Centre for Human Rights’ doctoral candidate appointed as UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea

Ms Sheila B. Keetharuth, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea

Ms Keetharuth is a long-standing human rights lawyer and defender who has been involved in human rights issues in Africa for over two and a half decades. She is the former Executive Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA), a pan-African NGO based in Banjul, The Gambia. Sheila has a long involvement in human rights activism and trains in Monitoring and Documenting Human Rights violations on the continent. In 2011, the Madrid Bar Association awarded her a Medal of Honour for her human rights work on the African continent.

She is currently enrolled as a part-time doctoral candidate at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her particular interests are: business and human rights, extractive industries, women's human rights and litigation to strengthen the African human rights system.

In the course of her one-year mandate, she is tasked with carrying out investigations and report to the UN Human Rights Council on the human rights situation in Eritrea.