Professor Obiora C. Okafor

Co-founder and Chief Knowledge Officer

Professor Obiora C. Okafor is one of the world’s top human rights scholar-practitioners. With nearly thirty years of experience as a world class human rights scholar and practitioner, he holds the highly prestigious York Research Chair in International and Transnational Legal Studies (Senior Tier) and is a tenured Full Professor of Law at the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto, Canada (Canada’s top law school).

Prof Okafor has served as a human rights and/or International law consultant for the World Bank, the ECOWAS Parliament, and the House of Representatives of Nigeria. The General Editor of the international journal, the Transnational Human Rights Review, and editorial board member of a number of other academic journals around the world, he has held the Gani Fawehinmi Distinguished Chair in Human Rights Law at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and served as a Visiting Professor at a number of universities and institutes around the world (including Harvard, MIT, the Rene Cassin Institute in Strasbourg, and Kent Law School). He was conferred the Award of Academic Excellence of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers in 2010 and the Gold Medal for Exceptional Research and Major Contributions to Jurisprudence of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in 2013.  His PhD Thesis at the University of British Columbia (1998) won the Canadian Governor-General (Head of State’s Gold Medal). Professor Okafor has published six books (with two others forthcoming) and nearly 100 journal articles and scholarly writings. He has also won over 19 highly competitive grants.

Prof Okafor has also worked and partnered with the following organizations:

  • World Bank Groups Nigeria
  • National Assembly of Nigeria
  • The ECOWAS Parliament
  • African Union’s Human Rights and Transitional Justice Unit

Education

Ph.D., Law, University of British Columbia, Canada, (1998) University-wide Gold Medallist

LL.M, University of British Columbia, Canada, (1995) First Class Average

LL.M, University of Nigeria, Nigeria, (1995) Distinction

LL.B., University of Nigeria, Nigeria (1989) Honours