Amanda McRae

Director of United Nations Advocacy at Women Enabled International

With WEI, Amanda built upon our relationships with U.N. human rights institutions, agencies, and political bodies and has collaborated with several of WEI’s partner disabled women’s rights organizations in several other countries on U.N. submissions and advocacy.

Before joining WEI in 2016, Amanda was a Global Advocacy Adviser with the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she conducted oral and written advocacy with U.N. institutions in New York and Geneva, including with the CRPD Committee, on sexual and reproductive rights, substantive equality, and women’s rights more broadly. Amanda also served as a researcher at Human Rights Watch, where she focused on human rights issues in the Western Balkans and disability rights worldwide. She conducted one of the first research projects at HRW, or from any general human rights organization, to invoke the CRPD. Her documentation of the institutionalization of persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities in Croatia and advocacy with the Croatian government, the European Union, and U.N. institutions helped shape the understanding of two of the most challenging and groundbreaking rights in the CRPD: the rights to legal capacity and to be free from arbitrary detention. Amanda also served as a fellow at the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice at Cornell Law School, where she taught in the Gender Justice Clinic and did research and writing related to gender-based violence.

Amanda holds a J.D. from Duke University School of Law, where she founded the international Human Rights Law Society, served for two years as a law student attorney with the AIDS Legal Assistance Project, and received academic awards for Pro Bono Service and Law Clinic Advocacy. She also holds a B.A. in International Relations/Political Science from Carleton College.