Margaret Satterthwaite | |
|---|---|
 in 2015 | |
| Born | 1969 |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | United Nations Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges |
Margaret Lockwood Satterthwaite (born 1969) is the American-born special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers for the United Nations. She has been involved in legal cases including those in Kiribati and the United Kingdom where the government was planning to overrule the judiciary.
Satterthwaite was born in the United States of America in 1969. She completed a BA in writing, Literature and Gender with a Jacob Burns Scholarship in May 1990 [1] at Eugene Lang College of the New School for Social Research in New York. She received her master's degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz [2] in Literature in 1995. [1]
She clerked for Judge Betty Binns Fletcher [ citation needed ] at the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. [3] She received her J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law magna cum laude. [2]
Satterthwaite is Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law, where she heads the Global Justice Clinic. [4] [5] She became the faculty director of the Robert and Helen Bernstein Institute for Human Rights in 2015. [4] She led the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice starting in 2006. [4]
In 2013 she and Jayne C. Huckerby published their book, Gender, National Security and Counter-terrorism: Human Rights Perspectives. It includes work by a variety of authors, and it includes a chapter by Satterthwaite on measuring the United States Agency for International Development's work to counter violent extremism. [6] [7]
In October 2022 she was appointed as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers by the Human Rights Council. This is a position that has existed since 1994. [4]
In September 2023 she had written in "alarm" to the President of Kiribati. He had ordered that the Australian judge David Lambourne who was married to the leader of the opposition should be deported. The pilot had refused to take him, and the island's senior judges had all been suspended for refusing to enforce the President's will. This had left the country with no senior court of appeal or any legal check on the government's powers. [8]
In April 2024 she received a long letter from Nagananda Kodituwakku who was a Sri Lankan lawyer and politician. He had been debarred from practicing law in 2019 following a dispute with a judge. [9] He has asked Satterthwaite to intervene in the case which resulted in him being barred from practicing law. [10]
In 2024 she spoke out against the plans of the United Kingdom to send immigrants to Rwanda while they apply for political asylum. The government was passing laws to override the judiciary. The new law would command judges to decide that Rwanda was a "safe country" irrespective of any evidence that was brought to the court. She said that the governments changes to the law "constitute an interference with the independence of the judiciary and a violation of international law". [11]
In June 2024 she was one of the many UN experts who spoke out against the sale of arms to Israel as a result of the conflict in Gaza. The experts cautioned arms supplier and finance companies that they would be implicated in human rights violations. The list included special rappporteurs Reem Alsalem, Paula Gaviria Betancur, Tlaleng Mofokeng, Mary Lawlor, Claudia Flores and Francesca Albanese. [12]
Martin Scheinin is an international law scholar who served as the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism in 2005–2011. He was selected for this position after serving for eight years (1997–2004) as member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the independent expert body monitoring states' compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. While on the committee, he was known as a defendant of the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples and opponent of capital punishment, as well as the drafter of the committee's General Comment No. 29 on states of emergency.
The government of Belarus is criticized for its human rights violations and persecution of non-governmental organisations, independent journalists, national minorities, and opposition politicians. In a testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labeled Belarus as one of the world's six "outposts of tyranny". In response, the Belarusian government called the assessment "quite far from reality". During 2020 Belarusian presidential election and protests, the number of political prisoners recognized by Viasna Human Rights Centre rose dramatically to 1062 as of 16 February 2022. Several people died after the use of unlawful and abusive force by law enforcement officials during 2020 protests. According to Amnesty International, the authorities did not investigate violations during protests, but instead harassed those who challenged their version of events. In July 2021, the authorities launched a campaign against the remaining non-governmental organizations, liquidating at least 270 of them by October, including all previously registered human rights organizations in the country.
María Lourdes Afiuni Mora is a Venezuelan judge. She was head of the 31st Control Court of Caracas before she was arrested in 2009 on charges of corruption after ordering the conditional release on bail of businessman Eligio Cedeño, who then fled the country. She was moved to house arrest in Caracas in February 2011, and granted parole in June 2013, but she is still barred from practicing law, leaving the country, or using her bank account or social networks.
Penelope (Penny) Andrews is a South African and American legal scholar.
Michael Benedict Emmerson CBE KC is a British barrister, specialising in public international law, human rights and humanitarian law, and international criminal law. From 2011 to 2017, he was the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism. Emmerson is currently an Appeals Chamber Judge of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals sitting on the Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He has previously served as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and Special Adviser to the Appeals Chamber of the ECCC.
Amal Clooney is a British international human rights lawyer. She has represented several high-profile clients, including former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad, Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova, and Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy. She has also held various appointments with both the United Nations and the Government of the United Kingdom. She is also an adjunct law professor at Columbia Law School. In 2016, she and her husband, American actor George Clooney, co-founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice.
Women in law describes the role played by women in the legal profession and related occupations, which includes lawyers, paralegals, prosecutors, judges, legal scholars, law professors and law school deans.
Murat Arslan is a former Turkish judge active in the Judges and Prosecutors Union and political prisoner.
Tessie Eria Lambourne is an I-Kiribati civil servant, diplomat and politician. She has been a member of the Maneaba ni Maungatabu (Parliament) since April 2020. She was formerly Kiribati's Ambassador to Taiwan from June 2018 to September 2019 and Secretary to the Cabinet, the highest position in Kiribati's civil service, from August 2016 until June 2018.
Catarina de Albuquerque is a Portuguese lawyer and human rights activist who served as the first United Nations special rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation (2008–2014). After becoming Executive Chair of Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) in 2015, in September 2018 she was appointed SWA's chief executive officer.
Nagananda Kodituwakku is an attorney-at-law, public interest litigation activist and also a 2019 Presidential Candidate. Having held the office of the Head of Revenue Task Force in the Sri Lanka Customs Administration, Kodituwakku emigrated to the United Kingdom with his family following life-threatening circumstances in 2001. Since his return to Sri Lanka in 2009, he has played a key role in public interest litigation.
Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou is a Beninese jurist who has been a judge of the International Criminal Court since March 2018.
Mary Lawlor is Adjunct Professor of Business and Human Rights in the School of Business of Trinity College Dublin. An Irish national, she is currently the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, appointed in May 2020. She is the founder and former Executive Director of Front Line Defenders and former director of the Irish branch of Amnesty International.
Margaret Sekaggya is a Ugandan lawyer and human rights activist. From 2008 to 2014, Sekaggya was the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights defenders.
Tlaleng Mofokeng is a South African physician who is the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. She campaigns for universal health access and HIV care. She was named one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2021.
A constitutional crisis began in Kiribati when the Cabinet of Kiribati suspended two of its High Court Justices. High Court Judge David Lambourne was suspended in May 2022 while Chief Justice Bill Hastings was suspended on 30 June 2022, both over allegations of misconduct. A Court of Appeal ruling upheld an earlier ruling of Chief Justice Hastings that the government acted unconstitutionally in not permitting David Lambourne to resume his duties as a High Court judge, and overturned the subsequent attempted deportation of Lambourne. In response, the government suspended all judges of the Kiribati Court of Appeal on 6 September 2022.
Reem Alsalem is a Jordanian independent consultant and former civil servant. Since August 2021 she has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. She is gender-critical, and has been accused of being anti-trans.
Siobhán Mullally is a United Kingdom-born Irish professor of law and the UN special rapporteur on human trafficking.
Astrid Jovanna Puentes Riaño is a Colombian-born Mexican law professor. She has led the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) to support the people who live in La Oroya, "one of the most polluted places on Earth". In 2024 she became the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment.
Dorothy Estrada-Tanck is a Mexican academic who has worked in Spain. She has led the United Nations Working Group on discrimination against women and girls. She co-authored a report about the "gender apartheid" in Afghanistan which they considered a crime against humanity.
| Countries & territories |
|  |
|---|---|---|
| (Human Rights) Thematic mandates |
| |
United Nations special rapporteurs bear mandates from the United Nations Human Rights Council and may hold the titles special rapporteur, independent expert or special representative of the Secretary-General, and are also referred to simply as mandate-holders. | ||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
