Bonavero Annual Lecture: Promoting human rights in the next decade: Challenges and Opportunities

10 December 2023 marked the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly and it is therefore an appropriate moment to constitute a panel to discuss the challenges and opportunities that will be encountered in promoting human rights at international, regional and domestic levels in the decade ahead. The panel will draw together a geographically diverse group of experts working in strategic human rights litigation, constitution-building and democratic transitions, policy-making and community and campaign advice. Most of the panel members are members of the Bonavero Institute Advisory Council, who will be in Oxford for the annual meeting of the Advisory Council this week.

The event will also mark the launch of the Bonavero Annual Highlights 2023-2024, an online report that provides an overview of the programmes, research and events hosted by the Bonavero over the last year.

Adem Abebe

Adem Kassie Abebe supports constitution-building processes around the world, and designs and implements projects particularly in transitions to peace and democracy in politically complex and fragile contexts. He convens platforms for dialogue, advises and provides technical assistance to high level constitution and decision makers at national and international levels and to civil society stakeholders. He was an editor of and managed ConstitutionNet from 2016 to 2021, an online platform providing continuous updates on comparative constitutional reform processes around the world. A notable feature of ConstitutionNet is 'Voices from the Field', a series in which local experts provide analysis and updates on the process, content and principal actors in ongoing constitutional-reform proposals.

He is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I.CON) and Vice President and member of the Executive Committee of the African Network of Constitutional Lawyers (ANCL). In addition to his extensive publications, Abebe regularly publishes opinion pieces in prominent platforms including Foreign Policy and The Conversation and has appeared as commentator on major international and media outlets such as The BBC World News and France 24. He has also delivered lectures at universities in Belgium, Ethiopia, Germany, The Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland, and is invited to participate in high level conferences. He has served as assistant professor in the postgraduate studies programme of the Faculty of Law of the University of Addis Ababa.

Abebe has been recognized as an Extraordinary Lecturer at the University of Pretoria.  He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law, and was also granted a Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (UK), Centre of Governance and Human Rights (2011) and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (2012). He has been recognized since 2015 as a Fellow of the Centre for Jurisprudence and Constitutional Studies at Kabarak University in Kenya.

Meghna Abraham

Meghna Abraham is an international human rights lawyer and expert on economic, social and cultural rights. She has worked with communities in all regions of the world to challenge the negative impacts of economic policies on their lives over the last twenty years. She has led campaigns, undertaken and overseen complex investigations, advocacy, legal analysis, and policy development. She currently advises foundations and NGOs on strategic, legal and policy issues and is also focusing on reparations for harms arising from the climate and biodiversity crises.

She was formerly the Executive Director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR). Prior to joining CESR, she worked for Amnesty International for more than a decade, including as the Director of Global Issues, Head of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Senior Researcher on Corporate Crimes. Meghna has held a range of management roles in other non-governmental organizations, including the Natural Resource Governance Institute, International Service for Human Rights, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, and World Organisation Against Torture. Earlier in her career, she worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, and Centre for Child and the Law, the National Law School. She has acted as an expert consultant for various NGOs and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Meghna is the Chair of the Board of the Natural Resource Charter Limited and a Fellow of the Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre.

She is an Indian national who holds a BA LLB (Hons) degree from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and BCL and MPhil in Law degrees from the University of Oxford.

Miriam Saage-Maaß

Dr Miriam Saage-Maaß is a German trained lawyer and Vice Legal Director of the European Center of Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), where she has built up the Business and Human Rights program. She has worked on various cases against corporations, including civil proceedings against German retailers relating to the exploitation of workers in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and against companies trading in cotton picked by forced child labour in Uzbekistan. Miriam is also engaged in criminal proceedings against high-ranking officials, for example in the European arms industry, for their involvement in the commission of international crimes.

Miriam regularly publishes articles on the question of corporate accountability for human rights violations in the global supply chain and consults internationally as an expert in corporate responsibility and human rights. She is a lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin and joined the Stiftung Forum Recht's advisory board in 2020.

Murray Hunt

Murray Hunt is Director of the Policy and Evidence Centre on Modern Slavery and Human Rights which recently moved to the University of Oxford.  The Centre is a collaborative partnership, including the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, which exists to bridge the divide between research and policy, working closely with policy-makers and the research community to bring into being the evidence, data and expert analysis required to inform good, human rights-based policy.  Murray has been a Visiting Professor in Human Rights Law at Oxford since 2011. He was Director of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law from 2017 to 2024, and has been the UK's alternate member of the Council of Europe's Commission for Democracy Through Law (the Venice Commission) since 2019.

Murray was Legal Adviser to the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the UK Parliament from 2004 to 2017.  Before that, he practised as a barrister for 12 years, specialising in public law and human rights, after studying law at Oxford and Harvard Law School.  Murray’s publications cover a wide range of public law and human rights issues, but focus in particular on the national implementation of international human rights norms, the capacity of the common law to provide the necessary normative foundation for such national implementation, and the importance of democratic considerations in any contemporary account of public law and human rights.  His current research interests focus on how to build the long-term resilience of human rights and the rule of law as essential features of democratic societies in an age of authoritarian populism and political polarisation.

Vincent Warren

Vincent Warren is the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York. He oversees CCR's groundbreaking litigation and advocacy work, which includes using international and domestic law to hold corporations and government officials accountable for human rights abuses; challenging racial, gender, and LGBT injustice; combating abusive immigration policies and Muslim profiling; and stopping the illegal expansion of U.S. presidential power and policies such as illegal detention at Guantanamo and torture. Prior to his tenure at CCR, Vince Warren was a national senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where he litigated civil rights cases, focusing on affirmative action, racial profiling, and criminal justice reform. Vince was also involved in monitoring South Africa's historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and worked as a criminal defense attorney for the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn. He is a graduate of Haverford College and Rutgers School of Law.

Vince Warren is a frequent guest on MSNBC and Democracy Now!  And has appeared on Moyers & Company with Bill Moyers, CNN, and Fox News. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Room for Debate, the Guardian, on the Huffington Post, and on CNN.com, among other publications.