Chair
Professor Evelyn Collins CBE
Professor Evelyn Collins CBE is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Equal Rights Trust and was previously Chair of the Board of Equinet, the European Network of Equality Bodies, from October 2013 to October 2017. She is also currently a Trustee on the Board of the Abraham Initiatives UK and a member of the National Statistician’s Advisory Committee on Inclusive Data.
Evelyn was Chief Executive of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, an organisation with a wide remit under Northern Ireland’s equality laws, from March 2000 until February 2023.
Evelyn is a law graduate of Sheffield University, and has Masters’ degrees from the University of Toronto (Criminology) and Queen’s University Belfast (Human Rights and Discrimination Law).
Evelyn has worked on equality issues since the 1980s, mostly in Northern Ireland but also as a national expert working on gender equality in the European Commission in Brussels and more widely through her engagement with Equinet and various EU projects.
Evelyn was a member of the European Commission’s Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities between Women and Men from 1992 to 2020, serving as its President in 2005. Evelyn also served on the Board of the Chief Executives’ Forum in Northern Ireland from 2014 – 2020 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Evelyn was awarded the CBE in 2008, for services to the public in Northern Ireland.
In July 2014, the University of Ulster awarded Evelyn the honorary degree of Doctor of Law (LLD) for her contribution to the promotion of equality and good relations.
In May 2023, Queen’s University Belfast conferred the title of Honorary Professor on Evelyn, where she will contribute to the work of its School of Law.
Vice Chair
Robin Allen KC
For over 40 years Robin Allen KC has worked as a barrister specialising in equality and discrimination and human rights law, working both in the UK and internationally.
In 1993 he was made an expert adviser to the European Commission on the law affecting the most disadvantaged. In 1998 – 1999 he worked with the European Commission on the proposals for what became the Race Directive and Framework Equality Directive, and throughout the 2000s he lectured judges and jurists from across all Member States on the new European equality laws. From 2002 – 2007 he was special legal adviser to the Disability Rights Commission. He was elected to the Bar Council of England and Wales in 2013 and chaired its Equality and Diversity and Social Mobility Committee for six years. In 2018, he set up the AI Law Consultancy to disseminate the developing laws and standards concerning the impact of AI on equality and non-discrimination. Its work has been referenced by the European Commission, Equinet, the Council of Europe and the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as the UK Government. He has written widely on issues relating to equality and discrimination and in 2018 he gave the Hamlyn Lectures under the overall title “Why does Equality seem so difficult?” Robin has appeared in over 40 cases in the UK’s highest court, the House of Lords/Supreme Court and many leading cases in the CJEU and the ECHR.
Trustees
Ferdous Ara Begum
Ferdous Ara Begum is the member of the Board of Trustees of HelpAge International and a former member of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (2007-2010). She is a gender and ageing issues specialist.
As a CEDAW Member she had the opportunity to examine the reports on women’s advancement in 115 countries. She worked to realize equality between men and women through ensuring women’s equal excess to and equal opportunity in every aspect of their life including public and political life. She took the lead role to formulate the General Recommendation on protection of human rights of older women, which is called General Recommendation No 27.
As the member of the Board of Trustees of HelpAge, she influenced the policy guideline of the organization for the benefit of the older people, so that they have a dignified life with adequate social protection, access to health services, protection from violence and they have a voice.
As a former civil servant, she was the first woman to lead Bangladesh Television as Director General, and also the first female Commissioner of Taxes in Bangladesh. She served as a board member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Grameen Bank for six years.
In her 32 years of continuous public service, she has been active in educating and creating public awareness on the importance of women’s rights and actively influenced women’s financial independence.
She also worked with the International Institute on Ageing (UN-Malta). She is also the country representative of INPEA from Bangladesh.
She has a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University and 9 months Diploma on Public Administration from Princeton University. She is the CEO of the Active Ageing, Care Training and Research Centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Niall Crowley
Niall Crowley is currently working as an independent equality and human rights expert at European level and at Member State level, including in Ireland. As co-founder of the Values Lab, he has innovated in supporting values-led organisation building and values-based approaches to the new public sector equality and human rights statutory duty. He was formerly Chief Executive Officer of the Equality Authority. He led the development of this institution for ten years from its establishment in 1999. Prior to that he worked for over a decade in the civil society sector. He played a leading role in the entry of this sector into the then social partner arrangements.
His career began with a BAI and BA focused in Civil Engineering from Trinity College, Dublin and work in this field in Ireland, Zambia, and Mozambique.
Quinn McKew
Quinn McKew is the Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, the leading international freedom of expression organisation. She brings to ARTICLE 19 a background in community building, environmental activism, and the protection of human rights in the digital age. Above all she brings a decade-long dedication to the value of freedom of expression to create and maintain a more inclusive, a fairer and a more sustainable world.
As a graduate of both Stanford (international relations and the environment) and of Georgetown University (MBA in non-profit management), McKew’s experience has spanned both the public, private and third sectors. Since joining ARTICLE 19 in 2011 she has played a vital role in developing a world-leading programme of work on digital infrastructure and human rights, and become a leading voice on the protection of civic space from a rights-based perspective. She is also a board member of The Equal Rights Trust – an international organization combating discrimination.
Prior to joining ARTICLE 19, Quinn was a senior strategist with a London-based consultancy specialising in sustainability, working with major corporations to develop the means to integrate sustainability into their operations. This was part of a life-long passion for the natural world which saw her progress from research fellow with the World Wildlife Fund to lead the American Rivers Wild River Campaign as Senior Director of the organization, during which she had access to the highest levels of state and federal government. Quinn also helped to launch the Georgetown Women’s Leadership Initiative while working towards her MBA.
Tarun Khaitan
Tarun Khaitan is the Professor (Chair) of Public Law at the LSE Law School and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Previously, he has been the Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (Oxford), the Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory (Oxford), Vice Dean (Faculty of Law, Oxford), and a Visiting Professor of Law (Chicago, Harvard, and NYU law schools).
He completed his undergraduate studies (BA LLB Hons) at the National Law School (Bangalore) in 2004 as the 'Best All-Round Graduating Student'. He then went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and completed his postgraduate studies at Exeter College. His research has been cited in over a dozen cases by influential courts, including the Indian Supreme Court, the Canadian Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the Israeli Supreme Court, the Madras High Court, the High Court of Kerala, and the Superior Court of Quebec (a list of these cases is available here).
Prof Khaitan’s monograph entitled A Theory of Discrimination Law (OUP 2015 hbk, South Asia edition and Oxford Scholarship Online, 2016 pbk) was reviewed very positively in leading journals, including in Law and Philosophy, where Sophia Moreau said "In this magnificent and wide-ranging book ... Khaitan attempts what very few others have tried." In Ethics, Deborah Hellman said that its 'ambitious scope and the careful argumentation it contains make it one of the best in the field’. In his review in the Modern Law Review, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen claimed that "Khaitan's account is sophisticated, extensive and among the best normative accounts of discrimination law available." Colm O'Cinneide's review in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies says that "Khaitan’s quest shows up the inadequacies of previous attempts to track down this Holy Grail, and the path he has laid down will encourage others to follow in his footsteps." The book won the Woodward Medal (with a cash prize of 10,000 Australian dollars) in 2019 for making ‘a significant contribution to knowledge in a field of humanities and social sciences.’ A list of reviews is available here.
He has also co-edited Foundations of Indirect Discrimination Law (Bloomsbury, 2018) with Prof Hugh Collins, and contributed two co-authored chapters to the volume. This collection was the outcome of a major international workshop with leading discrimination law scholars to rethink the moral foundations of the legal prohibition of indirect discrimination in the face of growing judicial hostility towards it. Chapters from the volume have been cited by the Canadian Supreme Court, the Indian Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the Madras High Court, the Superior Court of Quebec, and the Kerala High Court.
María Rachid
María Rachid is the Director of the Institute Against Discrimination of the Ombudsperson Office of the city of Buenos Aires, member of the Executive Board of the Argentine LGBT Federation (FALGBT+), and Professor at the Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication of the National University of La Plata.
Rachid was a legislator of the City Council of Buenos Aires from December of 2011 through December of 2015, where she was also the president of the Commission of Human Rights, Guarantees and Anti-discrimination. As a legislator, she presented more than 600 initiatives.
From 2010 through 2011, Rachid was the Vice President of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism (INADI). She has been an activist for the human rights of LGBT+ individuals since the 1990’s. In 1998 she was one of the founders of one of the most representative organizations of the LGBT+ activism in Argentina, La Fulana. When the Argentine LGBT Federation was founded in 2005, she was elected as their first president.
In 2010, Rachid was declared “Public Figure of the Year” by “El País” one of the main Journals in Spain, for her role in the campaign for Equal Marriage in Argentina in 2010 and voted unanimously an “Outstanding Figure in the Fight for Human Rights” by the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires.
Rachid wrote the Antidiscrimination Law of the City of Buenos Aires and was one of the authors of both the Equal Marriage Law and the Gender Identity Law, and has contributed to many bills that are currently being debated by the National Congress in Argentina, such as the project for a new National Antidiscrimination Law and an Integral Trans Law.
Nomfundo Ramalekana
Nomfundo Ramalekana is a senior lecturer in the Public Law Department at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She completed her LLB at the University of Pretoria, South Africa and the BCL, MPhil and DPhil (Law) at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. While at Oxford, Nomfundo worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the comparative human rights law and comparative equality law courses on the BCL course. She was also a Research Assistant for the Africa Oxford Initiative and a blog editor for the Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog. Nomfundo’s areas of interest are constitutional law, human rights law, anti-discrimination law, feminist legal theory and critical race theory. At the University of Cape Town, she lectures courses in constitutional law, women and the law, social justice, and the Constitution.