Gay McDougall has spent her career working on issues of race, gender, and economic justice in the U.S. and in the global context, seeking to change the dynamics of power in order to improve the lives of ordinary people from Mississippi to Durban.
She has played a leadership role in the fight against racism in the United Nations for over three decades. She was the first American to serve on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination nominated by President Clinton, again by President Obama and recently President Biden nominated her to serve a third four-year term, for which she received the votes of 144 nations of the General Assembly. She was Vice-Chair of CERD from 2018 through
2019. She was the first UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities during which, over 6 years she visited 17 countries to monitor their laws and practices on the rights of minorities. She was Special Rapporteur on the issue of systematic rape and sexual slavery practices in armed conflict from 1995 to1999 and in 2001 played a leadership role in the UN Third World Conference against Racism held in Durban.
As Director of the Southern Africa Project of the Lawyers Committee for 15 years, she worked with South African lawyers to free thousands of political prisoners. In recognition, she was later appointed to the South African body created to administer its first non-racial elections in 1994, which resulted in the historic election of President Nelson Mandela. In 2015 the Government of South Africa bestowed on her their national medal of honor for non-citizens, the Order of O.R. Tambo Medal for her extraordinary contributions to ending apartheid.
She also spent 14 years as Executive Director of Global Rights, which worked with human rights activists in 10 countries to assist them to realize the human rights priorities they had established.
McDougall is currently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence and Adjunct Professor of International Law at Fordham School of Law. She received a J.D. from Yale Law School, an LL.M. from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has Honorary Degrees from nine institutions including the University of Witwatersrand, the University of London, Georgetown Law School, Emory University and Boston University. She received the MacArthur “Genius” Award in 1999. She has also received numerous other national and international awards.