SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
Laurier's efforts towards SDG 16 are reflected in various initiatives and actions that aim to foster peace, justice, transparency and inclusivity on its campuses and within the broader global community. Through engaged work with government and non-governmental partners, Laurier is actively seeking ways to positively impact society.
See some of the work that Laurier completed in 2022 to advance SDG 16.
Staff members from the Dean of Students Office, Laurier International, the Student Wellness Centre and Student Finance worked closely with campus partners and student groups to provide coordinated support to those adversely impacted by the war in Ukraine. Support – including academic accommodation, counselling, emergency bursaries and immigration advising – is ongoing and designed to meet the individual needs of students.
Laurier’s student-run International Students Overcoming War club is changing lives by creating opportunity for scholars from war-torn countries.
Laurier Helps Ukraine, a Laurier student club, invited the community to a benefit concert and silent auction to support various organizations assisting Ukrainians impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Laurier’s Centre for Public Safety and Well-Being, based in the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, won two awards as part of the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education’s (CAUCE) annual awards competition, which recognizes programs and courses at CAUCE member institutions for excellence in achieving their educational objectives.
A new university-community partnership will help refugee-claimant youth in Canada continue their education at Laurier. Laurier and our International Students Overcoming War (ISOW) club entered a five-year partnership with COMPASS Refugee Centre, a resettlement organization in Kitchener, to offer the ISOW Newcomer Scholarship Program. The scholarship program assists up to two recipients per academic year with undergraduate tuition fees in any Laurier program and is renewable if eligibility criteria – including refugee-claimant status and financial need – are met.
Explore the work that Laurier research centres do to promote peace and inclusion.
The Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa (TISCA) is a university-wide research centre with members across multiple faculties involved in Afrocentric research projects. TISCA’s vision is to provide scholars specializing in Africa with a platform and voice to produce and share timely interdisciplinary knowledge and discourse about issues affecting contemporary Continental Africa and its diaspora. TISCA’s mission is to promote global awareness and excellence in knowledge development on issues in contemporary Africa and the African diaspora in Canada and beyond.
Laurier's International Migration Research Centre (IMRC) serves as a node of excellence in scholarship and research, social and cultural debate and policy formulation pertaining to international migration. IMRC's mission is to create platforms for debate, research, policy analysis, community engagement, and proposal development related to international migration and mobility at global, national, regional and local scales.
The UN Development Program provides a framework for defining “human security” as a freedom from fear, want, poverty and despair, and the work of Laurier's Centre for Research on Security Practices (CRSP) both engages and extends this definition. The centre does so by thinking through global and state-level practices of security and securitization that uphold structural forms of power and which, somewhat paradoxically, leave particular populations vulnerable.
Learn more about Laurier initiatives in 2022 that helped advance SDG 16.
Laurier is strongly committed to upholding free speech and free expression on its campuses. Our commitment is reflected in our founding documents and policies, and has been recently further articulated in our Statement on Freedom of Expression.
The Visiting Researcher - Scholars at Risk Program at Laurier was established to support scholars who are facing threats to their life, liberty or academic career, and/or have been forced to leave their academic position because of such threats. The program is fully remote and allows scholars to remotely re-engage with academia after being pushed outside the university space.
International Students Overcoming War (ISOW) is a multi-faceted initiative unique to Laurier that brings students, staff and faculty together to enable students from war conflict countries to study in safety and security in Canada. Initiated by students in 2014, ISOW is primarily student-led and student-funded. ISOW embodies the university’s commitment to academic excellence, diversity and experiential learning.