Zelalem Kibret

Zelalem Kibret is an Ethiopian human rights activist and legal scholar. He emigrated to the US in 2016.

Early life and education Kibret grew interested in politics from a young age due to the Soviet-era literature in his childhood home, and from hearing of the violence following the contested 2005 Ethiopian general election, the first in which he could vote.

Kibret worked with the Ethiopian Human Rights Council. He did his LLM at Addis Ababa University, and became a lawyer.

Career Kibret was appointed professor of law at Ambo University.

Kibret could not return to his job at the university. In 2016 he emigrated to the US and took on an African Leadership Initiative fellowship during the presidency of Barack Obama at the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law.