Bernard Duhaime

Bernard Duhaime is developing a research project related to COVID-19 and human rights, with the support of UQAM (request in progress) and New York University (request accepted). The project will examine the scope of international human rights law during a pandemic while addressing themes such as the suspension or limitation of rights in emergency situations; the prohibition of discrimination, people and groups in vulnerable situations; the right to access to information; the right to health care, integrity and dignity; and, the right to housing. Bernard Duhaime is a member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation’s COVID-19 Impact Committee.

Bernard Duhaime is a professor of international law at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and a specialist in the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights. He is also chairman of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which reports to the United Nations Human Rights Council. For over 20 years, Professor Duhaime has been contributing to the promotion and defence of human rights, through his collaboration with national and international human rights organizations. He has taken part in a range of observation and training field missions and produced numerous institutional reports. Professor Duhaime has also advised many human rights groups, Indigenous rights advocacy groups, human rights lawyers and defenders, international organizations, and states.

A member of several research centres, he has authored some sixty publications and delivered over 130 lectures around the globe. He founded and directed the UQAM's international human rights defence clinic (CIDDHU), which is recognized worldwide as a model university initiative. Recognized by his peers, Professor Duhaime has been a visiting fellow at the University of Southern California (as Canada-US Fulbright Visiting Chair in Public Diplomacy), at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School (United States), at the European University Institute (Italy), and at the faculty of law of the University of Palermo in Argentina. Professor Duhaime has served as lawyer with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. He was called to the Québec Bar in 1999.