Adelle Blackett appointed Senior Advisor to the Director-General at UN’s International Labour Organization
The Faculty of Law is proud to announce that Professor Adelle Blackett, FRSC, Ad E, has been appointed senior advisor to Mr. Gilbert Houngbo, Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva.
The ILO is a specialized agency of the United Nations devoted to advancing social justice and international labour rights. Founded in 1919 under the League of Nations, its guiding principle is that “universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice.” Â鶹AV holds a – during World War II, the ILO took refuge in Canada, being housed on the Â鶹AV campus from 1940 to 1948.
During her term at the ILO, set to begin on 5 February 2025, Professor Blackett will be the ILO focal point to the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. She will serve as a cornerstone for research at the ILO, a role that will dovetail with the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law she has held at Â鶹AV since 2016.
Adelle Blackett, BCL’94, LLB’94, is a full professor at the Â鶹AV Faculty of Law. An internationally acclaimed scholar, she has received three honorary doctorates in law (Queen’s University, UniversitĂ© Catholique de Louvain and Simon Fraser University). She is the author of (Cornell University Press, 2019), which received the 2020 Canadian Council on International Law scholarly book award. A beloved teacher and mentor, Professor Blackett received the Â鶹AV Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2020. She has made remarkable contributions to advancing equity in Canadian academia, most notably as the principal drafter for the .
Professor Blackett has been steadfastly committed to improving the employment conditions of marginalized workers in Canada and abroad. From 2021 to 2023, she chaired Canada’s Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, which led to a governmental to create employment equity groups for Black people and for 2SLGBTQI+ people. A former ILO official, Professor Blackett was the chief legal architect behind the ILO's first comprehensive international standards offering protections and rights to more than 60 million domestic workers (Convention No. 189 and Recommendation No. 201), and subsequently prepared a draft Haitian labour code. In 2023, she was awarded the Labour Law Research Network’s Bob Hepple Lifetime Achievement Award in Labour Law.
“While we’ll miss Professor Blackett during her leave of absence, we’re proud to see our colleague tapped by the head of the ILO to bring her social justice leadership to the global stage,” said Dean Robert Leckey, Ad E. “Professor Blackett’s impact as a scholar, educator, and engaged citizen has been truly exceptional, and she will undoubtedly contribute significantly in this new role.”