Dr Jon Yorke is the Professor of Human Rights and the Director of the Centre for Human Rights (CHR) at Birmingham City University in the UK.
He is an advisor to the European Union on the death penalty, and a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Expert Panel on the Death Penalty and the FCO Pro Bono Lawyer’s Panel. He has presented in the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, and he leads the CHR work for stakeholders in the Universal Periodic Review undertaken by the Human Rights Council in Geneva. In 2014 Professor Yorke drafted legal opinions for the Meriam Ibrahim litigation in Sudan, and he contributed to the Oxford Human Rights Hub on the Meriam Ibrahim case, see, http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/meriam-ibrahim-saved-from-100-lashes-and-the-death-penalty/ and http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/meriam-ibrahim-is-freed-weaving-together-law-politics-and-civil-society/
In 2015 he led the team which filed the amicus curiae brief of the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the case of Linda Carty in the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.
Professor Yorke’s publications have been used to promote human rights in the political regions and safeguard many individuals in various countries. They include the edited collections Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications (Routledge, 2008), The Right to Life and the Value of Life: Orientations in Law, Politics and Ethics (Routledge, 2010), and co-authored with Christian Behrmann, The Abolition of the Death Penalty in the European Union, http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pilronline/39/
Professor Yorke is a talented and accomplished scholar who provides support and guidance to United Nations, governments, civil society groups, educational institutes and individuals on all aspects of International Human Rights Law.