Magnitsky Awards
Helena Kennedy KC
Lawyer
Award Winner 2023
Lifetime Achievement Award
Award Presenter 2015, 2017 & 2026
Outstanding Contribution to Human Rights Law
Outstanding Campaigning Politician
Baroness Helena Kennedy KC is one of Britain’s most distinguished lawyers. She has spent her professional life-giving voice to those who have least power within the system, championing civil liberties and promoting human rights. She has conducted many prominent cases of terrorism, official secrets and homicide. She is the founding force behind the establishment of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. In 1997, she was elevated to the House of Lords where she is a Labour peer. She has published a number of books including two on how the justice system is failing women and has written and broadcasted on many issues over the years. Currently, she has taken on the role of Director to the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. She directs the Institute’s work upholding the rule of law and human rights globally.
She was a member of the Government Commission on a British Bill of Rights. She has been a member of the House of Lords for over 20 years, where she sat on the Joint Committee of Human Rights and chaired the European Union Sub Committee.
She was President of the School of Oriental and African Studies, a member of the World Bank Institute’s External Advisory Council and a board member of the British Museum.
She authored a number of books on law reform, co-wrote the successful television series Blind Justice and became a well-known broadcaster on law and ethics during the eighties, presenting the BBC’s Heart of the Matter.
A frequent broadcaster and journalist on law and women’s rights, her publications include the widely acclaimed Eve Was Shamed: How British Justice is Failing Women (Chatto & Windus, October 2018), was also published in paperback under the title, Misjustice: How British Law is Failing Women, in September 2019. Her book Just Law: The Changing Face of Justice and Why It Matters To Us All (Chatto & Windus, 2004) was also published in paperback in March 2005. Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice (Vintage, 1992) with the paperback publishing in 1993. It was fully updated and reissued in paperback in March 2005.
She was the Investigating Officer of the Human Trafficking Commission in Scotland. She is a member of the First Minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls.
She was Master of Mansfield College, Oxford for several years and was responsible for creating the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, the first institute of its kind in Oxford.
She was the Chair of the Booker Prize Foundation for five years and is the current Chair of the Video Standards Council.
A member of the Microsoft Technology and Human Rights Advisory Council. She is the President of Justice, the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists. She is the Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University and the Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.