Kayum Ahmed Profile Picture

A. Kayum Ahmed

Program Lead, Global Health Initiative
Follow @akayumahmed1

Kayum is a South African human rights activist-scholar and HRW’s Program Lead for the Global Health Initiative (GHI). GHI is an innovative, interdisciplinary, and cross-divisional structure that serves as a creative space to advance decolonial knowledge and methodologies centered on reimagining the right to health. Kayum works on various global health projects including pandemic preparedness, Indigenous epistemologies, and the evolution of the right to health to include non-human nature. He also serves as a visiting scholar at Birzeit University in Palestine.

Previously, Kayum taught as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University and served as a Visiting Scientist at Harvard. He also worked on ensuring equitable global access to Covid-19 vaccines as Division Director at the Open Society Foundations (OSF) Public Health Program. Prior to relocating to New York, Kayum served as Chief Executive Officer of the South African Human Rights Commission from 2010 to 2015. During this period, he led a team of 178 colleagues to monitor, protect and promote human rights in South Africa, and oversaw the management of nearly 45,000 human rights cases.

Kayum holds a Ph.D. in education from Columbia University as well as various law degrees from the universities of Oxford (MS.t), Cape Town (LL.B.), and Leiden (LL.M.). In addition, he has degrees in anthropology (M.A.) and theology (B.A. Hons).