BIOGRAPHY

A human rights defender, activist, international lawyer, and specialist in human rights law, policy and methodology, Craig Mokhiber has served in the UN human rights programme since January of 1992, with postings in Geneva, New York, Palestine, and Afghanistan, and through field work and human rights missions in countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe.He has served as Chairman of the UN Task Force for Action Two (a global initiative to advance human rights-based approaches and the building of national protection systems), as Chairman of the UN Democracy Fund consultative group, as Co-Chair of the UN Working Group on Leadership, and as the representative of the UN human rights office to the High-Level Committee on Programmes. He was the UN’s senior human rights advisor in both Palestine and Afghanistan, led the team on human rights specialists attached to the High-Level Mission on Darfur, and has headed the Office’s Development and Economic and Social Issues Branch, the Human Rights and Development Unit, the Rule of Law and Democracy Unit, and the Economic and Social Issues Section. As Deputy Director in New York, Mokhiber spearheaded the Office’s work there on advocating for the integration of human rights in UN peacekeeping, development, humanitarian affairs, economic affairs, and in rule of law programming. In earlier years, he developed the Office’s work on human rights-based approaches to development, on poverty, on the administration of justice, on elections, and on institution building methodologies.Craig Mokhiber has lectured on and taught human rights, has authored several publications on human rights themes, and has served on the Secretariats of the World Conference on Human Rights (1993), the Commission on Human Rights (1995), the Working Group on the Right to Development (2001), and the World Summit (2005), and in the OHCHR delegation to Rio+20 (2012). In 1999, he led a global study on human rights reforms, on behalf of the International Council on Human Rights Policy. Before joining the UN, he worked as an NGO activist, human rights advocate, and lawyer in private practice.

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