Dr. Elīna Šteinerte is an academic and human rights lawyer with over 20 years of experience. She is a member of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and former member and Chair Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. She is also Jersey Law Commissioner, Visiting Professor at the Jersey Law Institute and Visiting Fellow at the Human Rights Implementation Centre of the University of Bristol. In April 2023 she was appointed independent expert of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism on the issue forcible transfer of children within parts of Ukraine’s territory temporarily controlled or occupied by Russia and/or their deportation to the Russian Federation which culminated in the publication of the report on the matter. Dr. Šteinerte is an academic with extensive teaching background having taught public international and human rights law at numerous Universities in Latvia, the United Kingdom, and the Bailiwick of Jersey. The prime focus of her work and research has been the implementation of the UN Convention against Torture and its Optional Protocol (OPCAT). She has worked worldwide and published five academic outputs with respect to the implementation of the Convention including advising upon the calibration of domestic legislation and the designation and effectiveness of National Preventive Mechanisms. Additionally, she has provided expert advice on a variety of criminal justice reforms, including pretrial detention, overuse of imprisonment, overcrowding, and independent oversight over the places of deprivation of liberty and child justice. She has worked with the UNHCR on streamlining its methodology for monitoring immigration detention. In her Working Group Against Detention (WGAD) role, Dr. Šteinerte has led numerous UN country missions including to Argentina, Sri Lanka, Hungary, Bhutan, Qatar, the Maldives, Botswana and Mongolia. She has participated in the delivery of over 450 WGAD Opinions regarding allegations of arbitrary deprivation of liberty globally. She also led the WGAD’s work on the formulation of its Deliberations on detention in the context of migration in 2017 and detention in the context of public health emergencies (COVID-19) in 2020.
