule of Law (2001 to 2003). Ms. Gagnon has served as an investigator and advisor on human rights and rule of law for the Canadian and United States governments on projects in China, India and Sudan and as a human rights officer with UN missions in Bosnia Herzegovina and Rwanda.

Ms. Gagnon holds an LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, Canada, and an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. She has investigated, researched and authored numerous reports and articles on international human rights and humanitarian law, and is a senior expert in the areas of protection of civilians in armed conflict, torture and arbitrary detention, violence against women, rule of law and counter-terrorism issues in conflict and post-conflict countries.