Speeches and Advocacy

Statement of the Director-General Meeting of the Assembly of Parties November 6, 2014 Rome, Italy   Mr. President, Excellencies, Our Special Guests, Members of our Board of Advisors, Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, Let me begin by welcoming you,...

This piece was originally published on OpenDemocracy.net. The overlapping and interdependent nature of human rights suggests efforts to protect only some rights in law are misguided. The reason for legalizing economic and social rights is not only to make them justiciable in court; it is to...

  "The sobering reality is that in many countries [...], women are not treated equally by law itself," Director-General Irene Khan has said. The statement came in a speech entitled Changing Women's Lives: Empowerment, Innovation and Development delivered on Monday, September 15, 2014 at the...

This piece was originally published in the Global Post. Justice is scarce in Arab countries where the rule of law is absent. Democracy, it turns out, does not breed the rule of law; all indications are that it is the rule of law that breeds democracy. By Irene Khan, Director-General,...

This piece was originally published in The New York Times. Out of the rubble of a garment factory, just outside Dhaka, hundreds of bodies of women are brought to light, shalwar kameez and saris vivid against death’s pallor. In the capital itself, meanwhile, Islamic extremists burn buses, loot...

This piece was originally published in Huffington Post. By Irene Khan, Director-General, IDLO As we mark World Intellectual Property Day, much of the debate has been focusing on access to life-saving medicines in the developing world. The echo endures of the Indian move to refuse the...

This piece was originally published in the World Economic Forum blog. By Irene Khan, Director-General, IDLO I’m not an economist but the principle of supply and demand strikes me as a wonderful principle to apply to justice and the rule of law, and a good yardstick to assess their...

This article by Naomi Burke-Shyne was originally published in Devex. The global approach to HIV has been overwhelmingly a medical and epidemiological one. While this has delivered great therapeutical advances, it has also pathologized perceptions of the virus and further marginalized those...

This piece was originally published in the Huffington Post By Irene Khan, Director-General, IDLO As the world gathers in Rio, legal and institutional reforms remain key to delivering sustainable development. Yet effective national laws to further this goal are few and far between; court...