Babatunde Olugboji

Babatunde Olugboji is deputy program director for Human Rights Watch. He brings more than 25 years of experience to his job, having worked as a researcher, journalist, writer, editor, human rights activist, campaigner, and public policy analyst.

Before joining Human Rights Watch, he worked with Christian Aid in London and in Berlin with Transparency International. He collaborated with groups in Africa on membership development, anti-corruption strategies, evaluation techniques, and organizational development. Previously, he was executive director and cofounder of the Centre for Free Speech, Nigeria’s first specialist freedom of expression human rights group. Olugboji also received Britain’s prestigious Chevening Scholarship.

He has researched and written extensively on freedom of expression and access to information, transparency in HIV/AIDS funding, tax justice and illicit flow of funds, and the corruption dimensions of human rights. He holds human rights certifications from institutions in Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United States, where he was a fellow of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University.

Olugboji holds a PhD in mass communication from the University of Leicester, United Kingdom, where he wrote his thesis on how the British press report and frame corruption issues in the three aid-recipient African nations of Ethiopia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.