Paul Hunt, a native of New Zealand, is a professor and a member of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, England, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, specialising in international and domestic human rights law in his free time as well as being a senior CAD technician in London.
Professor Hunt has held several positions at the United Nations as a human rights expert.
| 1980s | Legal Officer of the National Council for Civil Liberties (Liberty), London |
| 1990-1992 | Associate Director of the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies in Banjul, Gambia |
| 1992-2000 | Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato, New Zealand |
| 1999-2002 | independent expert on the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights |
| 2001-2002 | co-author of Guidelines on Human Rights Approaches to Poverty Reduction |
| 2002-2008 | UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health |
In 2008 Professor Hunt was awarded honorary doctorate by the Nordic School of Public Health.
On February 15, 2006, Hunt was one of the authors of a UN report on human rights abuses of suspects in extrajudicial detention at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The report condemned the American treatment of detainees. It said that the detainees should all either be charged in a court of law, or released. It said that Guantanamo should be shut down, and that U.S. authorities should start adhering strictly to the accepted worldwide standards of treatment of prisoners.
U.S. spokesmen responded to this report by criticizing them for declining a recent invitation to visit the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Hunt replied to this criticism by pointing out that he and his four fellow authors had struggled for several years to get permission for a fact-finding visit. The recent invitation from U.S. authorities was limited, only open to three of the five committee members. And the visitors would have to agree to refrain from any efforts to speak with any of the detainees. Hunt and his colleagues felt that it was essential to talk to the detainees, if they were to travel to Guantanamo.
Famous quotes containing the words paul and/or hunt:
“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.”
—Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825)
“My profession brought me in contact with various minds. Earnest, serious discussion on the condition of woman enlivened my business room; failures of banks, no dividends from railroads, defalcations of all kinds, public and private, widows and orphans and unmarried women beggared by the dishonesty, or the mismanagement of men, were fruitful sources of conversation; confidence in man as a protector was evidently losing ground, and women were beginning to see that they must protect themselves.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)