Racial justice expert to deliver Human Rights Centre Lecture

An international expert on racial justice is to deliver this year’s Human Rights Centre Lecture.

E. Tendayi Achiume has served, since 2017, as the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the fifth person to hold this role and the first woman.

On Thursday 30 July, Professor Achiume will deliver the Fourth Annual Lecture of the Human Rights Centre. Her title is “Racial Borders: The Urgency of a Racial Justice Critique of International Borders and Migration.”

E. Tendayi Achiume said: “Both the disparate impact of the COVID pandemic, and the recent transnational uprising against systemic racism have put racial justice on the global human rights agenda. In my talk I’ll aim to reflect on what urgent demands for racial justice mean for how we think about borders and international migration.”

Special Rapporteurs are independent experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific issues.

Professor Achiume is currently Professor of Law at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and a research associate of the African Center for Migration and Society (ACMS), at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. She is also a core faculty member of the UCLA Law School Promise Institute for Human Rights, the Critical Race Studies Program, and the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.

Her current focus is the global governance of racism and xenophobia; and the legal and ethical implications of colonialism for contemporary international migration.

Her recent publications include “Migration as Decolonization”, "Governing Xenophobia”, “Syria and the Responsibility to Protect Refugees” and “Beyond Prejudice: Structural Xenophobic Discrimination Against Refugees.”

The Human Rights Centre, founded in 1982, is a globally-renowned centre for the academic study of human rights. 

The Centre's Annual Lecture attracts leading experts from around the world.

The Fourth Annual Lecture of the Human Rights Centre, which will be delivered via Zoom, is open to all.