Dexter Dias

Dexter Dias QC is an award-winning human rights lawyer, a prize-winner scholar and Visiting Researcher at Cambridge University (and previously Harvard). He is in constant demand to lecture all over the country and to think tanks internationally on race, racial justice and human rights.  His TED Talk on speaking up about racism has garnered almost 1.5 million views, and is the most viewed talk on race by a non-American.  Dexter is Special Human Rights Adviser to UNICEF UK, with a particular focus on safeguarding the rights of women and girls.  His human rights report to Parliament for the Bar Human Rights Committee was vital in changing the UK law on FGM to better safeguard thousands of at-risk girls, his work being paid tribute to in both the House of Lords and House of Commons.  He is Chair of the Global Media Campaign to End FGM supporting 500+ courageous young women activists in nine Sub-Saharan countries to fight FGM.  He has drafted Parliament-ready ground-breaking legislation to properly protect women and girls from Public Sexual Harassment for the first time, working closely with the Our Streets Now campaign group of young women.  He won Departmental first prize for in his research degree at Cambridge University and was elected to a Foundation Scholarship at Jesus College.  As Chair of the Bar’s Equality & Diversity Training Committee he helped transform the profession’s attitudes to fair recruitment and equal treatment. He won the SMG award for Advocacy for Racial Justice and was finalist in the Liberty and JUSTICE’s prestigious Human Rights Lawyer of the Year award, shortlisted for ‘his outstanding commitment to the rule of law and justice for all; for his deep devotion to ensure that the voices of the weakest in society are heard’.  He has practised his entire legal career from a set of legal chambers created to represent those disadvantaged by poverty and discrimination and has been instructed in some of the biggest cases in recent years on human rights, murder, crimes against humanity, terrorism, war crimes, freedom of speech, child protection, genocide and contentious deaths in state custody. 

His first book, The Ten Types of Human (William Heinemann, 2018), was selected for the BBC Radio 2’s Book Club, Waterstones Book of the Year promotion and was an Amazon #1 bestseller in a dozen categories.