Toby Mendel

Toby Mendel is the founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Democracy, a Canadian-based international human rights NGO which provides legal and capacity building expertise regarding foundational rights for democracy, including the right to information, freedom of expression, the right to participate and the rights to freedom of assembly and association. Prior to that, he was for over 12 years Senior Director for Law at ARTICLE 19, an international human rights NGO focusing on freedom of expression and the right to information. He has collaborated extensively with inter-governmental actors working in these areas–including the World Bank, UNESCO, the UN and other international rapporteurs on freedom of expression, the OSCE and the Council of Europe–as well as numerous governments and NGOs in countries all over the world. Before joining ARTICLE 19, he worked as a senior human rights consultant with Oxfam Canada and as a human rights policy analyst at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). 

His work spans a range of areas of legal work. This includes having drafted or participated in drafting numerous laws in countries in every region of the world, engaging in strategic litigation before senior national and international courts, leading standard setting exercises, including the Joint Declarations adopted annually by the freedom of expression rapporteurs, providing training and other forms of capacity building, including to judges and legal professionals, and preparing in-depth analyses of laws and proposed legislation. He is also the author of a large number of articles, monographs and books on a range of freedom of expression, right to information, communication rights and refugee issues, including several books published by UNESCO.