On 1 April 2022, Mr. Richard Bennett was appointed as the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan.

 

 Mr. Bennett has served in Afghanistan on several occasions in different capacities including as the Chief of the Human Rights Service with UNAMA. He has previously played a role in the promotion and protection of human rights in Afghanistan and supported the UN on human rights issues, such as protection of civilians, transitional justice, child rights, rule of law, rights of people with disabilities, protection of human rights defenders and economic, social and cultural rights.

 

 Mr. Bennett served with the UN as the Representative of OHCHR and head of the human rights components of peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, and South Sudan, as well as twice in Afghanistan (2003-07; 2018-19). He has been a long-term adviser to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

 

 Mr. Bennett was the Representative of OHCHR and head of OHCHR’s office in Nepal (2007-10), as well as Chief of Staff for the UN Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka and Special Adviser to the Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights in New York.

 

 Mr. Bennett worked for Amnesty International (2014–17) as its Asia-Pacific Program Director and later as head of Amnesty’s UN Office in New York. From mid-2019, he worked as a consultant on UN human rights assignments in Afghanistan, Myanmar and New York.

 

 Mr. Bennett is currently a visiting professor at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund, Sweden.