Geraldine Van Bueren

Professor Van Bueren is Professor of International Human Rights Law at Queen Mary University of London and Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford. She is a barrister and an Associate Tenant at Doughty Street Chambers and was appointed an honorary Queen’s Counsel in recognition of her scholastic contributions to national and international law. At the time of her appointment there were only ten women honorary silks.

Professor Van Bueren is also a Bencher in the Middle Temple. She has served as a Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission with lead responsibility for human rights and is also a member of the Attorney-General’s International Pro Bono Committee.

In 2003, Professor Van Bueren was awarded the Child Rights Lawyer Award. The Award, jointly organised by the Law Society, UNICEF and The Lawyer, recognises lawyers who have done outstanding work in the field of children's rights.

Professor Van Bueren is one of the original drafters of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and also helped draft the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty, the UNHCR Guidelines on Refugee Children and the United Nations Programme of Action on Children in the Criminal Justice System.

She has represented the United Nations in discussions with Iran; the Commonwealth Secretariat in Bangladesh and advised the Government of Japan and Unicef. She has also acted as an expert witness for the Government of Canada and has lectured and worked throughout Europe and the United States and in Argentina Senegal, Uganda and Venezuela.

From 2002 to 2006 Professor Van Bueren held a second concurrent chair W P Schreiner Professor, Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Cape Town.

Professor Van Bueren co-founded INTERIGHTS an international human rights law centre based in London, represented Amnesty International for ten years at the UN on children's rights and is a member of the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch (Children's Rights Project), Child Rights International and is on the Advisory Board of the British Institute of Human Rights and Rene Cassin. She has also served as a non-executive director and Trustee of Save the Children.

Professor Van Bueren's writings have been cited in courts around the world, most recently by the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the European Court of Human Rights and also in legislatures including the US Senate and the Australian Parliament.

She was instrumental in founding the Human Rights Collegium which is based at Queen Mary University of London and serves as its co-director.