Professor S. Michael Lynk has been a Law for Palestine Board of Trustees member since October 2022. He is an Associate Professor of Law at Western University in London, Ontario, where he teaches courses in Canadian labour law, Canadian human rights law, international human rights law and Canadian constitutional law.
Between 2016 and 2022, he served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. In this capacity, he delivered regular human rights reports to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the 3rd Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. His UN reports have been widely cited, he has frequently spoken to UN, academic and institutional conferences in North America, Europe and the Middle East and he has regularly published opinion pieces on the role of international law respecting the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Earlier in his career, Prof. Lynk worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on human rights and refugee issues in Jerusalem.
Prof. Lynk has written widely on labour law and human rights issues in Canada and on the application of international law to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He is the co-author, with Michael Mac Neil and Peter Engelmann, of Trade Union Law in Canada (Thomson Reuters), the co-editor, with John Craig, of Globalization and the Future of Labour Law (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and the co-editor, with Susan Akram, Michael Dumper and Iain Scobbie, of International Law and the Middle East Conflict (Routledge, 2011).
In January 2015, he was named to the Mayor of London’s Honours List for his work on humanitarian issues.
Professor Lynk earned a Bachelor of Arts degree (with honours) from Dalhousie University in 1974, followed by a LLB from the same university in 1981, before completing a master of law at Queen’s University in 2001.