Rashida Manjoo is a Professor of Human Rights in the Department of Public Law, University of Cape Town, South Africa. Until July 2015, she held the position of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences. Prof. Manjoo is the former Parliamentary Commissioner of the Commission on Gender Equality, an institution created by the Constitution of South Africa. She has also been involved in social context training for judges and lawyers, where she has designed both content and methodology. Prof. Manjoo has over four decades of experience in social justice and human rights work both in South Africa and abroad. Her research interests include human rights broadly with a particular focus on women’s human rights. She has authored a number of journal articles, book chapters and reports on women’s human rights, violence against women, transitional justice, and state responsibility to act with due diligence in the quest to promote and protect the human rights of women. Her research and teaching has focused on the intersectional nature of discrimination, including on the base of sex, gender, race, class, location, (dis)ability, socio-economic conditions, and historical and cultural contexts. She has particularly highlighted the interaction of interpersonal, communal, institutional and structural factors that negatively impact the interdependence and indivisibility of the human rights of women.
