Mark Erik Hecht is a lawyer, academic and human rights advocate. He is currently Manager, Legal Services and In-house Counsel to the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa and Senior Legal Counsel (pro bono) to Beyond Borders ECPAT Canada. Prior to his recent appointments, Dr. Hecht was Visiting Professor at the University of Ottawa and Assistant Professor and Access to Justice Fellow at the University of Windsor. His primary research interest is international child law, specifically the role and involvement of the private sector in the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Dr. Hecht has sat on the Board of Trustees for ECPAT International, the Canadian government’s Senate Committee against the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth, and the Patron Board of the Alliance for the Rights of Children. He is the Permanent Secretary for CINCYR: The Canadian Information Network on Child and Youth Rights.
From 2000-2004, Dr. Hecht was the Executive Director of Human Rights International Documentation Network, a non-government organization that specializes in human rights networking, research and documentation in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. In that capacity, he was a member of the Canadian delegation to the three UN World Congresses against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and key-note speaker at the UNESCO Meeting of Experts in Paris on the subject of child protection on the Internet. He recently acted as moderator at the Human Rights and the Internet colloquium in Canada and the First Conference of the Americas on Child Pornography on the Internet in Brazil.
Dr. Hecht continues to lecture in the law schools at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa and the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec. He also teaches in the graduate program at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and Australian National University in Canberra.