International Justice Mission Canada (taken from their website)
Visit them at: www.ijm.ca
International Justice Mission Canada is a human rights organization that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression, in partnership with U.S.-based International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to ensure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to ensure that public justice systems – police, courts and laws – effectively protect the poor.
Injustice Today
Today, millions of lives around the world are in the grip of injustice.
More children, women and men are held in slavery right now than over the course of the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade: Millions toil in bondage, their work and even their bodies the property of an owner.
Trafficking in humans generates profits in excess of 12 billion dollars a year for those who, by force and deception, sell human lives into slavery and sexual bondage. Nearly 2 million children are exploited in the commercial sex industry. The AIDS pandemic continues to rage, and the oppression of trafficking victims in the global sex trade contributes to the disease’s spread.
In many countries around the world, pedophiles find that they can sexually violate children with impunity. And though police should be protectors, in many nations, their presence is a source of insecurity for the poor. Suspects can be held interminably before trials, imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.
The land rights of women are violated on a massive scale worldwide, but with particular ferocity in Africa, leaving widows and other women in vulnerable positions unable to care for themselves or their children. Around the world, women suffer the double indignity of rape and seeing their perpetrators face no consequences for crimes of sexual violence.
Often lacking access to their own justice systems and unable to protect themselves or their families from those more powerful, it is overwhelmingly the poor who bear the burden of these abuses.
More children, women and men are held in slavery right now than over the course of the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade: Millions toil in bondage, their work and even their bodies the property of an owner.
Trafficking in humans generates profits in excess of 12 billion dollars a year for those who, by force and deception, sell human lives into slavery and sexual bondage. Nearly 2 million children are exploited in the commercial sex industry. The AIDS pandemic continues to rage, and the oppression of trafficking victims in the global sex trade contributes to the disease’s spread.
In many countries around the world, pedophiles find that they can sexually violate children with impunity. And though police should be protectors, in many nations, their presence is a source of insecurity for the poor. Suspects can be held interminably before trials, imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.
The land rights of women are violated on a massive scale worldwide, but with particular ferocity in Africa, leaving widows and other women in vulnerable positions unable to care for themselves or their children. Around the world, women suffer the double indignity of rape and seeing their perpetrators face no consequences for crimes of sexual violence.
Often lacking access to their own justice systems and unable to protect themselves or their families from those more powerful, it is overwhelmingly the poor who bear the burden of these abuses.
IJM Collaborative Casework
IJM investigators, lawyers and social workers intervene in individual cases of abuse in partnership with state and local authorities to ensure proper support for the victim and appropriate action against the perpetrator. Such collaboration is essential to obtain convictions against individual perpetrators and to bring meaning to local laws that are meaningless if not enforced.
What We Do
IJM seeks to make public justice systems work for victims of abuse and oppression who urgently need the protection of the law.
Collaborative Casework Model
By pushing individual cases of abuse through the justice system from the investigative stage to the prosecutorial stage, IJM determines the specific source of corruption, lack of resources, or lack of good will in the system denying victims the protection of their legal systems. In collaboration with local authorities, IJM addresses these specific points of brokenness to meet the urgent needs of victims of injustice.
IJM focuses its work on several casework areas. These include sex trafficking, forced labour slavery, sexual violence, illegal property seizure, illegal detention andhill tribe citizenship
In all of its casework, IJM has a four-fold purpose:
1. Victim Relief: IJM’s first priority in its casework is immediate relief for the victim of the abuse being committed.
2. Perpetrator Accountability: IJM seeks to hold perpetrators accountable for their abuse in their local justice systems. Accountability changes the fear equation: When would-be perpetrators are rightly afraid of the consequences of their abuse, the vulnerable do not need to fear them.
3. Victim Aftercare: IJM aftercare staff and trusted local aftercare partners work to ensure that victims of oppression are equipped to rebuild their lives and respond to the complex emotional and physical needs that are often the result of abuse.
1. Victim Relief: IJM’s first priority in its casework is immediate relief for the victim of the abuse being committed.
2. Perpetrator Accountability: IJM seeks to hold perpetrators accountable for their abuse in their local justice systems. Accountability changes the fear equation: When would-be perpetrators are rightly afraid of the consequences of their abuse, the vulnerable do not need to fear them.
3. Victim Aftercare: IJM aftercare staff and trusted local aftercare partners work to ensure that victims of oppression are equipped to rebuild their lives and respond to the complex emotional and physical needs that are often the result of abuse.
History
Founded in 1997, IJM began operations in response to a massive need. Historically, humanitarian and missions organizations worked faithfully and courageously to bring healthcare, education, food and other vital services to those who needed them. But little had been done to actually restrain the oppressors who are a source of great harm to the vulnerable.
Concerned by this need, a group of lawyers, human rights professionals and public officials launched an extensive study of the injustices witnessed by overseas missionaries and relief and development workers. This study, surveying more than 65 organizations and representing 40,000 overseas workers, uncovered a nearly unanimous awareness of abuses of power by police and other authorities in the communities where they served. Without the resources or expertise to confront the abuse and to bring rescue to the victims, these overseas workers required the assistance of trained public justice professionals.
Gary Haugen, working as a lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice and as the United Nations’ Investigator in Charge in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, founded International Justice Mission as a response to this massive need. Today, IJM has grown to more than 300 professionals working in their own communities to fight injustice.
In 2002, Jamie McIntosh established International Justice Mission Canada to educate, empower and engage Canadians in IJM's global mission to seek justice for the oppressed. IJM Canada is based in London, Ontario and contributes to IJM field operations in five countries around the world.
IJM Canada is registered with Canada Revenue Agency as a federally recognized charitable organization (registration number: 86388 9283 RR0001).
