Helena Kennedy becomes IBA Human Rights Director

Labour peer Baroness Helena Kennedy QC has been appointed as the new director of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI).

She will assume the post in January 2019, succeeding Dr Phillip Tahmindjis AM, who is retiring after 16 years at the Institute, and will be the IBAHRI's third director since its foundation in 1995 under the Honorary Presidency of Nelson Mandela.

In Baroness Kennedy's practice as a barrister she has acted in many of the most prominent cases of the last 30-plus years, including the Brighton bombing, the Guildford Four appeal and the bombing of the Israeli embassy. She has also acted in many homicide trials with a domestic setting, and chaired an inquiry for the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health into sudden infant death, in the aftermath of miscarriages of justice where mothers were wrongly convicted of murdering their babies.

She has held many prominent posts including chair of Justice, the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists, and of Charter 88 (1992-1997), which advocated constitutional and electoral reform; and chaired the Power inquiry, which reported on the state of British democracy and produced the Power report in 2006. She has received honours for her work on human rights from the governments of France and Italy and has been awarded more than 30 honorary doctorates.

Declaring herself “very honoured and excited” to be taking on the role, Baroness Kennedy commented: “[The IBA's] Human Rights Institute is one of its great achievements and to lead it is truly a privilege.”

She added: “The rule of law is currently under threat in many parts of the world and this new role will allow me to play my part in strengthening law and human rights globally.”