Skip to main content

Lecture spotlights the moral challenges of international peacekeeping

Kim O'Toole lecture poster

In 2013, Kimberley O’Toole put her life in Canada on hold and flew across the globe to the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan. For a full year, Ms. OToole, who teaches in the Justice Studies program at the University of Guelph-Humber, served on a peacekeeping mission to train members of the Afghan National Police and prosecutors in the Attorney General’s Office. As a gender and human rights advisor and a rule of law expert, Prof. O’Toole was helping them bring their civil services in line with international law.

“The lecture will be a case study centred on human rights, based on an actual case I worked on while on mission,” says Prof. O’Toole. “It’s about the story of my working with an Afghan prosecutor on the case of a girl who’s been the victim of a crime. We follow the law and follow the rules, and she suffers because those laws butt into cultural rules.”

Prof. O’Toole is telling the whole story of her experience in Afghanistan at the second installment of Academic Services’ Winter 2016 Lecture Series on Thursday, March 10 at 11:00am. The lecture will confront the moral challenges Prof’ O’Toole encountered during her work.

Prof. O’Toole says that while a criminal and penal code are enforced in Afghanistan, the nation also adheres to Sharia Law and its deeply-rooted religious customs. Often, these come into conflict with each other.    

“We imposed what we thought were appropriate measures according to Western law, but I’m left wondering if that was the right thing to do because she’s now facing cultural and religious consequences,” she says.

The complexities of a peacekeeping mission mean that there often aren’t clear-cut answers to questions like this, but Prof. O’Toole hopes to give the audience at the lecture a sense of what happens.

“I want the audience to understand the importance of balancing the culture and norms of where the peacekeepers originate from with where they’re going to,” she says. “I went in with good intentions, and wanted to help this girl. Now, two years out, I still struggle with what happened.”

To hear the story of Prof. O’Toole’s time in Afghanistan, attend “Peacekeeping in Afghanistan - My Moral Dilemma”

Date: Thursday, March 10

Time: 11:00am-1:00pm

Location: GH424 

Seats at the lecture are limited, so RSVP to academicservices@guelphhumber.ca to save your spot.