Charles Ngwena

The GHJP is saddened to announce the death of Professor Charles Ngwena , whom we had the honor of hosting as a Visiting Scholar at Yale for the last two years, with the support of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights. Professor Ngwena passed away on 31 January 2025, in Pretoria.

Professor Ngwena was a towering intellect, colleague and generous friend to so many of us working in the fields of human rights, especially disability, sexuality, reproduction and gender rights, both in the African context and globally. His humor, support and cascade of knowledge and insights will be missed, even as those of us who have been touched by him strive to continue the justice work he helped us all to do better. In this time of retrenchment of rights commitments across all these issues—gender, sexuality, disability and health justice more generally—we hope his memory will inspire us all.

A longer listing of his accomplishments can be found below.

A recorded video of the tribute to him organized by the University of Pretoria Centre for Human Rights is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/UjjV8aWwI7Y

Charles Ngwena, LLB (Wales), LLM (Wales), LLD (Free State), Barrister-at-Law, is a Research Scholar at Yale for the academic years 2022-24, with the support of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women's Rights. He is Professor of Law in the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Charles has published extensively on issues at the intersection between human rights and health, including HIV/AIDS and reproductive and sexual health with a focus on the African region. He also works in the fields of disability rights, and race, culture and sexualities.

He serves as the Convening Editor of the African Disability Rights Yearbook, Section Editor of Developing World Bioethics (for Law and Bioethics) and ethical and legal associate editor of the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics. He is co-editor of Employment equity law (Butterworths); co-editor of Health and human rights (Ashgate, 2007); and co-editor of Strengthening sexual and reproductive rights in the African region through human rights (Pretoria University Law Press, 2014). He is the author of What is Africanness? Contesting nativism in race, culture and sexualities (Pretoria University Law Press, 2018) which was awarded the University of Pretoria Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Scholarly books.

Charles has taught at universities in the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland and the United States, Swaziland and South Africa. His research and teaching interests straddle across sexual and reproductive health and rights, disability, race and culture. He has initiated and directed Masters and doctoral programmes on sexual and reproductive health and rights and disability at universities in South Africa. In 2008, he was shortlisted for the position of UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health. He teaches on Gender, Sexuality and International Human Rights at a Summer School course convened annually by the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights, Oxford University.