Jane Connors is the Victims' Rights Advocate for the United Nations, a new post at Assistant Secretary General level, to which she was appointed in August 2017. 

Immediately prior to this appointment, Jane was International Advocacy Director Law and Policy, at Amnesty International, part of her long career in human rights advocacy as well as human rights and humanitarian assistance in the academic, United Nations and civil society spheres. Jane was Director of the Research and Right to Development Division at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), a post from which she retired in March 2015. From 1996 and 2002 she was the Chief of the Women’s Rights Section in the Division for the Advancement of Women in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York. In 2002 she joined OHCHR, where she worked in the Human Rights Treaties Division and as Chief of the Special Procedures Branch.

Before joining the United Nations, she was a law teacher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, the Universities of Lancaster and Nottingham, in the United Kingdom, and the University of Canberra and the Australian National University in Australia.

She has written on United Nations human rights mechanisms, in particular human rights treaty bodies and the Human Rights Council’s special procedures, the human rights of women, and violence against women and children.  She is a trustee of the UK charity, Keeping Children Safe and frequently teaches at universities around the world.