Zama Neff

Zama Neff is the executive director of Human Rights Watch’s children's rights division. Under her leadership, the organization has launched new work on education and armed conflict, child rights and new technologies, secondary education, refugee children’s right to education, hazardous child labor in tobacco, girls’ reproductive rights, and other issues. She has over two decades of experience documenting human rights abuses and has authored reports and articles on a range of abuses against children.

Neff is a founder of the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack—a unique group of human rights, humanitarian, and UN agencies—and has helped lead the coalition’s work for over a decade. Through global reporting and international advocacy, the Coalition helped firmly establish that attacks on schools, teachers, and students characterize armed conflict, and promoted the Safe Schools Declaration, a political declaration to protect education in war, now endorsed by a majority of countries.

She is a graduate of Davidson College and New York University School of Law.