Ilze Brands Kehris assumed her functions as United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights in January 2020. From 2017 to 2019, she served as an Expert Member of the UN Human Rights Committee; between 2016 and 2019, as a senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund University, in Sweden.
Ms. Brands Kehris has previously held leadership positions in national and regional level human rights organisations, including the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, the Committee on the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. She also served as Director of the Latvian Centre for Human Rights.