Bede Sheppard
Bede Sheppard is the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s children’s rights division. For more than a decade he has specialized in investigating war crimes and other abuses involving students, teachers, and schools during armed conflict. He was a leading civil society advocate during the process that led to the 2014 Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict, and the 2015 Safe Schools Declaration. He has also conducted research and advocacy on the right to education during the Covid pandemic, alternative care for children, the use of the death penalty on children, child domestic workers, extrajudicial executions, and forced evictions from informal settlements. He has conducted human rights investigations in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Japan, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Thailand, Ukraine, and Yemen. He has previously worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Croatia, and as an attorney with a Washington DC law firm, conducting investigations into human rights abuses related to extractive industries in Indonesia and South Africa. He holds a bachelors degree from Harvard College, a masters degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a law degree from Columbia University. During the summer term of 2016, he was a visiting scholar at the New Zealand Centre for Human Rights Law, Policy, and Practice at the Faculty of Law at Auckland University, and during the spring term of 2022, he was a research visitor at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford.
Articles Authored
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December 7, 2022
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October 19, 2022
All Children Have a Right to Pre-Primary Education
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June 23, 2021
UN Head Urges India to Join Safe Schools Declaration
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September 9, 2020
Protecting Education from Attack During Covid-19
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July 9, 2020
Music Shouldn’t Stop at Hong Kong’s School Gates
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July 3, 2020
Keeping Schools Safe from the Battlefield
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November 29, 2019
100 States Support Norway’s Initiative to Protect Schools
Reports Authored
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“Lay a Strong Foundation for All Children”
Fees as a Discriminatory Barrier to Pre-Primary Education in Uganda
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“Years Don’t Wait for Them”
Increased Inequalities in Children’s Right to Education Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic
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“These Killings Can Be Stopped”
Abuses by Government and Separatist Groups in Cameroon’s Anglophone Regions
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Studying Under Fire
Attacks on Schools, Military Use of Schools During the Armed Conflict in Eastern Ukraine
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“Our School Became the Battlefield”
Using Schools for Child Recruitment and Military Purposes in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
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Schools and Armed Conflict
A Global Survey of Domestic Laws and State Practice Protecting Schools from Attack and Military Use
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“Targets of Both Sides”
Violence against Students, Teachers, and Schools in Thailand’s Southern Border Provinces
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Sabotaged Schooling
Naxalite Attacks and Police Occupation of Schools in India’s Bihar and Jharkhand States
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