Oscar Benavides Calvachi

Master’s Student in Political Science

benavides_calvachi.oscar_fernando@courrier.uqam.ca

I hold a law degree (1999) and am a specialist in human rights from the Escuela Superior de Administración Pública in Bogotá, Colombia (2005). I have dedicated my professional life to the defense and promotion of human rights, particularly in contexts of political violence. In the late 2000s, under a far-right Colombian government, I was forced to leave my country and relocate to Brazil. There, I worked as National Coordinator of a peace program. My areas of work focused on the prevention of violence against women and education (2009–2012).

From 2013 to 2017, I served as National Director of an international cooperation organization in Mexico. My main areas of work in Mexico included peacebuilding, education, support for people in situations of forced migration, and gender equity.

In Canada, after 2019, I served as General Coordinator of the Quebec–Guatemala Accompaniment Project, as well as Executive Director of the Centre d’analyse sociale Justice et foi and the journal Relations in Montreal. I am also a member of the Board of Directors of the Clinique pour la justice migrante.

I am currently developing my supervised research project which, within a decolonial feminist analytical framework, seeks to identify the factors that render the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE/OCRE) ineffective in protecting human rights violated by Canadian mining companies operating abroad. My preliminary hypothesis is that the OCRE is ineffective insofar as it is a modern institution that ultimately reproduces a form of public administration whose primary purpose is not the protection of life, women’s rights, and the environment. My research supervisor is Professor Nora Nagels.

Languages : Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Italian.

Research Interests:

• Human Rights
• Epistemologies of the Global South
• Feminism / Gender
• International Development Cooperation