The Commission

United Kingdom

Sir Nicolas Bratza is a British lawyer and a former President of the European Court of Human Rights. He took silk as Queen’s Counsel in 1988 and in 1993, was appointed a Recorder of the Crown Court, elected a Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. and appointed as the UK Member of the European Commission of Human Rights, part of the European Convention on Human Rights system of the Council of Europe. In 1998, the European Court of Human Rights was established and he was elected to represent the UK. He was a vice-president of the court from 2007 to 2011, then succeeded Jean-Paul Costa as President. His term ended in October 2012. He is a member of the Advisory Council and former Vice-Chairman of the British Institute of Human Rights, a member of the Advisory Board of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and a member of the Editorial Board of the European Human Rights Law Review.

New Zealand

Dame Silva Cartwright was Governor-General of New Zealand from 2001 – 2006 and the first woman appointed to the High Court in New Zealand. She was a judge on the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. She has served on the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and played a role in drafting the optional protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In 2006 Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea awarded her an honorary doctorate, and she holds honorary doctorates from three New Zealand Universities. She is also a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) and Principal Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (PCNZM).

Lebanon

Nahla Haidar is the Vice-Chair of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and was a member of the Working Group on Communications under the Optional Protocol to the Convention (2015 – 2016 & 2019 – 2020) and of the Working Group on Inquiries (2017 – 2018). She has been CEDAW’s Rapporteur on Reprisals since July 2018. Nahla has over 35 years of professional experience mainly within the United Nations System, in various capacities, both at headquarters and in the field, ranging from social development, to relief coordination, to peace-building and to development cooperation. She holds an LLM in Law from Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, and Law degree in International Law from Saint Josef University in Beirut Lebanon and a licence in Sociology.

Palestine

Shawan is a Palestinian human rights defender and the General Director of Al-Haq, an independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation and an ICJ affiliate. He began his career as a fieldworker in the southern West Bank for Al Haq and acquired a MA in human rights from Galway University in Ireland before becoming the General Director of Al-Haq. In August 1990, during one of his administrative detention terms, Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. In November 1994, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his detention to be arbitrary. Following his release in early 1998, the Israeli authorities allowed him to travel abroad eight times over seven years before imposing an indefinite travel ban in 2006. Shawan has won numerous awards from various European and American organisations. He is also a member of the MENA board at Human Rights Watch.

South Africa

Azhar Cachalia is a Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, having served as Judge of the South African High Court from 2001 – 2005. In 1983 he was a founding member of the United Democratic Front (a coalition of anti-apartheid organisations in South Africa) and has worked with numerous community organisations throughout his life. Between 1977 and 1989 he was detained and banned on several occasions for his anti-apartheid activity. From 1996 to 1999 he served in Government as Secretary for Safety and Security. In 1999 he returned to legal practice.

Zimbabwe

Justice Moses Hungwe Chinhengo is one of the three drafters of the new constitution of Zimbabwe. From March 2004 – March 2012 he was a Judge of the High Court of Botswana. He previously served as a Judge of the High Court of Zimbabwe, resigning from that position in 2004 due to what he perceived as executive interference in the judiciary in Zimbabwe. Prior to becoming a judge he worked as a practising lawyer for several years. From 1983 to 1989 he worked for the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and rose to the position of Chief Law Officer in the Legislative Department of the Ministry. In 2013, he co-founded the African Institute of Mediation and Arbitration (AIMA) in Harare, Zimbabwe and is a managing director of the Institute. He is also a lecturer in the Department of Procedural Law at the University of Zimbabwe.

Sierra Leone

Commissioner Jamesina Essie Leonora King is the first Sierra Leonean to be sworn in as a Commissioner of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights. In 2007, she was the first Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRCSL). She served as Commissioner in the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone from 1996 – 2016. Prior to this, she worked as a private legal practitioner in Basma & Macaulay, a law firm in Sierra Leone from 1994 to 2006. She holds a postgraduate degree from Georgetown University Law Centre, Washington D.C. and a certificate in “Implementing Human Rights Conventions” from the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre in the UK. She is a Leadership Advocate for Women in Africa (LAWA) Fellow, and a past President and founding member of Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality Rights and Social Justice, an organisation of female lawyers in Sierra Leone dedicated to enhancing women’s access to justice. She was appointed as a judge of the High Court of Sierra Leone in 2017.

Venezuela

Carlos Ayala was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (I-ACHR), serving as Chairman between 1996 and 1999 and was also Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples’ Rights of the I-ACHR. He also served as President of the Venezuelan Association of Constitutional Law at that time and, since 1998, has been President Honoris Causa. He was a member of the Andean Commission of Jurists from 1992 to 2009, serving as President in 2003 to 2009. Carlos has been a professor at a number of universities, including Universidad Católica “Andrés Bello” (UCAB) and Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) in Caracas, Georgetown University and American University in the USA and the University of Oxford in the UK. He is currently a partner in the Caracas law firm Ayala, Dillon, Fernández & Linares (Consultores Jurídicos). Since 1998, Carlos has been a member of the Board of the Ibero-American Institute of Constitutional Law and chairman of the Venezuela Chapter. He has been a member of the International Human Rights Institute IBA in London since 2009.

United States

Mr Reed Brody is counsel for the victims of the former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré, who was convicted of crimes against humanity in a special court in Senegal. Previously, he worked on the cases of Augusto Pinochet and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. From 1998 to 2016, he was Counsel and Spokesperson for Human Rights Watch, where he was author of four HRW reports on U.S. treatment of prisoners in the “war on terror” and the book “Faut-il Juger George Bush?” He has also served as Deputy Chief of the UN Secretary-General’s Investigative Team in the Democratic Republic of Congo (SGIT), Director of the Human Rights Division of the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL), advisor to the government of Haiti for the prosecution of serious crimes, and Executive Director of the International Human Rights Law Group. He coordinated the ICJ 1997 report “Tibet: Human Rights and the Rule of Law.” From 1987 to 1992 he was director of the ICJ’s Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers and then ICJ Executive Secretary. His 1984 investigation uncovered atrocities by the U.S.-backed “contras” against Nicaraguan civilians. He has taught courses on accountability for international crimes at Columbia Law School and the American University Washington College of Law. Mr Brody is on the advisory board of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. His work has been featured in five films, including “The Dictator Hunter.”

Canada

Ms. Leilani Farha is a Canadian lawyer and Global Director at The Shift, a worldwide movement aimed at securing the right to housing, which she launched in 2017 with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Cities and Local Government. She served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing between 2014 and 2020. She is also the central figure in the award-winning documentary film, “Push”, on the financialization of housing. Ms. Farha has helped develop global human rights standards on the right to housing, including through reports on homelessness, informal settlements, rights-based housing strategies, and the first UN Guidelines for the implementation of the right to housing. She is also the former Executive Director of non-profit organisation, Canada Without Poverty, and currently runs a bi-monthly podcast called Pushback Talks which focuses on the global housing crisis.

Peru

César Landa is a Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and the former dean of the PUCP School of Law. As a former Minister of Foreign Affairs (2022) and President and Justice of the Peruvian Constitutional Court (2004 – 2010) Prof. Landa has played an important role in strengthening human rights in Peru and the region. He has previously served as Vice Minister of the Peruvian Ministry of Justice and ad hoc judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He is a professor honoris causa at five Peruvian universities and honorary professor at the Universidad Alcalá de Henares in Spain. He has been a visiting professor at Universidad de Pompeu Fabra, Universidad de León, Universidad Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in France, Universidade de Fortaleza in Brazil and Renmin University of China. He has published several books and articles about constitutional matters and human rights.

Guatemala

Claudia Paz y Paz is Director of the Mexico and Central America Program of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). She holds a PhD in Criminal Law from the University of Salamanca, Spain. She was the first woman to hold the position of Attorney General of Guatemala (2010-2014). She was part of the Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in charge of investigating the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico; as well as of a second iteration of the GIEI, which was in charge of investigating the violence that took place in Nicaragua in 2018.

Colombia

Catalina Botero Marino is a lawyer, director of the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Expression at Universidad de Los Andes, former co-chair of the Oversight Board of Facebook and Instagram and an expert of Columbia University’s Columbia Global Freedom of Expression project.

She is also a member of the external transparency panel of the Inter-American Development Bank, commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists and member of the Advisory Board of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI).

She is an adjunct professor at American University’s Human Rights Academy and visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. She was Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights/OAS, Dean of the Faculty of Law of the Universidad de Los Andes, and an Associate Judge of the Constitutional Court and of the Council of State in Colombia. 

Mexico

José Luis Caballero Ochoa has an LLB from the Monterrey Institute of Technology University, a master’s degree in law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a Ph.D. in law from the National University of Distance Education (Spain). He also has a diploma in human rights and processes of democratization from the Chile University. He is part of the National System of Investigators (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores) in Mexico. He has participated in multiples academic and citizen commissions and boards in Mexico, including the Council of the Human Rights Commission of the Federal District; the Advisory Committee of the Center for Constitutional Studies of the Supreme Court of Justice; the Board of Directors of the Federal Institute of Public Defense; the Selection Commission of the Citizen Participation Committee of the National Anticorruption System, Board of Directors of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, among others. He is an academic and researcher at the law department of the Ibero-American University in Mexico City, and teaches constitutional law and human rights at various Mexican universities. He has been a panelist at conferences and forums in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Colombia, Spain, the United States and Peru. As a legal consultant and expert, he has written bills, amicus curiae, and international expert opinions, such as the expert opinion in the San Miguel de Sosa and other vs. Venezuela case handed down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He has published more than 80 book chapters and articles in specialized publications on constitutional law, human rights and international human rights law. He has also published books in these areas. He is currently serving his first term as an ICJ Commissioner having been elected in 2021.