Mr. Ashfaq Khalfan,
Kenya,
Acting Chair, Board of Governors
akhalfan@cisdl.org

Ashfaq Khalfan is the Acting Chair of CISDL’s Board of Governors. He served between 2000 and 2010 as a Director of the CISDL. He has co-authored several publications including Sustainable Development Law: Principles, Practices and Prospects (OUP, 2004), with Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Legal Resources for the Right to Water: National and International Standards (COHRE, 2004), Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation (COHRE, AAAS, UN-HABITAT and SDC, 2008) and The significance of human rights in MDG-based policy making on water and sanitation: An application to Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Laos (COHRE, 2009). He has co-authored several reviews of national water and sanitation laws and policies as well as book chapters and articles on human rights and sustainable development.

He is currently an Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Policy Coordinator at Amnesty International’s International Secretariat, with a focus on legal enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights and on advancing human rights in efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals. He has previously served as Coordinator of the Right to Water Programme at the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, supervising research, capacity building and advocacy for policy reform in ten countries and leading international initiatives that have strengthened international standards on the right to water and sanitation. He has consulted for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) on human rights and development related issues and worked for the Canadian Federal Department of Justice, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Law & Society Trust (Sri Lanka), and Kituo Cha Sheria (Legal Advice Centre, Kenya). He received degrees in political science and international development and in common and civil law from McGill University. He speaks English, French and Swahili.