Please be advised that I.V.S.I. has ended all of its former research and program evaluation work that was the essence of its formation in 1997, primarily researching offender program evaluation in the field of interpersonal violence while serving as a resource hub for students in the social sciences.
It has been a rewarding experience for myself and for the dedicated persons associated with our work over the decades. I am also hopeful this website with its many resources has additionally served my students well over the years during my teaching career.
As former Director of the Institute on Victimization and Social Injustice, I continue to work on a private biographical research project and am coordinating the first Canadian chapter of Exit International, a leading and revolutionary organization in the worldwide right-to-die movement.
Here are REFLECTIONS on the right-to-die-movement.
We are presently working to develop a new website called Farewell Foundation for the Right to Die further reflecting the transition of I.V.S.I. to our new focus for information and research on voluntary assisted dying, and additionally providing a platform on the web for the Canadian chapter of Exit International not limited only to legislated, medical assisted dying regimes. In keeping with a consistent human rights philosophy of I.V.S.I., we advance the human right of all persons to freely choose to have a peaceful, painless, dignified and reliable death. Where people are denied this right by any authority, they become victims blocked from self-deliverance as control of their own body is taken away from them. If life is a gift, depriving one the right to end it is an injustice and makes life an imposition. In Canada, as in many other countries today, suicide is no longer a crime, so why is assisting still criminalized?
Information about Exit International can be found at this link: www.exitinternational.net
The Canada chapter’s contact information:
Email
Phone: 604 738-2520
The website Farewell Foundation for the Right to Die (2024) is currently being developed. The Foundation has its roots in the Farewell Foundation for Research and Education created in February of 2012 by scholars who set out to understand why persons voluntarily assisted another to choose an assisted death in Canada. It presaged an end to an absolute prohibition on assisted suicide declared unconstitutional by the Canadian Supreme Court in 2015, and before the Government of Canada established its medical aid in dying (MAID) regime a year later. It was assumed then that there was no further purpose for the Foundation which was retired in October of 2016. However, increasing problems with MAID over the past seven years demanded a restoration for both research and support to those excluded from MAID and those choosing not to apply for it in the first place. Under its renewed name, the Foundation is now researching how other approaches for a voluntary assisted dying provision might be developed that can avoid most of the major challenges facing a legislated regime that is problematic for both applicants and service providers, a pathway nevertheless largely replicated in a growing number of jurisdictions and countries in many parts of the world. The link to the Foundation website is here.
You can still contact me personally at this email address
Jürgen Dankwort, MSW, PhD