Join Dr Marie Joseph Ayissi, the Secretary for the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD), to discuss The General Recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination: Theory and Practice. This event is jointly hosted by the Centre for International and Public Law, ANU Law School and Professor Bina D’Costa, Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School and Chair of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. The event has funding support from Australian Research Council Future Fellowship Project #FT210100759, Professor Bina D’Costa, The Australian National University.

Speaker: Mr. Ayissi is the Human Rights Officer and Secretary of the UN Working Group of Experts on people of African Descent within the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva. From 2018 to 2023, he was the Secretary of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). He joined OHCHR in 2008, where he worked with the Secretariat of the Human Rights Council, the Universal Periodic Review and the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council. From 2009-2018, he serviced several Human Rights Treaties Bodies namely CERD, the Human Rights Committee, the Committee Against Torture, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, and the Sub-Committee on the Prevention of Torture, covering more than 100 countries. Previously, Mr Ayissi worked with the International Labour Organization (International Standards Department) and the Permanent Mission of the Francophonie to the United Nations Office in Geneva. He also carried out various missions in Africa, Colombia and Suriname, for fact-finding purposes, elections observations or training of government officials.

Mr. Ayissi holds a Master and a PhD in International Law (topic on international responsibility of States for wrongful acts) obtained at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva (Switzerland). From 2016-2017, he was a Visiting Researcher with the Georgetown University Law Center, in Washington, DC. He has also attended sessions of the International Institute for Human Rights at Strasbourg (1999), the Hague Academy of International Law (2002) and served as Research Assistant of a Member of the International Law Commission (2002).

He has given talks/lectures in many institutions including the University of Geneva, Sciences Po Paris (Dijon campus), the Geneva Academy, the Georgetown University Law Center, the Catholic University of Lyon, the Kennedy Center for Human Rights and Justice, the University of Toulouse -Faculty of Law, the International Law Weekend at Fordham University and the International Institute for Human Rights at Strasbourg. His last publications appeared in the American Journal of International Law and the International Legal Materials. He recently co-authored a chapter on “United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies' Approaches”, in Roles of International Law in Development, Siobhan McInerney; Robert McCorquodale (eds.), OUP, 2023.

Mr Ayissi is a Member of the American Society of International Law and the American Branch of the International Law Association.