Alex Neve

Robert Alexander Neve, OC (born May 24, 1962[1]) is a Canadian human rights activist and served as the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada between 2000 and 2020. He is presently an adjunct professor in international human rights with the law schools at the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University, a Senior Fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and a Fellow with the Atlantic Human Rights Centre at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Alex Neve at the Amnesty International National Office - Ottawa

Alex Neve with Erika Guevara Rosas Director for the Americas at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International and Tara Scurr, the Business and Human Rights Campaigner for Amnesty Canada

Born in Calgary, Alberta, the son of Robert Rex Neve and Jean Elizabeth Taylor, Neve received a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1984 and a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1987 from Dalhousie University. A few years later, he went to England to study international human rights law, receiving a Master of Laws degree, With Distinction, from the University of Essex in 1991.[1] He is married to Patricia Goyeche[1] and they have three children.

Neve practiced law in Toronto, in private practice and in a community legal aid clinic with a focus in the areas of refugee and immigration law. He has been a member of Amnesty International since the mid-1980s and has worked for the organization nationally and internationally in a number of different roles, including leading and participating in over 40 research and advocacy delegations to 25 countries, including Tanzania, Guinea, Mexico, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Honduras, Zimbabwe, Côte d'Ivoire, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Mauritania, Bangladesh, Ghana, Guantánamo Bay, the United Nations in both Geneva and New York City, and numerous First Nations communities across Canada.[2][3]

In Toronto, he was affiliated with the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University and taught international human rights and refugee law at Osgoode Hall Law School.[3] He has authored and contributed many reports and studies for Amnesty International as well as legal submissions to parliamentary committees and United Nations human rights bodies, including the Maher Arar Commission. He regularly lectures, participates in conferences, and speaks and writes in the national media on a range of human rights topics.[4] Before taking on the role of secretary general in January 2000, he served as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.[2]

Within Canada, Neve has been involved with such issues as the Lubicon Cree, Grassy Narrows First Nation, Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, the Site C Dam in NE British Columbia, the Ontario Provincial Police killing of Dudley George, the national security cases of Omar Khadr, Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Abou El-Maati, Muayyed Nureddin and Abousfian Adelrazik, the extradition of Hassan Diab, Canadian military prisoner transfers in Afghanistan, the human rights accoountability of Canadian mining companies in Guatemala, Colombia, Eritrea and other countries, the Canada/US Safe Third Country Agreement, and Canadian arms sales to Saudi Arabia.