ADAM STAPLETON

Adam Stapleton has been working in the field of criminal justice all his professional life. He started out as a criminal barrister in London (1985-1993), before serving as a human rights officer with UN missions in Cambodia, South Africa and Rwanda. He co-wrote with Kathryn English: the Human Rights Handbook – a practical guide to monitoring human rights (published by Essex 1995 and Juta and Co in 1997).

He was a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre at Essex University (UK), Visiting Professor of Law at the Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Chicago, USA and senior Justice adviser to the UK government’s Stabilisation Unit (now Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation (OCSM)). He co-founded the Governance and Justice Group (GJG) in 2009.

From a base in Malawi he worked as an independent adviser to Penal Reform International (1995-2007). He was the architect of the Paralegal Advisory Service while there which has been introduced in other African countries and in Bangladesh. In 2004, he organized the first pan-African conference on legal aid which produced the Lilongwe Declaration on Accessing Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems (2006: adopted by the ACHPR and in 2007 by the United Nations). He was commissioned by UNODC to research and draft the UN Principles and Guidelines on Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems which were adopted by the General Assembly in 2013.