Dr. Fannie Lafontaine is a lawyer, full professor at the Faculty of Law at Université Laval and holder of the Canada Research Chair on International Criminal Justice and Human Rights from 2013 to 2023. She is the Project Director of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice and founder and co-director of the International Criminal and Humanitarian Law Clinic.
Dr. Lafontaine has worked at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and in NGOs and law firms. From 2015-2020, she acted as independent civilian observer of a criminal investigation into criminal acts alleged to have been committed by members of different police forces against Indigenous People in Quebec (public reports, 2016 and 2020). Dr. Lafontaine was the lead drafter of the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ Supplementary Report “Legal analysis on genocide”. She is the author of Prosecuting Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes in Canadian Courts and of many other publications on Canadian and international law.
Dr. Lafontaine is a member of College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada (2017). In 2021, she was elected by the Canadian Lawyer Magazine in its prestigious annual Canada’s Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers. The Canadian Partnership for International Justice that she leads was awarded the SSHRC Impact Award (Partnership Award) in 2022 and the Governor General’s Innovation Award in 2023.
