S. Michael Lynk Professor; Former Human Rights Special Rapporteur

Michael Lynk is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Law, Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, where he taught from 1999 to 2022. He specialized in labor law, human rights, disability law, constitutional law, and administrative law, and served as Associate Dean from 2008 to 2011. His scholarship has been cited by both the Supreme Court of Canada and the International Court of Justice.

In May 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously appointed Professor Lynk as the 7th Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. During his six-year term, he delivered regular reports to the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council on human rights trends in the occupied territories, completing his term in April 2022.

He has shared insights from his UN experiences in the book Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations, co-authored with Richard Falk and John Dugard, both of whom are his predecessors as UN special rapporteurs (Clarity Press, 2022).