​Imrana Jalal Elected as next Inspection Panel Chairperson

Members of the Inspection Panel have unanimously elected Imrana Jalal as Panel chairperson, effective December 16, 2018. Ms. Jalal will succeed Gonzalo Castro de la Mata, who has been the chairman of the Panel since November 2014. Mr. Castro de la Mata will remain as chairman until his five-year term as a Panel member ends on December 15, 2018.

A gender specialist, lawyer and development practitioner, Ms. Jalal joined the Panel on January 1, 2018, succeeding Zeinab Bashir Elbakri. A Fiji national, she brings to the Panel more than 30 years of experience across diverse geopolitical and multicultural environments in the private and public sectors. Immediately prior to becoming a Panel member, Ms. Jalal was a principal social development specialist for the Asian Development Bank, where she gained an intimate knowledge of multilateral development bank operations in various sectors.

Ms. Jalal was a commissioner from 1999-2001 on the initial Fiji Human Rights Commission, the first of its kind in the Pacific Island countries. She is the author of the “Law for Pacific Women: A Legal Rights Handbook,” architect of the Fiji Family Law Act 2003, and was a founding member of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement. She was elected a commissioner on the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in 2006 and served on the Commission’s Executive Board from 2011-2017. The ICJ was established to protect the independence of judges and lawyers. Ms. Jalal earned a Masters of Arts with a focus on Gender and Development from the University of Sydney, and an LLB and LLM (Hons.) in International Law from the University of Auckland.