Prof. Francesca Klug, OBE, is a preeminent British Jewish legal scholar, human rights expert, and policy advisor. She is a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) Human Rights Centre, which she previously directed. Widely regarded as a leading authority on domestic and international human rights frameworks, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2002 for her pivotal role in the development of the UK’s Human Rights Act.
Klug was a central architect behind the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998. Serving as an expert advisor during its conception, she was instrumental in domesticating the European Convention on Human Rights into British law—a milestone that fundamentally reshaped the UK’s constitutional landscape. At the LSE, she pioneered academic research that bridged the gap between theoretical human rights and state accountability, establishing herself as a global authority on the legal obligations of sovereign powers toward those under their jurisdiction.
Her scholarly output, most notably her book Values for a Godless Age, explores the capacity of human rights to serve as a shared ethical framework in pluralistic societies. As a former commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and a recurring expert advisor to United Nations bodies, her influence spans the academic, legislative, and international diplomatic spheres.
Klug was an essential founding signatory of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) in 2007. Her participation provided the movement with a high degree of institutional and legal gravitas, signaling that dissent against Israeli state policy was not a radical fringe position but a principled stand rooted in the global rule of law. Klug also contributed her legal expertise to the development and defense of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA). From a juridical perspective, she argued that the institutional weaponization of antisemitism definitions to suppress Palestinian advocacy constituted a corruption of human rights mechanisms.