Laverne Jacobs’ election to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities almost didn’t happen.

“I didn’t actually see the call for nominations when it first went out,” says Dr. Jacobs, associate dean of research and graduate studies in the Faculty of Law. Colleagues encouraged her to put her name forward to become Canada’s nominee in a process Jacobs described as multilayered.

“I put my name forward with the support of several organizations in the disability community and was invited for an interview with Global Affairs. People may not realize this, but that’s only the beginning,” she said. “Once I became Canada’s nominee, the next step was to run for election.”

She campaigned for more than a year, giving talks and meeting with diplomats who reported back to the ambassadors who would ultimately cast votes at the UN. She was elected to the committee in June 2022 to serve a four-year term working to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities across more than 180 countries that are states parties to the Convention.

In this role, Jacobs mobilizes years of research on the intersections of law and disability and strives to add focus on other intersecting lived experiences including women, LGBTQ2S+ people, people of different ages, and racialized people. Her background as both a human rights lawyer and academic, and her lived experience with disability, give her a unique and important perspective on the cases that come before the committee.

She brings this experience to the classroom, teaching a course called “Law, Disability and Social Change.”

“I want students to think about the possibilities that are out there for ways of sharing knowledge to help their communities,” says Jacobs. “We often think about how to serve our immediate communities, but skills can have impact on a global community.”

Learn more in the full article, “Expertise on the global stage,” published in the Research and Innovation in Action report.