Claire Mahon

Claire Mahon is an internationally award winning human rights advocate, and the founder and CEO of the Global Human Rights Group, a social enterprise that was established in Geneva, Switzerland, and now operates from New Zealand.

She has worked as an advisor to world leaders including Presidents and heads of United Nations agencies, and has run a global consulting practice for over 20 years, offering advocacy, policy and legal advice to businesses, governments, civil society, and international experts, on matters including laws and policies around housing, education, health, food and agriculture, water and sanitation, discrimination, indigenous issues, women’s and children’s rights, community-building, and business and human rights. Some of her clients include UNICEF, the World Bank, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organisation, the International Development Law Organisation, the global Consortium for Street Children, HelpAge International, Save the Children, and the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions.

Claire also works as a coach and mentor, running a coaching practice that helps global affairs practitioners, human rights advocates, international lawyers, humanitarians, and global leaders in aid and development, to change the world.

Previously, Claire was a senior Research Fellow and the Founder and joint Coordinator of the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, coordinating their Geneva International Fellows Program.  She taught at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and also regularly teaches at other universities around the world as a guest lecturer in various courses on international human rights law, international organisations and public international law.

She has previously worked for Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Service for Human Rights, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Her work has focused on the UN human rights system and economic, social and cultural rights, particularly issues relating to monitoring human rights, including in the field. She has experience in designing and providing training on international human rights law and practice to diplomats, advocates, field officers, UN staff, and students in over 35 countries. She worked with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and contributed to his country missions and annual reports. She also spent two years working as the Special Advisor to Mrs Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland, in her role as Chair of the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisations (GAVI).

Claire has published on a variety of international human rights law topics, for academic publications and non-governmental organisations.  She is the co-author of the book The Fight for the Right to Food: Lessons Learned (with Jean Ziegler, Christophe Golay and Sally-Anne Way, published by Palgrave Macmillan, February 2011), and the co-editor of Realizing the Right to Health (with Andrew Clapham, Mary Robinson, and Scott Jerbi), published by Rüffer and Rub in May 2009.  She is the principle author of Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights (Geneva: COHRE, 2007), and she wrote the MultiStakeholder Guidelines for Mega-Events and Housing Rights (Geneva: COHRE, 2007), published in French, Spanish and Chinese, which have been referenced by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing.  For several years she wrote a monthly column as ‘Foreign Correspondent’ on human rights issues at the UN in the Australian Human Rights Law Centre Bulletin.

Claire lived and worked in Geneva, Switzerland, for 15 years. Prior to moving to Geneva, Claire worked as a corporate lawyer in mergers and acquisitions, at a top Australian law firm, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, and in community law at the Peninsula Community Legal Centre, in Victoria. In late 2018 she moved to her family’s hometown of Rotorua, New Zealand, in order to run the 2020 election campaign for Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party for this area.

Claire holds a Diplôme d’études approfondies (LLM/M.Phil equivalent) in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International Studies; a Bachelor of Laws (with Honours) from the Australian National University (ANU); a Bachelor of Arts (International Relations and Development Studies) from ANU; and is completing a PhD on the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.