Dr Chaloka Beyani
Centre member
Chaloka is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he is a Senior Lecturer in Law and a member of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and Chair of its Advisory Board.
He is also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons. In this capacity, his official Report to the General Assembly in 2011 dealt with the human rights aspects of climate change and internal displacement.
Chaloka is Visiting Professor of International Law at the University of Toronto and Santa Clara University.
Chaloka is a member on the following Editorial boards:
He is a member of the following boards of charitable bodies:
Background
Chaloka Beyani studied law at the University of Oxford (D.Phil) and at the University of Zambia (UNZA)(LLB, LLM). He has taught international law, human rights, and public law at Oxford and UNZA.
He joined the Department of Law at LSE in 1996. He was formerly a Research Fellow at Wolfson college, Oxford, with Lectureships in Law at Exeter and St. Catherine's colleges, Oxford, and a Crown Prince of Jordan Fellow, Queen Elizabeth House, as part of the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford.
Chaloka has served as a legal advisor and expert to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, United Nations Development Fund for Women, the European Union, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the African Union.
Chaloka was a member of the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons of the African Union on the Formation of an African Union Government. He has served as an expert to the African Union on the issue of universal jurisdiction and was a member of the joint African Union and European Union ad hoc Expert Group on Universal Jurisdiction.
Chaloka has practical legal and political experience in making national constitutions. He was a member of the official Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review of the Republic of Kenya, the Committee that drafted and prepared the Constitution of Kenya, which was adopted by referendum in 2010. He also has practical legal and diplomatic experience in making treaties or conventions, having drafted and negotiated the adoption of the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons 2009. He also drafted and negotiated the adoption of 11 peace treaties under the framework of the Pact on Peace, Stability and Development of the Great Lakes Region 2006.
Research interests
-
International law and human rights;
-
Gender;
-
International criminal law and aspects of the laws of armed conflict;
-
Human rights and humanitarian assistance;
-
The movement of persons and populations, including migration, trafficking, refugees and displaced persons;
-
Territorial and maritime disputes;
-
The collapse of state authority;
-
Democracy and constitutional reform
-
Legal aspects of mercenaries and the regulation of private military companies;
-
The state and other actors' responsibility for human rights;
-
Climate Change, human rights, displacement;
-
Treaty making;
-
Constitution making.
Contact details