2014 Tutu Fellow Aua Baldé has been appointed to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances by the Human Rights Council. The appointment was made during its 54th session, in October 2020.
The main goal of the Working Group is to assist families of missing people to discover their fate or whereabouts, and act as a channel of communication between the families of victims and governments.
The UN African States for the Working Group, established in 1980, was the first thematic mechanism created under the United Nations Human Rights Program to address specific violations of human rights of a particularly serious nature, practiced worldwide.
Aua is a lawyer and member of the Portuguese and Bissau Guinean Bar Associations. For the last three years, she has been working with the United Nations in a peacekeeping context. She first joined the UN as a Political Affairs Officer with the United Nations Integrated Office in Guinea-Bissau.
As a Henigson Fellow, she worked in Senegal with the international NGO, Tostan, in the implementation of Human Rights at grassroots level. Aua was also awarded the Governance for Development in Africa Initiative fellowship from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and an International Law Seminar Fellowship (UNOG). She has also received a C.V. Starr Scholarship). She enjoys academia and has been a guest lecturer in European universities and written papers on the protection and promotion of human rights in West Africa.
Aua is a doctoral student and researcher at the Católica Global School of Law, which posted news of her appointment at their website. There is more on the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances at the Office of the High Commissioner website.
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