Irene Khan

Irene Zubaida Khan (born 24 December 1956) is a Bangladeshi lawyer appointed as of August 2020 to be the United Nations Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, the first woman appointed to this mandate.

Khan was born on 24 December 1956 in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), though her ancestral home is in Birahimpur, Sylhet.

She is the daughter of Sikander Ali Khan, a Bengali Muslim medical doctor; granddaughter of Ahmed Ali Khan, a Cambridge University mathematics graduate and barrister; and great-granddaughter of Assadar Ali Khan, the personal physician of Syed Hasan Imam.

Her great-great-grandfather, Abid Khan, was the descendant of an Afghan migrant to Bengal.

Her uncle, Rear Admiral Mahbub Ali Khan, was the chief of the Bangladesh Navy.

She was the star pupil at St Francis Xavier's Green Herald International School, 1964-1972 where she was the record holder at the school-leaving examinations.

During her childhood, East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971 following the Bangladesh Liberation War.

The genocide that occurred during the war helped shape the teenage Khan's activist viewpoint.

She left Bangladesh as a teenager for St. Louis Grammar school in Kikeel, Northern Ireland 1973–1975.

Khan went to England, where she studied law at the University of Manchester and then, in the United States, at Harvard Law School.

She specialized in public international law and human rights.

Khan helped to create the organisation Concern Universal in 1977, an international development and emergency relief organisation.

She began her career as a human rights activist with the International Commission of Jurists in 1979.

Khan went to work at the United Nations in 1980.

She spent 20 years at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In 1995 she was appointed UNHCR India's Chief of Mission, becoming the youngest UNHCR country representative at that time.

After less than one year in New Delhi the Indian government requested that she be removed from that position.

During the Kosovo crisis in 1999, Khan led the UNHCR team in the Republic of Macedonia for three months.

This led to her being appointed as Deputy Director of International Protection later that year.

She previously served as the seventh Secretary General of Amnesty International (from 2001 to 2009).

Khan joined Amnesty International in 2001 as its Secretary General.

In her first year of office, she reformed Amnesty's response to human rights crises and launched the campaign to close the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which held suspected enemy combatants.

Khan is featured in a 2003 TV documentary titled Human Rights, by the French filmmaker Denis Delestrac.

The film, shot in Colombia, Israel, Palestine and Pakistan, analyses how armed conflicts affect civilian communities and foster forced migration.

In 2003, Irene Khan wrote a piece titled Security for Whom?

in which she, inter alia, accused the allies of the occupying force in Afghanistan of "mass killings".

In 2004 she initiated a global campaign to stop violence against women.

In 2005, Irene Khan penned the introduction to that year's Amnesty International report in which she, inter alia, referred to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as "the gulag of our time," accusing the United States of "thumb[ing] its nose at the rule of law and human rights [as] it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity".

In 2006 she was awarded the City of Sydney Peace Prize for "her leadership as a courageous advocate of universal respect for human rights, and her skills in identifying violence against women as a massive injustice and therefore a priority in campaigning for peace. "

In 2008, she was one of the two finalists for the election of the new Chancellor of the University of Manchester.

In May 2009 Khan launched Amnesty's "Demand Dignity" campaign to fight human rights abuses that impoverish people and keep them poor.

During her leadership of IDLO, Irene Khan has promoted the notion that the rule of law is an important tool that can advance equity and people-centered development, whether in reducing inequalities or fostering social justice and inclusion for peace.

In 2009 Khan was featured in Soldiers of Peace, an anti-war film.

In July 2009, she was appointed as Chancellor of the University of Salford a post she held until January 2015.

She was a consulting editor of The Daily Star in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2011.

In 2011, she was elected Director-General of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) in Rome, an intergovernmental organization that works to promote the rule of law, and sustainable development.

In August 2020, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights appointed Khan to the position of Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion.

Irene Khan is currently the Chair of the Supervisory Board of BRAC International.

On January 23, 2024, Khan, in her 10-day visit, met with National Privacy Commission Chair John Henry D. Naga to examine the state of rights to freedom of opinion and expression in the country.

The Presidential Task Force on Media Security per Atty. Hue Jyro U. Go, Chief of Staff, organized Khan's visit.