Gaye Sowe

Gaye Sowe is the Executive Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, a Pan-African human rights organized based in The Gambia. Mr Sowe has spent more than 12 years at IHRDA. He rose through the ranks as Legal Officer, Senior Legal Officer to Director of Programs before his appointment as Executive Director in October 2015.

Having gathered an incredible wealth of experience in litigation, capacity building and advocacy at domestic and regional levels up his sleeve, Gaye is the resident law reference, especially in common law, constitutional, criminal and non-discrimination law.

Gaye has done trainings and presentations on different areas of international human rights law with judiciary and law enforcement officials, as well as lawyers and human rights activists, in Africa and beyond. He is an Expert Member of the ECOSOC Working Group of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and has made significant contributions in developing the jurisprudence of various African human rights mechanisms.

Gaye was called to the Nigerian and Gambian Bars in October and November 2000 respectively. He worked with the Gambian Judiciary as a Principal Magistrate and Acting Judicial Secretary prior to joining IHRDA. He was a member of the Steering Committee for the Establishment of a Law Faculty in the University of the Gambia and has been an Adjunct Lecturer  at the UTG since its inception. He was also lecturer at The Gambia Law School until December 2014.

Mr. Sowe studied at the University of Essex’s International Human Rights Law programme (LLM), and at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife (LLB Honours), as well as at the Nigerian Law School (BL Honours) He has also done shorts courses in alternative dispute resolution, election observation and human rights in the UK, the U.S, Germany, Hungary, Finland and  Ghana