Miloon Kothari

Miloon Kothari is a Senior Advisor to DRAN. He was a Dr. Martin Luther King Visiting Scholar at MIT for the academic year 2013-14, a Visiting Scholar at the Program on Human Rights and Justice (PHRJ) and a Lecturer at DUSP during 2014-15. Mr. Kothari is a leading voice at national, regional and international forums on human rights, especially economic, social and cultural rights. He is an outspoken critic of the countries and institutions that see the neo-liberal and military/security policies as a means to achieving democracy and human rights. Mr. Kothari served (from 2000-2008) as the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council. During his tenure as Special Rapporteur Mr. Kothari led the process that resulted in the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development based Evictions and Displacement – the current global operational human rights standard on the practice of forced evictions. 

An architect by training, Mr. Kothari, who resides in New Delhi, India, has extensive fact-finding, research and training experience in the areas of housing, land rights and displacement. He is the founder and former coordinator of the South Asian Regional Programme of the Habitat International Coalition’s Housing and Land Rights Network and is founding member of the International NGO Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment (INCHRITI). In recent years, he has been particularly active on issues such as Women’s rights to land, inheritance, property, housing and globalization, trade liberalization and their impacts on the right to adequate housing and other related rights and the UN’s Universal Review Process (UPR). Since 2009, Mr. Kothari has contributed significantly, as founding member and convener to the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR).