Ibrahima Kane is Special Advisor to the Executive Director of the Open Society Foundation-Africa, responsible for advocacy at the African Union, and is a qualified lawyer in Senegal and France. Before joining the Open Society Foundation in 2007 , he was senior lawyer in charge of the Africa programme at INTERIGHTS for 10 years.
As a founding member of RADDHO, a Senegalese human rights organization, for six years Kane led a program focusing on public education and women’s human rights in five West African countries: Cape Verde, the Republic of Guinea, the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Senegal.
Ibrahima is particularly interested in economic, social and cultural rights, women’s rights, the rights of migrants and refugees, nationality issues on the African continent, and the pursuit of justice through regional and international mechanisms. Over the past fifteen years, Kane has worked closely with and argued before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Union Commission, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Court of Justice of the East African Community (EAC). He has authored and coordinated the writing and publication of a number of reports and articles on the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the protection of human rights by regional economic community bodies. He was also Associate Professor at the University of Essex Law School from 2005 to 2011.
