ERNA PARIS is the author of seven acclaimed works of literary non-fiction and the winner of twelve national and international writing awards for her books, feature writing, and radio documentaries. Her works have been published in fourteen countries and translated into eight languages. Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History was chosen as one of “The Hundred Most Important Books Ever Written in Canada” by the Literary Review of Canada Her most recent work, The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Struggle for Justice was first on The Globe and Mail's “best book of the year” list and shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

 

Erna is a member of the Honorary Council of the Canadian Centre for International Justice; a member of the Canada Committee of Human Rights Watch; a member of the board of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; and a past chair of the Writers' Union of Canada.


News and Events

Monday, Apr. 29 2013, Globe and Mail

Rape is a weapon of war. In the past, women were carried away as booty, along with the loser’s gold and silver reserves. Occasionally, they became the subject of great theatre, as in Euripides’s still-raw drama of grief, The Trojan Women. Over the centuries, the wartime abuse of women has been considered inevitable, and thus secondary, to the story of conflict and conflict resolution.

Since the Bosnian wars of the 1990s, sexual violence has become so widespread and brutal that world leaders have finally begun to notice. Impunity has escalated this savagery. Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim women were raped in a campaign of terror, but, since 1995, there have been only 40 prosecutions and 30 convictions. The United Nations estimates that, in recent years, at least 200,000 women and girls have been raped in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (The details shock: In one Congolese village, 11 infants between six months and a year old were raped by soldiers.) [more]

Friday, January 25, 2013, Globe and Mail

Last week, in a desperate effort to derail Syria’s murderous civil war, the Swiss government and 55 countries from every region of the world collectively called on the United Nations Security Council to refer the crisis to the International Criminal Court. After almost two years of escalating atrocities, and the repeated failure of the international community to stop the violence, the signatories to the Swiss letter hoped that a few key criminal indictments might kick-start change. [more]

Monday, Nov. 19 2012, Globe and Mail

The tea-leaf readers were jittery during my recent visit to Beijing in the days leading up to the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China. Speculation about political reform peppered conversations, especially after a high-ranking official publicly acknowledged the need for change.

To the certain disappointment of many, the conservative-leaning lineup of top leaders announced Thursday is unlikely to meet these expectations. In fact, the status quo of surveillance, force, and repression may actually get worse, at least in the short term, as the Internet-savvy generation born in the 1990s begins to test boundaries. [more]

February, 2012

Erna is pleased to announce that the Persian-language edition of The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Struggle for Justice has been published by Enteshar Publication Co.,Tehran. In addition to being made available to the general public, the book will be studied by Iranian law students. In a separate edition, students will have access to the Rome Statute, the legal treaty that underlies the workings of the ICC. [more]

Thursday, Mar. 15, 2012, Globe and Mail

Guilty as charged. There was high drama in The Hague and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Wednesday as the judges of the International Criminal Court prepared to release the tribunal’s historic first judgment. The decision was unanimous. Between September, 2002, and August, 2003, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a Congolese warlord, had enlisted or kidnapped thousands of children under the age of 15 to fight in his militia. The conflict was over mineral resources in the northern district of Ituri. It is estimated that up to 60,000 civilians were killed in the violence. [more]

International Criminal Court Track Record

Thursday March 15, 2012, CBC Radio, The Current Well it did take a decade and piles of money for the International Criminal Court to get a conviction. And now the Congolese warlord who destroyed the lives of so many children forcing them to be child soldiers or sex slaves will be locked away. But of [...]

More »

National Magazine Award Winner

June 7, 2012 The New Solitudes, Erna’s Walrus magazine article on a changed Canada, won a silver medal at the Canadian National Magazine Awards.

More »

Nuremberg’s Forgotten Doppelganger
A cautionary tale of victors’ justice.

The Mauthausen Trial: American Military Justice in Germany, By Tomaz Jardim, Harvard University Press Reviewed By Erna Paris Literary Review of Canada, May 2012 “Shortly after 9:00 a.m. on May 27, 1947, the first of forty-nine men condemned to death for war crimes at Mauthausen concentration camp mounted the gallows in the courtyard of Landsberg [...]

More »

Charles Taylor Sentencing Brings World Closer to Humanitarian Vision of Justice

Saturday June 2, 2012, Globe and Mail Fifty years in prison. To receive his sentence, former Liberian president Charles Taylor was ordered to stand before the judges of the special court that had been convened to try him. Only a small involuntary movement of his lower lip marked the moment he understood the news.

More »

“Forum on Ethics,” Renmin University, Beijing China

October 24, 2012   Erna lectured in the Forum on Ethics program on the history of international humanitarian law culminating in the birth of the International Criminal Court.

More »

Human Rights Watch Meeting, Paris, France

September 24, 2012 Erna attended the Paris Committee meeting of Human Rights Watch, France, where she spoke about the strong work being done by the Toronto HRW Committee and office with regard to both international and Canadian rights issues.

More »

The Sun Climbs Slow

The Sun Climbs Slow

A compelling journey into the dramatic events behind the creation of the International Criminal Court.

Long Shadows

Long Shadows

A superb work of history and thought. A brilliantly conceived quest...