Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR) is a legal charity (No. 1175498) in the UK that works on key projects to protect and promote Palestinian human rights. Our principal aim is to provide legal and human rights expertise that effectively contributes towards positively transforming the critical human rights situation impacting Palestinians.
LPHR seeks to achieve this overriding priority through the following components of our work:
- expert legal work, support and advice;
- utilising accountability and human rights mechanisms of domestic and international institutions;
- monitoring, analysis and urgent actions on human rights and international law violations;
- policy engagement from a legal and human rights perspective with the UK Government, parliamentarians, United Nations Special Rapporteurs and United Nations officials;
- legal advocacy and education (the latter includes engaging law students at law schools and universities in London through the LPHR Student Network).
We prioritise coordinating our work with human rights organisations in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel. LPHR is a resource member of the EuroMed Rights Working Group on Palestine, Israel and Palestinians – whose full members are drawn from Palestinian and Israeli human rights organisations.
LPHR Director – Tareq Shrourou
Tareq is the Director of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. Prior to this he was a practising human rights solicitor and previously worked for Liberty and Christian Khan Solicitors.
Tareq leads on LPHR’s legal work, policy positioning, advocacy, outreach and education activities. He supervises and works with LPHR’s Executive Committee (see below) who provide outstanding voluntary support. He devises and implements LPHR’s strategy with the oversight of its board of trustees – including leading human rights lawyers Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC and Tessa Gregory – and has responsibility for LPHR’s profile and impact.
Before becoming LPHR’s first Director in 2013, Tareq worked as a human rights solicitor representing asylum claimants, unaccompanied children and survivors of human trafficking. In this position he was specifically referred serious and complex cases from two prominent UK human rights organisations, Freedom from Torture and Liberty, and represented the Pakistan test cricketer, Zulqarnain Haider, in a high profile asylum claim. Prior to being a practising solicitor, he co-managed the public legal advice service of Liberty, after completing his legal training at Christian Khan Solicitors (established by the influential human rights lawyer, Louise Christian, and the former lawyer and current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan).
Tareq holds an LLB law degree from SOAS, University of London, an LLM in Public International Law from King’s College London, University of London, and completed the LPC with a distinction. He is mixed heritage, with an English mother and Palestinian father.
LPHR Executive Committee (2020-2021)
- Claire Jeffwitz (joined 2013)
- Natalie Sedacca (joined 2013)
- Aleisha Ebrahimi (joined 2013)
- Laila Hamzi (joined 2013)
- Alicia Mendonca-Richards (joined 2013)
- Dearbhla Katharine Minogue (joined 2014)
- Angelina Nicolaou (joined 2015)
- Emma Fullerton (joined 2017)
- Alamara Khwaja Bettum (joined 2017)
- Shahd Hammouri (joined 2018)
- Rebecca Nguyen van Thuy (joined 2019)
- Anastasia O’Brien (joined 2019)
LPHR Trustees
- Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC (founder of the UK law firm, Bindmans)
- Tessa Gregory (partner at the UK law firm, Leigh Day)
- Fiona McKay (senior managing legal officer on international justice at the Open Society Justice Initiative)
- Nusrat Uddin (public law and human rights solicitor at the UK law firm, Wilsons)
- Professor Bill Bowring (Professor of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London)
- Geraldine Isherwood (experienced finance director and manager)
- Jocelyn Hurndall (former charity director)