B.C.L./LL.B. (McGill), D.Phil (Oxford). Director, Law and Policy Programme, Amnesty International. Former Director of the CISDL (2000-2010).
Dr Ashfaq Khalfan is Director of the Law and Policy Programme at Amnesty International, having previously been a Researcher and Advisor on Human Rights Obligations Beyond Borders. He previously served as a Policy Coordinator on legal enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights at Amnesty International. In this capacity, he has authored/co-authored Amnesty publications on legal enforcement of rights, on the human rights obligations of international financial institutions, on the Millennium Development Goals and the post-2015 framework and on corporate accountability. Prior to joining Amnesty International in 2009, he directed the Right to Water Programme at the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, involving research, capacity building, and advocacy for policy reform in ten countries and leading initiatives that have strengthened international standards on the rights to water and sanitation. He was consulted by 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 and the Canadian Human Rights Commission. He received degrees in political science, international development, and in common and civil law from McGill University and a doctoral degree in law from University of Oxford. He speaks English, French and Swahili.
Key authored/co-authored publications include Sustainable Development Law: Principles, Practices and Prospects (Oxford University Press, 2004) with Prof Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger; Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation (COHRE, AAAS, UN-HABITAT and SDC, 2008); From Promises To Delivery: Putting Human Rights At The Heart Of The Millennium Development Goals (Amnesty International, 2010); “Commentary to the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” Human Rights Quarterly 34 (2012); “Division of Responsibility”’ and “Accountability Mechanisms” in M. Langford et. al. eds., Global Justice, State Duties: The Extraterritorial Scope of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Bulldozed: How a Mining Company Buried the Truth about Forced Evictions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Amnesty International, 2014).