INTERIGHTS
The International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights
Suite 1.05
New Loom House
101 Back Church Lane
London E1 1LU
United Kingdom
+44 (0)20 7264 3989
+44 (0)20 7481 9911

Dear Applicant

Re: Board Member positions at INTERIGHTS

Thank you for your interest in applying to join our Board.

We have created an application pack to provide information to support your application. The pack contains the following:

  • introductory note and responsibilities of a Board member
  • overview of INTERIGHTS
  • 25th Year Anniversary Report –
  • INTERIGHTS Business Plan -

In your covering letter please carefully demonstrate how you meet the requirements of this role and the expertise you can bring as this informs the short listing process.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Yours faithfully

John Wadham – Executive Director

1

INTRODUCTORY NOTE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF A BOARD MEMBER

INTERIGHTS

INTERIGHTS works to ensure that human rights standards are defended effectively before domestic and international bodies. We have cultivated an international reputation for expertise in international and comparative law, as well as strategy and procedure before regional and international courts as a means to advance human rights standards and promote social change.Those who violate rights must be held to account in order to underpin democracy and the rule of law. We shed light on abuses that may otherwise remain unchecked and strengthen public awareness of frequently marginalised issues. We contribute to justice and to strengthening the rule of law, protecting existing standards whilst advancing the progressive development of universal human rights.

The breadth and scope of our ligation is unparalleled. We work across regions (focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa). Our priority areas of economic and social rights, equality, and security and the rule of law are inter-related – expertise in one area informs our approach in others. Our internationally-recruited legal team combine regional understanding, specialist thematic knowledge and a global perspective. We are therefore well placed to transmit comparative practice and progressive jurisprudence between and across jurisdictions.

In February 2011 INTERIGHTS’ Board agreed a Business Plan (please take a look at the Business Plan). This set out a compelling narrative and work programme for INTERIGHTS but needs to be reviewed and renewed. A new Strategic Plan is currently being drafted for the medium and long term. At the same time the Board also wishes to refresh its own mandate and membership and that of the International Advisory Council (for further information please read Overview of INTERIGHTS).

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Board of anleadinginternational human rights NGO at a time of great change and financial challenge. We have built up an excellent track record and reputation. However we are not content to rest on our laurels and are determined to improve our capacity and effectiveness over the medium and long term. Strengthening our Board is a very important part of this process.

Remit of Board members:

Main shared responsibilities of INTERIGHTS’ Board members

  • setting our future year work programme and budget
  • ensuring that we retain our ethos and mission and are in compliance with our charitable objectives
  • periodically reviewing our business strategy
  • receiving at every Board meeting reports on legal cases, legal strategy, fund-raising and financial performance and risk assessments
  • agreeing the audited accounts
  • providing a source of strategic support & challenge to our staff
  • ensuring that INTERIGHTS’ governance is of the highest possible standard and that the Board works effectively as a team and strives to achieve high standards of accountability and transparency as a governing group
  • contributing to INTERIGHTS’ learning, improvement and effectiveness

Board members will have the commitment to introduce new funding opportunities and relationships where they can and to play an effective ambassadorial role on behalf of INTERIGHTS from time-to-time outside of formal Board meetings. Their skills, expertise and interests should align well with the specific priorities set out in our Business Plan.

We aim to configure a Board with the energy, commitment and expertise to ensure a successful future for INTERIGHTS. We have a strong commitment to equal opportunities and are keen to appoint a skilled and diverse Board.

Main individual responsibilities of INTERIGHTS Board members

  • attending up to six Board meetings per year including an AGM
  • willing to serve on the FinanceCommittee or relevant short life working groups that Board may set up
  • engaging periodically with our Executive Director and staff team outside of formal meetings in areas where Directors may be able to enhance the quality of our work
  • meeting annually with our Chair to review the contribution over the previous year and to agree suitably light touch targets and commitments for the next year
  • electing the Chair of the Board and the FinanceCommittee
  • serving concurrently as Directors of INTERIGHTS and to register as a company director at Companies House and the Charity Commission (this is done by the Company Secretary)

Desired skills and expertise

  • experience of strategic decision making
  • knowledge and commitment to the principals of equality and human rights
  • commitment to INTERIGHTS’ values and objectives
  • capacity to be a team player with excellent communication skills and to work effectively with a broadly range of peers
  • ability to represent INTERIGHTS externally

While it would be helpful if a majority of our Directors could draw on experience or interests that are aligned to our thematic legal priorities and the parts of the world in which we work, we are particularly interested in people with expertise in;

  • fundraising and donor relations
  • communications, including digital and social media
  • performance management
  • organisational development
  • non-executive roles for other organisations

INTERIGHTS provides a London-based international human rights service. While we would expect that the majority of our Directors will be UK based we would be delighted to receive applications from people based outside of the UK.

Term of office and remuneration

These appointments will initially be for a period of three years with the possibility of renewal for a further three year term which will be decided in the AGM.

As a charity, INTERIGHTS is not in a position to remunerate its Directors. We do commit to reimburse Directors for necessary expenses associated with Board duties.

How to apply

If you would welcome an informal discussion before deciding to apply please feel free to contact either our Chair, Jeremy McBride at or our Executive Director, John Wadham on +44 (0)207 264 3984 or by email at .

If you decide that you would like to apply please submit your current CV, equal opportunities and diversity monitoring form, together with a brief covering letter setting out your particular interests, skills and expertise and why you have decided to apply and include contact details of two referees.

Please send your completed application to Amana Dawuda-Wodu, Strategic Human Resources Consultant at byFebruary 10th 2014. Please ensure you state your name and the title of the role you are applying for in the subject heading of your email.

If you are shortlisted you will be contacted for interview.

Post appointment

All successful candidates will receive a background briefing on our work.

We will arrange an induction session for new Board members following the completion of the recruitment process. This will cover both further background on our current work programme and future plans together with essential background on charity and company law and responsibilities.

INTRODUCTION TO INTERIGHTS

Since 1982 Interights has provided leadership and support in the legal protection of human rights internationally. We work to ensure that human rights standards are protected and promoted effectively in domestic courts and before regional and international bodies, contributing to the development of a cumulative and progressive interpretation of international human rights law.

We have three main methods of working, which are mutually reinforcing:

  • providing expertise and support in strategic human rights litigation in priority thematic areas and other issues of particular regional significance;
  • building legal capacity of lawyers and judges through targeted training in human rights law, internships and through collaborative litigation efforts with local partners
  • disseminating practical legal information that enhances the use of human rights law and practice

Interightsregions and areas of focus

Regionally we work in Africa, Europe (with a focus on South Eastern, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union), and are currently scoping the possibility of work in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We have a number of lawyers who work thematically as well as lawyers who are from and have years of experience litigating in the regions in which we work. These thematic and regional lawyers work together on cases, bringing their particular knowledge, contacts and experiences to bear. We are thus able to bring an international and comparative law perspective to our work – whether in the form of submissions before an international court or tribunal, or individual advice to local lawyers.

The thematic areas we tackle, taking into account shifting areas of threat and new opportunities for jurisprudential development, are:

  • security and the rule of law
  • equality
  • economic and social rights (ESR)

Historically the mainstay of our work, security and the rule of law is a foundation of interights litigation. In addition to continuing to protect standards with respect to violations such as torture and arbitrary detention, in recent years we have expanded our work to include challenges emerging from the global war on terror. With partners we seek litigation opportunities with respect to, for example extraordinary rendition, secret detention and State obligations during counter-terrorism operations.

Equality is also an established plank of interights’ work, with the organisation at the forefront of emerging equality jurisprudence at the European Court of Human Rights. While we seek to litigate cases across grounds of discrimination, we also pay particular attention to the rights of those groups traditionally under-considered by courts, and where litigation is particularly challenging, namely women (particularly gender-based violence),persons with disabilities and LGBTI persons. We work internationally to ensure a progressive interpretation of existing equality provisions, and flexibility in the way in which discrimination can be proved.

The newest thematic area of our work is on economic and social rights, which largely focuses on the right to health and education. In Europe, much of this work is under the collective complaints procedure of the European Social Charter, though we also seek ways to strengthen the European Court’s protection of economic and social rights. In Africa, our work focuses on generating domestic litigation on the immediate obligations of States and seeks to clarify the minimum core content of ESR in the African context, the aim being also to create binding standards in the African Commission and Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Interightsworking methods

The primary focus of our work is strategic litigation. The bulk of our litigation is before international and regional human rights bodies where we generally co-represent individual applicants, or act as advisers off record. In selected cases before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), we intervene as a third party, advising the Court on particular international and comparative practice on which it should draw inspiration in its adjudication of cases. We also advise lawyers before national courts on international and comparative legal standards that might be argued before their domestic courts. Should these cases fail domestically, we then support the local lawyers in taking their cases to international or regional bodies.

In all of our litigation, we work with local partners contributing our expertise on international and comparative human rights arguments, and on strategy and procedure before the particular forum, while the local partner generally focuses on domestic law and procedure, establishment of facts and evidence and client support. Our litigation serves a capacity building role, with local partners’ ability to bring cases to domestic, regional and international fora increasing with each case, until Interights’ support is or is minimal or unnecessary. In many of our cases we collaborate with international NGOs, particularly where they bring thematic specialisation.

We will continue to consider the possibilities for interventions under the individual complaints mechanisms of the UN treaty bodies where appropriate, mindful of the limitations in terms of enforcement of these decisions. We are looking to support initial individual complaints under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and, when it comes in to force, under the Optional Protocol to the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

We aim to support the development of a strong cadre of human rights lawyers and human rights defenders. We do not hold “trainings” of lawyers in the traditional sense (though we do act as resource people/trainers at sessions organized by others), so much as gatherings of reasonably experienced litigators to discuss particular cases on which they are working, study recent jurisprudence and other legal developments on that theme and exchange views about gaps in human rights protection and strategies to address those gaps with a view to strengthening cases for submission to international courts. These London-based and in-country litigation surgeries have proved very successful as a way of identifying cases on the ground and building relationships with potential partners. In the past we have organised judicial colloquia, with a view to bringing international human rights law to the benches before which our local partners appear. While we are not currently holding judicial colloquia, we continue to gauge the need for such engagement and may hold such events in the future.

Interights also runs a programme of internships. Our interns acquire an increased knowledge of international and human rights comparative law, litigation and research skills and a strong understanding of opportunities and challenges in the legal protection of human rights. At the same time, our capacity is increased through learning about violations in the intern’s home country, effective legal responses and through discussing possibilities for future collaboration. A number of our most important cases have been taken with former interns as our local partners.

We produce and disseminate a range of publications, which keep lawyers, judges and NGOs abreast of developments in human rights law. The InterightsBulletin is an international human rights law review featuring analysis of developments in human rights law. The Commonwealth Human Rights Law Digest, published together with the Commonwealth Secretariat, contains summaries of significant human rights decisions from across the region. Our website ( hosts searchable legal databases providing over 4,000 summaries of significant human rights decisions. We also prepare and disseminate CommonwealthNet, a monthly information service providing a concise round-up of important human rights judgments from common law courts around the world, with links to full-text decisions.

In response to identified needs we also produce one-off publications. For example, we are currently working on a series of manuals on articles of the European Convention (and translating them into languages other than English), as well as a handbook on litigating under the women’s protocol to the African Charter.

In addition to our three prime working methods, we monitor and engage as necessary in institutional developments in the courts and bodies before which we work. For example, we are involved in a coalition of NGOs working towards greater effectiveness of the European Court in light of the current reform process. We also review institutional developments in Africa, particularly relating to the Rules of the Procedure of the African Commission and its relationship with the newly established Court.

Structure, governance and management

interights is an international non-profit making organisation registered as a charity in the United Kingdom and incorporated as a company limited by guarantee, with a written constitution contained in its memorandum and articles of association. Directors are appointed by Board members at its Annual General Meeting; the minimum number of Directors permitted is nine and the maximum is 17. The present number of Directors is 10. The governing body of the charity is the Board of Directors which meets approximately six times a year.

Financial and management oversight of interights’ work is carried out by a Finance Committee composed of four Directors (including the Chair and Treasurer), and the Executive Director, within the mandate given to it by the Board of Directors. The Finance Committee is charged with overseeing implementation of interights’ strategies, plans, policies and procedures in regard to finance, IT, property and internal organisation and management. The Finance Committee formally appraises the work of the Executive Director and can make recommendations to the Board on any matter relating to his or her employment. It can also approve emergency action on major policy, operational or other issues between Board meetings within agreed authority limits.

Oversight by the Board on personnel matters is delegated to the Executive Director The Finance Committee monitors the implementation of interights’ Human Resource strategies, policies, plan and procedures and makes any necessary recommendations to the Board. It recommends any changes in the contractual conditions of members of staff to the Board, and ensures compliance with statutory obligations with respect to staff.

Decisions of the Finance Committee are communicated to and ratified by the Board. The Board is assisted in setting the overall direction of interights’ legal work by an International Advisory Council composed of eminent figures in the world of human rights.

Directors are recruited on the basis of the needs of the organisation, taking into account existing experience on the Board. interights seeks to recruit Directors with diverse skill-sets including significant legal or human rights expertise in interights’ target regions or thematic areas of activity as well as financial, fundraising, management, governance, personnel and communication skills. New Directors are nominated to the Board by other Directors or recruited through an open recruitment process. Final decisions on membership are taken either by consensus or by a vote of Directors present at the Annual General Meeting. New Directors receive information on the organisation’s work and their duties as a Director, and take part in an induction meeting with the Chair of the Board, Executive Director the Senior Management Team and, as relevant, other members of interights’ staff.