David Mepham joined Human Rights Watch in April 2011 as the UK Director, responsible for communications and advocacy. Before joining Human Rights Watch, he spent four years as the head of policy and advocacy for Save the Children UK. Before that, Mepham was associate director of the Institute for Public Policy Research and the head of its international program, where he led research projects on fragile states; human rights and corporate responsibility; R2P; China's role in Africa, and economic and political reform in the Middle East.

From 1998 to 2002, David was a senior policy adviser in the UK's Department for International Development, and the lead author on the white paper Making Globalisation Work for the Poor (2000). He is also co-editor of Progressive Foreign Policy - new directions for the UK (2007). David was educated at the London School of Economics and Oxford University.