Free State Centre for Human Rights,
University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
E-Mail: brenda.kombo@aya.yale.edu
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Brenda K. Kombo is an anthropologist and lawyer whose research spans across legal anthropology, human rights, and international law. She has published several articles on women's human rights and international law and co-edited a Solidarity for African Women's Rights and Make Every Woman Count publication commemorating 10 years of the African Women's Rights Protocol. Her academic career follows several years of work with non-governmental organizations in the human rights field, primarily at the African continental level. Previous academic positions include research fellowships at New York University's Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora, the Free State Centre for Human Rights at the University of the Free State, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's African Centre for Gender and Social Development and Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Yale Fox International Fellow Program).

Current Main Research Interests

Brenda is currently interested in the ways various African actors engage with or reject international human rights law in different struggles for equality (including gender equality) and the attendant transformative possibilities. Her research focuses on family code reform in select Francophone African countries and, more recently, on the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Four selected publications with particular relevance to the Research Group

• A Missed Opportunity? Derogation and the APDF and IHRDA v. Mali African Court Case - https://www.ahrlj.up.ac.za/kombo-bk-2-2020
• Napoleonic Legacies, Postcolonial State Legitimation, and the Perpetual Myth of Non-Intervention: Family Code Reform in Mali - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0964663920962552
• Silences that Speak Volumes: The Significance of the African Court Decision in APDF and IHRDA v. Mali for Women's Human Rights on the Continent, 3 Afr. Hum. Rts. Y.B. 389, available at http://www.ahry.up.ac.za/ahry-issues/volume-3.
• Journey to Equality: 10 Years of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, (Kombo, Faiza Jama Mohamed, and Rainatou Sow eds., 2013), available at: http://www.soawr.org/images/JourneytoEquality.pdf.