Bassam Khawaja

Bassam Khawaja is a deputy director in the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch, where he supervises work on Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, and on social protection and economic rights. He previously taught human rights advocacy at Columbia Law school, was co-director of the Human Rights and Privatization Project at New York University Law School’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, was Senior Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, and worked for Human Rights Watch as the Lebanon and Kuwait researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division and the Leonard H. Sandler Fellow in the children’s rights division. His work has focused on poverty and inequality, privatization, refugee and migrant rights, torture, education, free speech, women’s rights, the right to health, and environmental rights. He received a BA from Macalester College and a JD from Columbia University, where he was a James Kent Scholar and Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. He is a Senior Fellow in the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School and Counsel to the Human Rights and Privatization Project at NYU School of Law.