Christine Evans is a senior researcher and lecturer at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. A human rights practitioner, she previously worked twenty years with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
She has extensive experience of undertaking human rights and IHL monitoring, legal analysis and report drafting. She has undertaken numerous fact-finding missions for OHCHR field presences and for several independent Commissions of Inquiry and Special Procedures established by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Having worked in a variety of conflict and post-conflict settings, she has gained insights into the practical complexities of applying human rights standards in such circumstances.
She has first-hand experience working with, and the interviewing of, victims of human rights violations, including in relation to the monitoring of arbitrary detentions, extra-judicial executions, torture, SGBV and attacks against human rights defenders.
Her past assignments include acting as the Legal Advisor to the UN Sri Lanka investigation, as Investigator for the Syria Commission of Inquiry, as Legal Officer in the Civil Parties (victims) Legal Representation unit at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia (ECCC) and as Human Rights Officer in the monitoring team with OHCHR in Colombia.
She has advocacy experience and has researched and drafted several UN reports to the General Assembly and to the Human Rights Council on a diverse range of themes, ranging from inter alia human rights defenders, extra-judicial executions, reprisals, human rights & business to the impacts of climate change and conservation.
Between 2015 and 2023, she was the Human Rights Officer in OHCHR supporting the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and her current research interest lies primarily in the area of Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
She holds an LLM from Lund University and a PhD in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her book on ‘The Right to Reparation in International Law for Victims of Armed Conflict’ was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. She has also published various chapters on human rights mechanisms in books by Oxford University Press and Routledge among others.
She regularly gives lectures, trainings and presentations to various stakeholders, including parliamentarians, judges, academics, masters’ students, representatives of CSOs and indigenous organisations, UN Agencies and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.