Giselle Portenier will be awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, at the 2:00 p.m. ceremony on Friday, June 13, “in recognition of a distinguished career as a broadcast journalist and documentary filmmaker, whose global focus on human rights, especially the human rights of women and children, is also reflected in print.”
Giselle Portenier has spent a 30-year career in journalism and documentary filmmaking promoting a human rights agenda. She has put the human rights of women and children around the world at the heart of her most successful work. Born in Switzerland, she came to Canada as a teenager. After graduating from journalism at
Carleton University in 1978, she began her career as a reporter and anchor at BCTV news in Vancouver, then moved on to ABC News and later, CBS 60 Minutes in London, England, before joining the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Long before the rest of the world had heard the term ‘honor killing,’ her documentary Murder In Purdah, about the murder of women in the name of honor in Pakistan, won the George Foster Peabody and George Polk awards. Her film Let Her Die, about the systematic elimination of the girl child in India, won the Golden Nymph Award in Monte Carlo,
and like several of her films, resulted in changes in the law.
Her determination to focus the eyes of the world on human rights violations has taken her to some of the world’s most dangerous places, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she made ‘Congo’s Forgotten Children,’ about the brutal effects of war on children. In addition to garnering numerous international awards, her films have also been used as evidence in refugee hearings, and by human rights organizations as part action campaigns.
She was the first CanWest Global visiting professor at UBC and regularly speaks about journalism and human rights. She lives in Vancouver.