Baroness Helena Kennedy LT KC has been appointed to serve as the new Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom. She succeeds The Rt Hon the Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury after his five-year tenure as the expert body’s inaugural Chair. The High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom serves as the independent advisory body to the Media Freedom Coalition, currently co-chaired by the governments of Estonia and Germany.

The Media Freedom Coalition, including its High Level Panel, is extremely grateful to Lord Neuberger for his leadership since the Panel’s inception in 2019. The High Level Panel looks forward to continuing its work as the Coalition’s independent advisory body under Baroness Kennedy’s leadership.

Baroness Kennedy was a founding member of the High Level Panel and has contributed significantly to the Panel’s work both in her capacity as a member of the Panel and as Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), which serves as Secretariat to the Panel.

Baroness Kennedy is a Barrister with over 50 years of experience of practice at the Bar of England and Wales. She is widely regarded as one of the leading human rights practitioners in the United Kingdom, representing defendants in many landmark cases in the English courts. She is a King’s Counsel, a member of the House of Lords in the UK Parliament and was appointed as a member of the Order of the Thistle in March of this year, the highest order of chivalry in Scotland. She has been Master of the Bench at Gray’s Inn and Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, during which time she also established the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford University.

She formerly chaired the British Council; JUSTICE, the UK section of the International Commission of Jurists; and a leading cross-party law reform charity in the UK. She has also chaired a number of inquiries including the Power Inquiry, which reported on the state of British democracy. Baroness Kennedy has served as Director of the IBAHRI since 2019, an independent entity within the International Bar Association. In 2019, she was the lead criminal lawyer in the United Nations team investigating the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Professor Can Yeginsu and Catherine Amirfar, Deputy Chairs of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, said: ‘We are absolutely delighted that our brilliant colleague, Helena Kennedy, will be taking on this new role. She is a founding member of the High Level Panel and a leading force behind its establishment and continued work. At the five-year mark of the Coalition, she is ideally placed to help take us forward with our work.’

ENDS

Contact: IBAHRI@int-bar.org

Notes to the Editor

1. The High Level Panel was established in July 2019 at the request of the Coalition’s inaugural Co-Chairs, Canada and the UK, and is composed of leading experts in the field of international law. The Deputy Chairs of the Panel are Professor Can Yeginsu and Catherine Amirfar.
2. The High Level Panel’s remit is to provide legal advice and recommendations to the Coalition and its partners, including international organisations, for the purposes of promoting and protecting a vibrant, free and independent media. The High Level Panel also provides individual States with legal advice in the form of legal opinions on draft legislation or legislation already in force, where media freedoms are engaged, as well as amicus curiae opinions at the request of a constitutional court or an international court in a media freedom case of general public importance.
3. The Rt Hon the Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury served as the inaugural Chair of the High Level Panel from July 2019 – August 2024.
4. The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute serves as the Secretariat to the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom.
5. Related material:
   • The High Level Panel’s Advisory Enforcement Reports to the Media Freedom Coalition
   • High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom – Opinions to States on Legislation and Amicus Curiae briefs
   • The Media Freedom Coalition’s 5th Anniversary

6. The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), established in 1995 under Founding Honorary President Nelson Mandela, is an autonomous and financially independent entity, working to promote, protect and enforce human rights under a just rule of law, and to preserve the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession worldwide.

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8. The International Bar Association (IBA), the global voice of the legal profession, is the foremost organisation for international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies. Established in 1947, shortly after the creation of the United Nations, it was born out of the conviction that an organisation made up of the world's's bar associations could contribute to global stability and peace through the administration of justice.

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Website page link for this news release:

Short link: www.tinyurl.com/5n7ddh2f
Full link: www.ibanet.org/Baroness-Helena-Kennedy-LT-KC-appointed-Chair-of-the-High-Level-Panel-of-Legal-Experts-on-Media-Freedom