Prof. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
Prof. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; Chair, Governing Council, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University; Chair, Truth, Justice, and Peace Commission, South-East?Nigeria.
A lawyer from Nigeria, Chidi Anselm Odinkalu is Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts and also Chairs the Governing Council of the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University in Anambra State, Nigeria. Since 2022, Odinkalu has led the Truth, Justice, and Peace Commission, a transitional justice established to address legacies of violence and trauma in the states of south-east Nigeria.?
In 2017, Odinkalu was part of a three-person Panel of Eminent Persons which facilitated the return of The Gambia to the Commonwealth. He was involved in the negotiations which led to the creation in 1998 of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and has more recently led the advocacy which culminated in the adoption in February 2024 of the ?Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Specific Aspects of the Right to a Nationality and the Eradication of Statelessness in Africa A former Chair of Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission, Odinkalu is also associated with several international advocacy initiatives on human rights, forced displacement and mass atrocities. Among others, he Chairs the Boards of the International Refugee Rights Initiative and of Global Rights and is a trustee of Atrocities Watch Africa.?
Odinkalu's current research interests include the right to leisure and human wellbeing in international law, the transformation of judicial integrity in comparative constitutional systems, the institutional dimensions of regionalism and the future of multilateralism. He?received his Ph.D in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science.