Professor Chaloka Beyani is an Associate Professor of International Law in the Law Department at the London School of Economics ( LSE ) since 1996 and a member of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and former Chair of its Advisory Board. Prof. Chaloka is also a member of the Centre for Climate Change at LSE. He studied law at the University of Oxford (D.Phil) and the University of Zambia (UNZA) (LLB, LLM). He has taught international law, human rights, public law, and criminal law at Oxford and UNZA. He is Visiting Professor of International Law at the University of Toronto and Santa Clara University.
Prof. Chaloka is a recognized international and United Nations expert on internally displaced persons, population transfers, mercenaries and private military companies, sexual and reproductive health, the human rights-based approach to development, climate change, making treaties, and making constitutions. He has served as a legal adviser and expert to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, and United Nations Development Fund for Women, the European Union, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the African Union.
Prof. Chaloka was a member of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons of the African Union on the Formation of an African Union Government. He has served as an expert to the African Union on the issue of universal jurisdiction and was a member of the joint African Union and European Union ad hoc Expert Group on Universal Jurisdiction. He is currently a member of the UK Foreign Secretary’s Advisory Group on Human Rights and a member of the Steering Board of the UK Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on sexual violence in armed conflict.
Prof. Chaloka has practical legal and political experience in making national constitutions. He was a member of the official Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review of the Republic of Kenya, the Committee that drafted and prepared the Constitution of Kenya, which was adopted by referendum in 2010. He was a mediator between the Government of Mozambique and the rebel group RENAMO in 2017-2019 and drafted amendments to the Constitution of Mozambique to enshrine the peace agreement on devolution. He also has practical legal and diplomatic experience in treaty-making, having drafted and negotiated the adoption of the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons 2009. He also drafted and negotiated the adoption of 11 peace treaties under the framework of the Pact on Peace, Stability and Development of the Great Lakes Region 2006.
As a former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons 2010-2016, Prof. Chaloka was appointed by the UN Secretary General in 2019 to the Expert Advisory Group of the United Nations High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. Most recently he was appointed by the United Nations High Commissioner for human rights as a member of the independent fact-finding mission to Libya given the widespread impunity for human rights violations and abuses committed in the country.
