Susan Bazilli

Susan Bazilli is the IWRP Director. She is a lawyer, author, educator, social entrepreneur and advocate, who has worked globally on issues of women's rights for more than 30 years. A graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School (LL.B.) and UBC (LL.M.), she lived and worked in South Africa from 1985-1991, and is the editor of the groundbreaking text "Putting Women on the Agenda: Women, Law and the Constitution in Southern Africa". From 1992 - 1997, she was the Legal Director of METRAC, The Metropolitan Committee on Violence Against Women in Toronto, Canada, and founded the Internet-based Ontario Women's Justice Network. In 1997 she became the first Executive Director of the California Alliance Against Domestic Violence. Susan's international missions have included many UN missions and assignments on peacebuilding, rule of law, gender based violence, sustainable development, international transboundary waters, gender mainstreaming within the Global Environment Facility, and gender equality laws in Mongolia and, South East Asia; women's human rights training in Bosnia, Lithuania and East Africa for Women Law and Development International; bilateral missions in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan for the OSCE; trainings in ICTs for development in the Baltic and Balkan regions for USAID and CIDA; evaluating the use of CEDAW by grassroots NGOs; managing the gender program for the American Bar Association - CEELI Program in Russia; developing and coordinating a seven country Southern African Women's Legal Rights program. She is the producer of IWRP’s documentary film project Constitute! Currently a Vanier Scholar, she is completing her PhD with a documentary film on women’s activism on international human rights over the past 30 years. The IWRP is affiliated to the Centre and while Susan works out of Vancouver, she makes regular trips to Victoria to meet with Centre fellows and IWRP interns, students and volunteers. She makes regular trips to Uganda to oversee the IWRP Uganda project in collaboration with Environmental Women in Action for Development (EWAD).