Chair in Human Rights
The Massey Chair in Human Rights, Senior Fellow Professor Payam Akhavan, contributes to the College through his distinguished scholarship and extensive experience as a human rights lawyer before international courts and tribunals. In this role, he delivers public lectures, convenes seminars and discussion groups with Junior Fellows, and participates in College activities related to human rights.
Payam Akhavan
Chair in Human Rights
Payam Akhavan, LLB (Osgoode) LLM SJD (Harvard), LLD Honoris Causa (Law Society of Ontario) OOnt FRSC, is the inaugural holder of the Massey Chair in Human Rights. Professor Akhavan is also Senior Fellow at Massey College, former Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Associate Member of the Institut de droit international, and the former Special Advisor on Genocide to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. He was previously Full Professor at McGill University Faculty of Law (2005-20), Distinguished Visitor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, with other appointments at Yale Law School, Leiden University, Oxford University, Université Paris Nanterre, and Sciences Po École de Droit.
He has published extensively on human rights and international criminal law in leading academic journals and is on the Editorial Review Board of Human Rights Quarterly. In 2017 he delivered the CBC Massey Lectures In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey. The companion book became the top non-fiction bestseller in Canada and the subject of a CBC documentary film.
Professor Akhavan was the first Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1994-2000) at The Hague. He has also served with the UN investigating atrocities in conflict zones – including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Timor Leste – and defended genocide survivors throughout the world – including the Bahá’ís of Iran, the Yazidi of Iraq, and Myanmar’s Rohingya minority.
He has served as counsel and advocate in notable cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Supreme Court of the United States. He also serves as Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Global Affairs of Canada and member of the Advisory Panel on the Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 Tragedy, 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. He is recipient of the 2021 Human Rights Award and an Honourary Doctor of Laws from the Law Society of Ontario. His human rights work has been featured in the New York Times, BBC HARDtalk, CBC Ideas, Maclean’s, TV Ontario, and other media.
