Guest speaker: Dory Lucy Arias
of the José Alvéar Restrepo Lawyers' Collective (CAJAR)
Friday, September 11, 12:45 – 2:30, Room TBA
You are invited to attend a specially arranged presentation and discussion session this Friday in a room TBA at York/Osgoode. Light lunch will be provided for those who RSVP.
Please RSVP to Lielle Gonsalves at lgonsalves@osgoode.yorku.ca if you intend to come.
Please RSVP soonest so that the size of the room for the event can be determined. An email will be sent to you with the specific room for the session when it is known.
Dora Lucy Arias is a human rights litigator who works for the José Alvéar Restrepo Lawyers' Collective (best known under its Spanish acronym "CAJAR", www.colectivodeabogados.org). The CAJAR is one of the very few legal organizations fully dedicated to the fight against impunity in Colombia. Dora Lucy has years of experience representing individual victims and vulnerable communities before national courts, as well as international mechanisms such as the those of the Inter-American Human Rights system. She also sits on the Board of Directors of the Eduardo Umaña Mendoza Colombian Human Rights Lawyers Association (Asociación Colombiana de Abogados Defensores Eduardo Umaña Mendoza - ACADEUM), a non-profit organization which brings together human rights lawyers from across Colombia and whose main purpose is to address the threats, attacks and intimidation faced by HR lawyers in Colombia. In the absence of a nationwide bar association, most lawyers in lawyers have no one to turn to for protection and support other than CAJAR and ACADEUM.
CAJAR lawyers have been accused on many occasions by government officials of siding with the guerrillas in Colombia only because they agreed to represent before people who had been brought to trial because they held political views different to that of the government. A few months ago, news emerged that Colombia’s main intelligence agency, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), had carried out over several months far-reaching wiretapping operations against a wide range of public figures who were known not to agree with governmental policies, including the CAJAR. This will be the focus of Dory Lucy’s talk on Friday. Me Dora Lucy Arias, an experienced litigator and senior associate of the CAJAR, would be please to share her experience with legal practitioners and the academia from Ontario.
Ms Lucy’s visit is sponsored by Lawyers without Borders Canada (LWBC), a non-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of human rights. LWBC and the CAJAR are currently supporting various indigenous communities in Colombia, through training and litigation. Friday’s session is sponsored by the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security (http://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/nathanson) in association with RedLEIDH (the Latin American Human Rights Education and Research Network – a collaboration of Osgoode, York’s Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, and multiple partners throughout Latin America).