Professor Geraldine Van Bueren

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Professor of International Human Rights Law

Location: Mile End
email: g.v.bueren@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)20 7882 3965

Professor Van Bueren is Professor of International Human Rights Law and Visiting Fellow, Kellogg College, Oxford. She is a barrister and an Associate Tenant at Doughty Street Chambers. From December 2009 she was appointed by the Secretary of State to serve as a Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She is a Bencher in the Middle Temple.

Professor Van Bueren works extensively with governments and intergovernmental organisations. She is working on a project for UNESCO on how the law can be used constructively to help combat poverty. She is a member of the Attorney General’s International Pro Bono Committee and her most recent book Child Rights in Europe is published by the Council of Europe.

From 2002 to 2006 Professor Van Bueren held a second concurrent chair W P Schreiner Professor, Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Cape Town.

In 2003, Professor Van Bueren was awarded the Child Rights Lawyer Award. The Award, jointly organised by the Law Society, UNICEF and The Lawyer, recognises lawyers who have done outstanding work in the field of children's rights. Goodenough College has appointed her as a Fellow.

Professor Van Bueren is one of the original drafters of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and also helped draft the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty, the UNHCR Guidelines on Refugee Children and the United Nations Programme of Action on Children in the Criminal Justice System.

Professor Van Bueren cofounded INTERIGHTS an international human rights law centre based in London, represented Amnesty International for ten years at the UN on children's rights and is a member of the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch (Children's Rights Project), Child Rights International and is on the Advisory Board of the British Institute of Human Rights and Rene Cassin. She has also served as a non-executive director and Trustee of Save the Children.

Professor Van Bueren's writings have been cited in courts around the world, most recently by the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the European Court of Human Rights.

She has written for The Independent, The Guardian and The Times other leading newspapers around the world, and co-founded and co-edited the International Journal of Children's Rights. She is also on the advisory board of a number of academic journals including De Jure, the African Human Rights Journal and the Human Rights Law Review.

To increase the number of lawyers working in children's rights she established PIRCH (the Programme on International Rights of the Child) in l991 as the first university based centre on the international rights of the child and she works as its director.

Publications:

Key publications

January 2008 onwards

Van Bueren, Committee on the Rights of the Child - 'Overcoming Inertia in this Age of No Alternatives' in Langford ed., Social Rights Jurisprudence. Emerging Trends in International and Comparative Law, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-86094-9, 2008, pp 569-591
Van Bueren, Child Rights in Europe, Convergence and Divergence in Judicial Protection, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 2008. 200pp. Sole Authored.
The Preface, written by Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe describes the book as "comprehensive" and "an impressive piece of work". It is currently being translated into French by the Council of Europe and will be available as Les Droits des Enfants en Europe (2008)ISBN 978-92-871-6299-1, to be published on 7 July 2008.
Van Bueren, The Separation of Powers and the International Legal Status of the Best Interests of the Child in Assisting Domestic Courts Protect Children's Economic and Social Rightsin Collins, Grondin et al eds, Rights of the Child Proceedings of the International Conference, Wilson and Lafleur, Montreal. ISBN 978-2-89127-831-7, 2008, pp 237-273 (15,000 words)
It will be published in Spanish in Van Bueren, La Separacion de Poderes y el Status en Derecho Internacional del Mejor Interes del Nino como forma de Asistir a los Tribunales Locales en la Proteccion de los Derechos Economicos y Sociales de los Ninos, Actas de la Convferencia Internacional sobre los Derechos del Nino; Buenos Aires, Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Before 2007

Van Bueren, ‘Article 40 -Child Criminal Justice’ in Alen et al ed., A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Martinus Nijhoff, 1- 31, 2006
'The Cluster of Rights' in Cheadle, Davis and Haysom South African Constitutional Law (Butterworths, Durban, 2005) 491
No Turning Back - The Right to Housing is Justiciable' in Cheadle, Davis and Haysom South African Constitutional Law (Butterworths, Durban, 2005)
'The Right to be the Same the Right to be Different' in Lindholm et al (eds), Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook (Nijhoff, London, 2004)
'Racism and Human Rights, Slavery as Piracy - The Legal Case for Reparations for Slavery' in van der Anker (ed), Political Economy of New Slavery (Palgrave, London, 2003)235
Van Bueren, Children’s Constitutional Rights, Amicus Curiae 2003. 27 – 32
'Including the Excluded: The Case for an Economic, Social and Cultural Human Rights Act' [2002] Public Law 456
Van Bueren, ‘The Minimum Core of Article 10(3)’ in Chapman and Russell eds. Exploring the Minimum Core Content of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Intersentia and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, August 2002
Van Bueren, ‘Of Floors and Ceilings: Minimum Core Obligations and Children’, in Brand and Russell eds. The Minimum Core Content of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: South African Perspectives.’ Juta 2002
Child Sexual Exploitation and the Law' - commissioned by the Government of Japan and UNICEF for the World Congress on Child Sexual Exploitation, Yokohama 200l.
International Documents on Children (2nd edn, Kluwer, Amsterdam, 1998)
Childhood Abused: Protecting Children against Torture, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment (Aldershot, Dartmouth, 1998)
International Law on the Rights of the Child (Kluwer, Amsterdam, 1998)

Supervision:

Professor Van Bueren welcomes proposals for postgraduate supervision in the fields of international human rights law, international children's rights, and international anti-poverty law