Board Member Spotlight: Chris Waters

Occupation: Law Professor, University of Windsor

Predominant Area of Law: International Humanitarian Law is my main area, but I also work on cities as international law actors and sit on the on the ILA’s Urbanisation and International Law Committee. The role of cities and other subnational actors in tackling climate change and other pressing issues will be increasingly important I suspect.

What are the challenges and/or opportunities faced by international law and/or your area of international law?

"International Humanitarian Law (IHL), or the law of armed conflict, is a contentious area right now. But it is understudied in Canadian law schools. That’s not surprising in one sense - the community of practice in Canada is quite small and Canadian positions on IHL matters can be opaque. To help remedy that in a small way, I had the pleasure of collaborating with co-authors from military and civil society backgrounds, on a book which provides an account of IHL from a Canadian perspective. The Canadian Handbook on International Humanitarian Law, by Steve Tiwa Fomekong, Catherine Gribbin, Andrew Thomson and me, is forthcoming from LexisNexis shortly. We hope it will be a practical guide for Canadian practitioners and academics on IHL issues. That scholarship-practitioner interface is a lot of fun, and sometimes a challenge, but, like the opportunities provided by ILA Canada, can lead to rich  collaboration."