PROFILE AND STATEMENT
OF MICHAEL K. ADDO
I am Michael K. Addo, a professor of law at the University of Notre
Dame and Director of the Law Program at the London Global Gateway.
Before joining Notre Dame, I held appointments at the Universities of Exeter
and Staffordshire.
I have established an international reputation as an expert in human
rights and one of the leading scholars in the field of human rights and
international business policy through my research, teaching, and policy
engagement. I have published several books, including one of the earliest
collection of essays on Human Rights Standards and the Responsibility of
Transnational Corporations (Nijhoff 1998), and articles in leading scholarly
journals.
I have successfully supervised and examined over thirty doctoral works
and many of my students have progressed to successful careers as government
legal advisors and human rights advisors at international organizations and as
successful university academics.
As a member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human
Rights, I served as chair of the Co-ordination Committee of the United
Nations Special Procedure Mandate Holders 2015/2016 and served as a
member of the Steering Committee of the Addis Ababa Roadmap between the
special procedures mandate holders of the Human Rights Council and the
African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. I am a lawyer by
training and an advocate at the Ghana Bar.1
I was invited by Ms. Desiree Llanos Dee, Climate Justice Campaigner
of Greenpeace Southeast Asia (Philippines), one of the petitioners in the
human rights and climate change case, to explain the issue of human rights
responsibility of transnational corporations and other business enterprises in
the second public hearing of the case on May 23-24 at the Commission on
Human Rights in Quezon City, Philippines.
I agreed to be a witness and resource person for the petitioners and
answer questions to be asked of me.
I submit the following answers to the questions given to me by the legal
representatives of the petitioners to form part of my statement, along with my
Curriculum Vitae to the Commission on Human Rights. I will elaborate and
clarify these answers during the public hearing.
1
My brief profile is available here:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Business/Pages/Members.aspx