Osgoode Professor & York Research Chair, Obiora Chinedu Okafor named UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity

Osgoode Professor & York Research Chair in International and Transnational Legal Studies Obiora Chinedu Okafor named by the United Nations Human Rights Council as the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity.

Professor Obiora Chinedu Okafor, the Canadian/ Nigerian lawyer joined Osgoode Hall Law School after holding faculty positions at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, Nigeria, and at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada and a Gani Fawehinmi Distinguished Chair of Human Rights Law at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.

Professor Okafor has published extensively in the fields of international human rights law and immigration/refugee law, as well as general public international law and he has authored lots of books. He has co-edited three books and edited three special journal issues, and published over seventy (70) journal articles, book chapters and other scholarly writings. He is the Editor of the Transnational Human Rights Review, and sits on the editorial advisory board of a number of scholarly periodicals. He is currently working on a SSHRC-funded partnership development research and dissemination project relating to Canadian/Nigerian human rights engagements; and on a project examining the comparative character of refugee rights in Canada and the USA post 9/11.

“I am happy to have the confidence of the states, civil society and other stakeholders who unanimously supported my election to this post,” said Okafor who, in assuming the new part-time UN position, will step down from his current role as Member and former Chairperson of the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee.