Mr Rajat Khosla is the Director of the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH).
Mr Rajat Khosla has two decades of expertise working at the intersection of global health, equity, and human rights, and has contributed to the Institute as a Principal Visiting Fellow. Prior to his appointment at UNU-IIGH, Mr Khosla served as Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, and Policy at Amnesty International.
Previously (2014‒2020), Mr Khosla served as Human Rights Adviser with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. In that role, he led on research and normative work for implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and human rights, in particular on women’s rights and issues related to sexual and reproductive health; guided countries and WHO regional offices on human rights, policy and legal analysis; represented WHO in high-level negotiations and processes related to human rights; and led policy work on the integration of women’s rights in humanitarian emergencies.
In 2018‒2019, he was seconded to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, where he managed the global campaign on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and advised the High-Commissioner and Deputy High Commissioner on policy issues. Mr Khosla previously had worked with Amnesty International as a policy advisor on health, served in a variety of research and policy roles at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, the International Environmental Law Research Centre, and other organisations, and worked as an independent research and policy consultant for such organisations as UNDP, UNICEF and UNFPA.
His current affiliations include serving as a member of the WHO Advisory Group on Gender Equality, Health Equity and Human Rights, and a member of the UNU-IIGH Gender and Health Hub High-level Advisory Committee. He also is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre and an Adjunct Research Professor at the University of Southern California Institute on Inequalities in Global Health.
Research Interests
- Gender
- Human Rights
- Sexual and Reproductive Health & Rights (SRHR)
- Women’s health and reproductive empowerment
