E. Tendayi Achiume

Achiume was born in Zambia. When she was growing up, Achiume had an inspirational physics teacher, and first considered a career in physics and engineering. She attended the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales, where she first became interested in political science and international law. Achiume earned her bachelor's degree at Yale University. She moved to the Yale Law School for her Juris Doctor, where she also earned a certificate in Development Studies. During her training she specialised in international migration and refugee rights. She also served as a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. At Atlantic College, Achiume initially took Higher Level subjects in physics and engineering but chose Standard Level Political Thought, where studying Hobbes, Locke, and Machiavelli sparked her interest in law and political science. She earned an International Baccalaureate Diploma there. At Yale University, she received a B.A. in Ethics, Politics and Economics in 2005, and spent her first year focusing on humanities and social sciences before pursuing law. == Research and career ==

Following her positions as a legal clerk, she was awarded a Bernstein International Human Rights fellowship to join the migrant rights project at Johannesburg's Lawyers for Human Rights. At UCLA, Achiume leads the International Human Rights Clinic, a programme which teaches students international human rights through clinical projects. The projects led by Achiume include providing legal support for Indigenous peoples of the Americas, legal policies in Los Angeles and incarcerated women. As part of the programme, Achiume worked with Dignity and Power Now, an organisation in Los Angeles that looks to support incarcerated people and their families. She and her students looked at violations against incarcerated women of colour who suffered from mental illness. She demonstrated that these women were regularly denied physical or mental health support. She chaired the 2016 American Society of International Law annual meeting. In 2017 Achiume was appointed to the United Nations Human Rights Council as the UN special rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. She was the first woman to hold such a position. Her verdict was that the Home Office hostile environment policy had "entrenched racism" across the United Kingdom. She encouraged the Government of the United Kingdom to evaluate its policies on discrimination and to investigate the criminalisation of young Black men. Achiume identified that the anti-foreigner rhetoric that developed during the Leave.EU campaign was permeating society, and that austerity measures were disproportionately impacting communities of colour. This visit was documented in her first report to the United Nations General Assembly, in which she concluded that "ethnonationalist populism" posed a considerable threat to racial equality. In 2019, she benefited of the support of UCLA which received to this end a grant from the Ford Foundation, especially for research about raising issues from the Global South. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Achiume studied the rise in racism and xenophobia that spread alongside SARS-CoV-2. Achiume emphasised the need for education in combating racism, and that racial and xenophobic discrimination should become a more substantial part of education. In October 2023, Achiume signed a letter to Joe Biden condemning Israel’s bombardment and intensifying blockade of Gaza and calling for an immediate cease-fire. The letter was signed by legal scholars from some of the United States' most prestigious law faculties. == Selected publications ==