Chris Pettit | Legal Project Coordinator

Chris Pettit JD (Florida) LLM (Cape Town) - Chris is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary College, University of London and is writing his doctoral thesis on the right to water as a socio-economic right.

He is a senior fellow at the University of Florida Institute of Human Rights and Peace Development as well as a fellow and research associate at the Weeramantry International Centre for Peace Education and Research (WICPER). Chris has worked as a legal consultant on the right to water for the Association for Water and Rural Development (AWARD) and the Water Research Commission (WRC) in South Africa, and played a significant role in helping to further develop understanding of the legal
implications of the National Water Act of 1998 and the constitutional right to water within South African law. Chris has traveled extensively and has significant interest in the customary law traditions concerning water of several indigenous communities
worldwide and what wisdom contemporary legal practitioners and systems can glean from those traditions. Some of his other interests include rights theory, the law of armed conflict, mercenaries and private military firms, and the science of the mind component of Buddhist philosophy.