Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe

Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer and doctoral researcher under the European Research Council funded project ‘DISSECT: Evidence in International Human Rights Adjudication’ at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University (Belgium). Her research project looks at the use of digital open source information (including social media content) as evidence in international human rights adjudication.

Her career has involved human rights activism, advocacy, conducting research and legal practice in the judiciary and civil society in Southern Africa, the UK and Asia. In 2020 and 2021 she worked for the Asia Justice Coalition as its International Human Rights and Justice Advocacy, Campaigns and Communications Fellow. She was previously the Strategic Impact Litigation Specialist at the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and a senior researcher to the judges in the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe. In the past, she has also provided legal support to civil society organisations including the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights), Youth Empowerment Transformation Trust (YETT), Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), Swansea University and the OECD Social Institutions and Gender Index (2019). She has also published on various topics on international human rights and protection.

Ruwa is a previous recipient of the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship and an inaugural Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sky Global Challenges Scholar. During her visit at Bonavero, Ruwa will research on land dispossession and human rights violations being perpetrated in the name of development with a particular focus on ethnic-minorities in Uganda and Zimbabwe.