Just Peace Advocates pleased to share its Palestine Legal Resources Canada portal and resources.
NOW AVAILABLE: Legal and Tactical Guide and information bulletins.
Palestine Legal Resources Canada (PLRC) is one of the initiatives of Just Peace Advocates.
PLRC serves to bolster the Palestine solidarity movement across the country by challenging efforts to threaten, harass and legally bully activists into silence and inaction.
Background
During the inaugural call of the Coalition in May 2016, the point was raised that we need a Palestine Legal equivalent in Canada. Consultations took place with activists and lawyers through 2017, as well as outreach to Palestine Legal in the USA and others to discuss best practices.
In 2018, Just Peace Advocates was founded as a not-for-profit to provide a civil society voice focused on government, institutional and society’s accountability to the rule of law, and the standards of international human rights and humanitarian law for the rights of all people, with a specific focus on Palestinian and more recently to the Kashmiri people given the denial of their rights of self-determination for over seven decades.
In March 2020, a dozen Canadian lawyers were about to leave for an intensive legal study with Al-Haq when Covid-19 meant we had to postpone. Since that time, Just Peace Advocates has kept in touch with these and other lawyers, and has hosted an initial webinar with Al-Haq specific for Canadian lawyers, with more being planned.
The work to provide a Legal and Tactical Guide and associated resources has continued, and these resources are now available.
We thank Palestine Legal for allowing us to have access to their existing resources and giving us permission to update them to the applicable Canadian legal context, and the lawyers and others who helped with developing these resources.
The Legal and Tactical Guide The Legal and Tactical Guide is meant to provide basic information on legal issues that Palestinian rights activists may face, and tips on how to navigate them. It provides some generally applicable information and some campus-specific information for student activists.
Check it out at: https://www.justpeaceadvocates.ca/legal-and-tactical-guide/
The guide can be read online, downloaded, or printed, and you can choose to access the full guide or specific sections.
There are also six information bulletins on activism, free speech rights, human rights law, actions, access requests and BDS. These too can be downloaded or printed.
Resources
We hope our work can help confront the widespread suppression of Palestine advocacy by representing, advising and providing legal education to activists and communities who stand up for justice in Palestine.
Should you need assistance, we will try to connect you with an appropriate contact from the network of lawyers who have indicated they would try to help pro bono or at reduced rates with initial advice. If you know of other lawyers who would be interested in being part of this network let us know.
We hope that having access to the Legal and Tactical Guide and associated information bulletins will be useful, and hope you and others in your organization can join the lawyers who developed these resources in the session planned for early October. Stay tuned for details.
Disclaimer:
Any legal information in this resource is intended for general educational purposes and is NOT a substitute for legal advice – federal and provincial laws differ, laws may change, and the application of all laws depends on the specific facts of a case. Make sure to consult with a lawyer before relying on any information you find here.
