Louise Arbour

Louise Arbour is a lawyer, prosecutor, jurist and the current United Nations Special Representative for International Migration. She has also served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Born in Montréal, Arbour received her Bachelor of Laws degree from Université de Montréal and served as a law clerk in the Supreme Court while completing graduate studies at the University of Ottawa. In 1995, Arbour led a commission of inquiry into allegations of prisoner abuse at the Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario. From 2009 to 2014, she was President and CEO of the International Crisis Group. The recipient of numerous honours, including the Order of Canada, Arbour made history by indicting a sitting head of state, Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević, and by prosecuting sexual assaults as crimes against humanity.

“I believe in resilience and in the great mobilizing power of people and of ideas.”