Graduate follows passion for international law, human rights
Seven years ago, Erica Bach, BA 99, developed a passion for international law and human rights while working as a legal intern for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in southern Africa.
If international law seems a stretch from Bach’s Concordia BA in creative writing, she confides that it “had always been at the back of my mind. Developing the ability to express myself and be creative in arguments was a good fit.”
So was her part-time job with the university’s students with disabilities service. “I had the opportunity to advocate on behalf of students who are marginalized from the mainstream,” she says.
Her current role channels that experience. The Halifax native has been a senior advisor in the Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Counsellor in Toronto since 2010. The office was created the previous year as part of a government strategy aimed at improving the competitive advantage of Canadian international mining, oil and gas companies by enhancing their ability to manage social and environmental risks.
The office’s mandate is to be an “honest broker” that mediates disputes between companies and local communities. The process is voluntary and non-binding. “In promoting human development, you have to engage with business. It’s through that lens that you can make a significant improvement in reaching development objectives,” Bach says.
It’s not only business that she engages. In December, Bach went to Tanzania to chair a roundtable of local NGOs, part of a Canada-East African community forum on CSR practices. She knows the African NGO scene well. In 2005, she spent six months in Pretoria, South Africa, as an intern at Lawyers for Human Rights, a local NGO, monitoring the post-apartheid government’s treatment of refugees primarily from Central Africa.
Next came three months in Harare, Zimbabwe, working on a rule of law initiative in the face of President Robert Mugabe’s repression, then volunteered for six months in Mozambique for a United Nations development program project to reform the judicial and prison systems.
Imbued with internationalism, Bach enrolled in a New York University program in Singapore, where she earned a master’s in global law to add to the bachelor of law she earlier acquired at Dalhousie University. She subsequently joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa as a legal officer and specialized in human rights. She represented Ottawa at sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
After 18 months, she was seconded to the CSR office. In terms of her career objectives, “I definitely feel that the field where business and human rights intersect is where I want to be,” says Bach. “It’s that place that combines all my experiences.”
Related links:
• Alumni Relations
• Concordia Department of English