Toby Mendel is the executive director of the Center for Law and Democracy, a Canadian-based human rights non-governmental organisation.
The centre provides legal expertise regarding foundational rights for democracy, including the right to information, freedom of expression and the rights to assembly and association.
Prior to that he spend 12 years as senior director for law at Article 19, an NGO focused on freedom of expression. He has provided expertise on freedom of expression and the right to information to organisations including the World Bank, the UN and numerous governments and NGOs in countries all over the world. He has played a leading role in drafting legislation in the areas of the right to information and media regulation.
Before joining Article 19, he worked as a senior human rights consultant with Oxfam Canada and as a human rights policy analyst at the Canadian International Development Agency. He has published extensively on a range of freedom of expression, right to information, communication rights and refugee issues, including comparative legal and analytical studies on public service broadcasting, the right to information and broadcast policy.