Event

Memorial Conference: Professor Sir Nigel Rodley KBE

Celebrating the life of a global champion of human rights

Please join us on Thursday 28 September for a Memorial Conference to celebrate Professor Sir Nigel Rodley’s remarkable contribution to human rights.

In honour of Nigel’s legacy, the conference will focus on themes central to his work as an eminent and influential international lawyer, academic and activist, including:

  • Human Rights as a branch of Public International Law
  • The United Nations Human Rights Machinery
  • Combating Torture

The final panel session of the conference will consider the future for human rights and how best to address the backlash which is taking place worldwide.

Keynote speakers and panel members will include colleagues and friends, who have worked with Nigel during his distinguished career, from the OHCHR, International Commission of Jurists, Security Council Report, the University of Essex and other International Law Schools and Human Rights Centres.

Professor Sir Nigel Rodley KBE came to Essex in 1990 and was Chair of the Human Rights Centre.

He had been Legal Adviser at Amnesty International from 1973 onwards - the founding Head of Legal and Intergovernmental Organisations Office. He became a Professor of Law at Essex in 1994 and was Dean of Law from 1992 to 1995. 

From 1993 to 2001 he served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. From 2001 to 2016 he was a Member of the UN Human Rights Committee, serving as its Chairperson from 2013 to 2014. He was President of the International Commission of Jurists at the time of his death.

In 1998 he was knighted for services to human rights and international law. Other honours included an honorary LLD from Dalhousie University. He was also a joint recipient of the American Society of International Law’s 2005 Goler T Butcher Medal for distinguished work in human rights. In 2008 he was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians.