Emeritus Professor Andrea Durbach
BA. LL.B (University of Cape Town)
DipLaw (Solicitors' Admission Board), University of Sydney
Andrea Durbach is Professor and was Director of the Australian Human Rights Centre (now Institute) in UNSW Law from 2004-2017.
Born and educated in South Africa, she practised as a political trial lawyer and human rights advocate, representing victims and opponents of apartheid laws. After leaving South Africa, Andrea initially worked as a solicitor at Freehills Hollingdale and Page in Sydney before joining the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) as Head of Legal Practice, subsequently becoming PIAC's Executive Director. Andrea has held senior positions in the human rights field, including as Deputy Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner (2011-2012) and as a consultant to the Australian Defence Abuse Response Taskforce to develop a framework to address the needs of Defence Force victims of gender-based violence and to prevent harmful conduct. She is a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and in 2013, she was awarded the Australian Human Rights Commission Human Rights Law Award for her promotion and advancement of human rights in Australia through the practice of law.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
ARC Discovery Grant (DP140102274), Combating sexual violence against women post-conflict through ‘transformative’ reparations: problems and prospects (with Louise Chappell and Sarah Williams) $375,000 (2014-2016)
The Caledonia Foundation grant to fund Strengthening Australian university responses to sexual assault and harassment project $150,000 (2015)
Australian Human Rights Commission/Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade grant to develop educational resource on LGBTI rights for 16 African members of the Commonwealth Forum of National Human Rights Institutions $30,000 (2013-2014)
Law School Workshop Support Scheme grant, Law and Poverty in Australia: 40 years after the Sackville Report (with Brendan Edgeworth and Vicki Sentas) $10,000 (2014)
UNESCO Australian National Commission Grants Scheme, Intersecting Heritage and Human Rights Workshop and resultant publication (with Lucas Lixinski) $4,840 (2013-2014)
ARC Linkage Grant (LP0776639): Building Human Rights in the Region through Horizontal Transnational Networks: the Role of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (with Professor Andrew Byrnes) $215,000 from ARC, and $75,000 from the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions) (2007-2010)
University of New South Wales/Goldstar: Structural, Social and Behavioural Influences on Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Response and Impact Mitigation in Australia (Andrea Durbach, Michael Humphrey, Niamh Stephenson, Heather Worth, Anthony Zwi, Daniel Tarantola) $30,000.00 (2007-2009)
UNSW Law Faculty Award for Impact and Engagement (2017)
Australian Human Rights Commission Human Rights Law Award for the promotion and advancement of human rights in Australia through the practice of law (2013)
Books
Andrea Durbach, Upington, Allen & Unwin, Sydney (1999) (published in South Africa by David Phillip, Cape Town 1999 and in America as A Common Purpose, Continuum, New York, 2002) Short-listed for the Alan Paton Non-Fiction Award, 1999
Andrea Durbach (ed), Law and Poverty in Australia – 40 Years after the Poverty Commission, (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2017) (co-edited with Brendan Edgeworth and Vicki Sentas)
Andrea Durbach (ed), Heritage, Culture and Rights: Challenging Legal Discourses, (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2017) (co-edited with Lucas Lixinski)
Book chapters
Andrea Durbach, Towards Reparative Transformation: Revisiting the Impact of Violence against Women in a Post-TRC South Africa, in Ros Dixon and Theunis Roux (eds), Constitutional Triumphs, Constitutional Disappointments: A Critical Assessment of the 1996 South African Constitution’s Local and International Influence, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 174-198
Andrea Durbach and Rosemary Grey, Grounds for concern: an Australian perspective on responses to sexual assault and harassment in university settings in Sundari Anitha and Ruth Lewis (eds), Gender based violence in university communities – Policy, prevention and educational initiative, Policy Press, 2018, 83-104
Andrea Durbach, ‘Between the Idea and the Reality’ Securing Access to Justice in an Environment of Declining Points of Entry, in Brendan Edgeworth, Andrea Durbach, Vicki Sentas (eds), Law and Poverty in Australia – 40 Years after the Poverty Commission, The Federation Press, 2017, 214-230
Andrea Durbach, Cultural Heritage as Transformation: a study of four sites from post-apartheid South Africa, in Andrea Durbach and Lucas Lixinski (eds), Heritage, Culture and Rights: Challenging Legal Discourses, Hart Publishing, 2017, 205-226
Andrea Durbach, Human rights commissions in times of trouble and transition: the case of the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal, in Hitoshi Nasu and Ben Saul (eds), Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region: Towards Institution Building, (London: Routledge, 2011), 209-234
Andrea Durbach, The Right to Legal Aid in Social Rights Litigation in Malcolm Langford (ed), Social Rights Jurisprudence: Emerging Trends in International and Comparative Law, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 59-71
Andrea Durbach, Conscientious participation: working the law back to its bones in Rosemary Hunter and Mary Keyes (eds), Changing Law – Rights, Regulation and Reconciliation, Aldershot: Ashgate - Law, Justice and Power series (2005) 155-178
Journal articles
Andrea Durbach and Lucy Geddes, “To shape our own lives and our own world”: exploring women’s hearings as reparative mechanisms for victims of sexual violence post-conflict, (2017) 21(9) International Journal of Human Rights 1261-1280
Andrea Durbach, Louise Chappell, Sarah Williams, Foreword: Special Issue on Transformative Reparations for Sexual Violence Post-conflict: Prospects and Problems (2017) 21 (9) International Journal of Human Rights, 1185-1192
Andrea Durbach and Louise Chappell, Notes from the field: “Nothing about us, without us, is for us”: Victims and the International Criminal Justice System (in conversation with Maxine Marcus, International Crimes Prosecutor and Investigator and Expert in Transformative Justice for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence) (2017) 21 (9) International Journal of Human Rights, 1337-1346
Andrea Durbach, “An essential intervention”: Civil society responses to redressing and preventing violence against women in post-apartheid South Africa (2016) Acta Juridica 218-240; (republished as a chapter in Sarah Williams and Hannah Woolaver (eds), Civil Society and International Criminal Justice in Africa – Challenges and Opportunities, (Juta, Cape Town, 2016)
Andrea Durbach, Towards Reparative Transformation: Revisiting the Impact of Violence against Women in a Post-TRC South Africa, (2016) 10 International Journal of Transitional Justice 366-387
Andrea Durbach, Of trials, reparation and transformation in post-apartheid South Africa: the making of ‘A Common Purpose’ (2015) 60(2) New York Law School Law Review 409-431
Andrea Durbach and Louise Chappell ‘Leaving Behind the Age of Impunity: Victims of Gender Violence and the Promise of Reparations’ (2014) 16(4) International Feminist Journal of Politics 543-562
Andrea Durbach and Louise Chappell The International Criminal Court – A Site of Gender Justice (2014) International Feminist Journal of Politics 16(4): 533-537
A Durbach, Visual Scholarship: Translating Human Rights from the Literal to the Visual, (2014) 23 (3) Human Rights Defender, pp 10-12
Andrea Durbach, Luke McNamara, Simon Rice and Mark Rix, Public Interest Litigation: Making the case in Australia ( 2013) 38 (4) Alternative Law Journal 219-223
Andrea Durbach and Hilary Charlesworth, Equality for Indigenous Peoples in the Australian Constitution (2011) 15 (2) Australian Indigenous Law Review 64-73
Andrea Durbach, Catherine Renshaw and Andrew Byrnes, Testing the Mettle of National Human Rights Institutions: A Case Study of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (2011) 1 Asian Journal of International Law 165-19
Andrea Durbach, A Missed Opportunity: The Foregone Conclusion of a National Human Rights Consultation, (2010) 7(17) Indigenous Law Bulletin 21-23
Andrea Durbach, Andrew Byrnes and Catherine Renshaw, A Tongue But No Teeth?’ The Emergence of a New Human Rights Mechanism in the Asia Pacific Region, (2009) 31(2) Sydney Law Review 211-238
Andrea Durbach, Andrew Byrnes and Catherine Henshaw, Joining the club: the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, the Paris Principles, and the advancement of human rights protection in the region (2008) 14(1) Australian Journal of Human Rights 63-98
Andrea Durbach, “The Cost of a Wounded Society": Reparations and the Illusion of Reconciliation (2008) 12(1) Australian Indigenous Law Review 22–40
Book reviews
Andrea Durbach, ‘The Courtroom as a Space of Resistance: Reflections on the Legacy of the Rivonia Trial, Awol Allo (ed), Social and Legal Studies, (forthcoming 2018)
Andrea Durbach and Robyn Morris, ‘A Culture of Rights: Law, Literature and Canada’, by Benjamin Authurs, (2015) 32 (1-2) Australasian Canadian Studies 167-178 (published in 2016)
Andrea Durbach, ‘Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies – International Agendas and African Contexts’, Doris Buss, Joanne Lebert, Blair Rutherford, Donna Sharkey and Obijiofor Aginam (eds), (2015) 21 (1) Australian Journal of Human Rights 195-199
Andrea Durbach, ‘The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apologies ‘by Danielle Celermajer, (2010)15 (2) Australian Journal of Human Rights, 143 - 146
Research reports
Andrea Durbach and Kirsten Keith, On Safe Ground: Strengthening Australian university responses to sexual assault and harassment (Australian Human Rights Centre, UNSW Sydney, 2017) 122 pages
Elena Cama and Andrea Durbach: Local Perspectives: a case study on responses to sexual violence in a university setting (Australian Human Rights Centre, UNSW Sydney, 2017) 42 pages
Andrea Durbach, Final Evaluation Report on Phase 1 of the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce Restorative Engagement Program, 25 February 2014
Other publications
Andrea Durbach with Sarah Dobinson, Jed Horner, Diane Macdonald, Andrew Small and The Explainers, Sogi’s Story - educational resource (briefing paper, graphic novel, fact-sheet and DVD) commissioned by the Commonwealth Forum of National Human Rights Institutions and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2014
My Research Supervision
Cristy Clark: The Impact of Privatization on the Right to Water (with Prof Rosemary Rayfuse) Completed/PhD awarded March 2013
Lou Schetzer: Human Rights and the Hollowed-Out State: How Human Rights Charters Apply to Contracted-Out Public Services (with Andrew Byrnes) Completed/PhD awarded February 2018
Elena Cama (Scientia PhD Scholarship): Communications Technologies and the Perpetration of Sexual Violence (with Prof Janet Chan)
Anna Hush (Research Training Program Scholarship): Exploring and evaluating 'cultural change' as a mechanism for responding to sexual violence in Australian university communities (with Prof Louise Chappell)
Allison Henry (Faculty of Law PhD Scholarship): Regulatory responses to addressing and preventing sexual assault and harassment in Australian university settings (with Prof Louise Chappell)
Kenneth Yakubu (Sciential PhD Scholarship): Developing a Sustainable Global Health Workforce - Challenges and Opportunities (with Assoc Prof Rohina and Prof David Peiris, Faculty of Medicine)
Sikhumbuzo Mabunda (Sciential PhD Scholarship): Developing a Sustainable Global Health Workforce - Challenges and Opportunities (with Assoc Prof Rohina and Prof David Peiris, Faculty of Medicine)
My Teaching
Lawyers, Ethics and Justice (LAWS1230/JURD7130)
Public Interest Litigation: Origins and Strategies (LAWS3185/JURD7485)