CGHR Practitioner Series: Lent 2019
For those hoping to pursue a career in the ‘Third Sector’, especially amidst a broad range of organisations and agencies whose mandates can be loosely collected under the umbrella headings of ‘Human Rights and Social Justice’, ‘Conflict and Security’ or ‘Development and Humanitarian Aid,’ the terrain can be difficult to navigate. A sound academic training, the kind provided by Cambridge University, is important but certainly not enough to prepare students for the transition into working in this sector. Through a mixture of substantive discussion, personal reflection and practical advice, the CGHR Practitioner Series brings together high‐level experts working in these fields and creates a forum in which students and researchers can listen and ask questions about what this work actually involves, seek out reflections from experience on the dilemmas and challenges faced, and probe the skill set and experience needed to forge a career in these fields.
23rd January: Sam Dubberley, Amnesty International
Sam Dubberley is special advisor to the Crisis Response team and manger of the Digital Verification Corps at Amnesty International. Prior to joining Amnesty, Sam worked for more than a decade in broadcast journalism, and was head of news at the European Broadcasting Union between 2010 and 2013. As a fellow of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, he co-authored a global study exploring the use of user-generated content or UGC in TV and online news. He is a founding partner of First Draft News which gives practical and ethical guidance in how to find, verify and publish content sourced from the social web, a research consultant for the Human Rights Big Data and Technology Project at the University of Essex and part of the OSR4 Rights team at Swansea University. He studied MML at King’s College (1995).
20th February: Rt. Hon. Sir Stephen O’Brien KBE, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
Sir Stephen O'Brien is a British internationalist, politician, diplomat, industrialist and lawyer who completed his term as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator towards the end of 2017.
In 2004 he founded, and then served as first chairman, of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases. He has also been Co-founder/Chairman of the leading NGO , Malaria Consortium, Vice-President/Director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and is now Chair of the Innovative Vector Control Consortium, Global Advocate for the UN/WHO’s inter-agency Roll Back Malaria Partnership. He was appointed to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Privy Council in 2013.
After serving as a Conservative MP and in various shadow ministerial roles, he was appointed the Prime Minister’s Envoy and UK Special Representative to the Sahel in Africa, and later on United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, leading the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
As the world’s leading advocate for crisis-affected people, he argued for compliance and accountability under International Humanitarian law and unimpeded access to people in need. His responsibilities included oversight of all UN humanitarian operations globally, and leadership of coordination mechanisms between UN agencies and other partners. In recognition of his leadership and achievements in humanitarian and development work, Stephen O’Brien was awarded a Knighthood (KBE) in June 2017.
Born in Tanzania, Sir Stephen was educated in Kenya and the United Kingdom, where he attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge University and qualified as a lawyer.
6th March: Clive Baldwin, Human Rights Watch
Clive Baldwin works as Senior Legal Advisor for the legal and policy office at Human Rights Watch, where he has been working on issues of international law since 2007. His areas of focus include the Middle East, north and west Africa and discrimination law.
Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Clive Baldwin was a practicing lawyer in London for the human rights law firm, Bindman and Partners, and also worked on European human rights litigation at the AIRE Centre. He subsequently worked for the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, and later served as Head of Advocacy for Minority Rights Group International. While at Minority Rights Group, he implemented the organisation’s first global litigation program, which brought cases to international legal bodies on behalf of the rights of minorities around the world.
One of the cases he litigated and won included the Endorois Community v Kenya, the first indigenous land rights case at the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights. In Finci v Bosnia-Hercegovina, he successfully challenged the Bosnian constitution’s exclusion of Jews from the presidency and upper house of parliament in the first such ruling of the European Court of Human Rights.
Most recently, Clive Baldwin helped Human Rights Watch initiate a case with two other organisations against Libya at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights based on allegations that numerous human rights violations had occurred. His efforts resulted in the first ruling against a state by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Clive Baldwin received a bachelor degree in international history and politics from the University of Leeds, a master in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and studied law at City University, London.