Jayne Theresa Stoyles was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, at the 9:30 a.m. ceremony on Wednesday, June 13, “in recognition of her outstanding contributions to international issues of human rights.”
Stoyles is executive director of Amnesty International Canada, as well as a lawyer and a board member of the International Institute for Criminal Investigations. She served as the first executive director of the Canadian Centre for International Justice (CCIJ) and was the founder and chief executive officer of the Philippe Kirsch Institute, which helps fund the CCIJ’s international justice and accountability work.
Stoyles previously served as the program director for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court in New York, a network of 2,000 non-governmental organizations that helped create the court. The coalition was twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize during her tenure. She was a senior adviser to the Institute for Global Policy, provided international humanitarian law training for the Red Cross and taught at Carleton’s Department of Law and Legal Studies.
Stoyles was awarded a lifetime Ashoka Canada Fellowship in 2008 and was the 2010 winner of the Tarnopolsky Human Rights Award and the Lord Reading Law Society Human Rights Award. She was named one of the top 50 people in Ottawa by Ottawa Life Magazine in 2008.