Vuyelwa Kuuya

Vuyelwa Kuuya is an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa, a legal scholar, and a practitioner with close to two decades of experience engaging with international human rights law. Her academic work is distinguished by a strong interdisciplinary approach that draws on both rigorous scholarship and extensive practical engagement across the public, private, and non-profit sectors.  

Her research focuses on the full spectrum of international human rights law, including civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. She is particularly interested in the regulation and enforcement of economic, social, and cultural rights both at the supranational or regional level and within domestic legal systems across Africa, Europe, and the Americas. She examines how regional human rights bodies — such as those within the African Union, the European Union, and the Organisation of American States — interpret and operationalize these rights and how they are implemented and enforced in local jurisdictions. 

 A core strand of her work investigates how regional systems regulate corporate conduct in relation to human rights obligations and the legal risks that businesses face in this context. Her research offers a comparative framework for understanding how human rights standards are evolving to address corporate accountability and the role of business in upholding or violating rights. This includes a focus on corporate complicity in a wide range of human rights violations, encompassing civil and political rights as well as socio-economic rights.  Trained initially as a commercial law attorney, Vuyelwa brings nearly twenty years of experience advising governments, corporations, and civil society organisations on complex legal and policy issues at the intersection of law, development, and human rights. 

Her practical experience spans multiple legal systems in Africa and Europe, giving her a grounded perspective on how human rights norms are applied and contested in varied legal and institutional environments. She also regularly trains corporate leaders on business and human rights, supporting companies in understanding and managing their human rights responsibilities and legal exposure.  She has held prestigious research fellowships in business and human rights at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and McGill University. These fellowships reflect her recognised expertise across the field of international human rights law and her contributions to critical debates on corporate responsibility, enforcement mechanisms, and legal accountability in both regional and global contexts.  Vuyelwa holds an LLM in Human Rights Law from University College London and an LLB from the University of Cape Town. She is committed to mentoring the next generation of human rights scholars and practitioners.

Vuyelwa Kuuya’s research lies at the intersection of international human rights law, corporate accountability, and regional legal systems. She is particularly interested in the regulation and enforcement of economic, social, and cultural rights at both the regional (supranational) level and within domestic jurisdictions across Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Her comparative work examines how regional human rights bodies—such as those within the African Union, European Union, and Organisation of American States—interpret and apply human rights obligations.  A significant strand of her research focuses on the role of businesses in human rights governance. She investigates how regional systems regulate corporate conduct, the legal risks companies face in relation to human rights obligations, and the broader implications of corporate complicity in civil, political, and socio-economic rights violations. Her work is grounded in nearly two decades of legal practice and policy engagement, offering a distinctive perspective on how human rights norms are operationalized across legal systems.Vuyelwa Kuuya is an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa and a legal scholar with nearly two decades of experience in international human rights law. Her work bridges theory and practice, with a focus on business and human rights, economic and social rights, and regional human rights systems across Africa, Europe, and the Americas.