Dr Albert K. Barume was appointed as Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples in December 2024. He has over 25 years of experience working on Indigenous Peoples’ rights at national, regional and international levels. A national of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dr. Barume was among the first lawyers to work on Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the 1990s in Africa.
He was a Chairperson and Member of Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Senior Specialist on the rights of Indigenous Peoples at ILO, Independent Expert on the rights of Indigenous Peoples at the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. Dr Barume led a team of African experts who provided support to African diplomats in New York during the process of adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.
Dr Barume holds a Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law with a focus on Indigenous Peoples’ rights from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, and a Master’s degree in Environmental Management from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies of Yale University in the United States of America. He has taught Indigenous Peoples’ rights in several universities across the World and has published numerous books and articles on the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
