Rachel Kiddell-Monroe is a lawyer and activist specializing in humanitarian assistance, global health, governance, and bioethics. She is passionate about social justice and about finding ways to show humanity and solidarity for people and our planet. In 2018, Rachel founded SeeChange Initiative, a non-profit organization that works with a radical community-first approach to humanitarian health response. Projects include work with Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic and Indigenous communities in Central America and West Africa.
This initiative builds on Rachel’s long history of humanitarian work, which began in 1989 when she left her legal practice to work on Indigenous rights and East Timorese independence with grassroots organizations in Indonesia. From there, Rachel joined Médecins Sans Frontières and headed various emergency humanitarian missions in Djibouti, Rwanda (before, during, and after the genocide), and Democratic Republic of Congo. After becoming program director of MSF Canada, she was appointed regional humanitarian affairs advisor for Latin America based in Costa Rica. She also led the MSF Access to Medicines Campaign in Canada until 2007.
Rachel became the founding president of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines in 2007, and most recently she served as a director on MSF's International Board, its highest governance platform. In 2013, Rachel was invited to be a professor of practice at McGill University, where she lectures on international development, humanitarian action, and access to medicines. She completed her LLM in bioethics at McGill, and her thesis focused on a multi-centric approach to global governance for health. Rachel has (co)authored several peer-reviewed publications, most recently on access to medicines, humanitarian ethics, and the global refugee crisis.
Themes | Global Health & Humanitarianism |
Status | Active |
Related Work | |
Updates |
You may also be interested in...
Recap — Utilizing Academic Research to Support Real-Time Decision-Making in Health and Humanitarian Crises
On November 30th, Dr. Ahmad Firas Khalid delivered an interactive seminar about how the Canadian Red Cross makes decisions using scientific, real-time evidence amidst health and humanitarian crises. Twenty-six participants discussed the Red Cross' involvement ...Read more about this Post
Reflections from the Humanitarian Response Network of Canada’s Triannual Meeting and Sphere Training
Originally published by Lassonde School of Engineering (21 September 2023). Bergeron Centre for Engineering Excellence, York University In June, York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering hosted a three-day event for the Humanitarian Response Network of Canada’s (HRN) Triannual ...Read more about this Post
York University Leads Water Sustainability Event Featuring Panel of Renowned Experts
The UN Global Water Academy was announced in March 2023 at the UN Water Conference in New York City. It is a multi-stakeholder collaboration between the United Nations, academic institutions, private sector partners, and with ...Read more about this Post