Declan Owens

Declan Owens is the Northern Ireland Human Rights Officer for Rights & Security International. He is a non-practising solicitor of the Law Society of England and Wales and a non-practising barrister after being called to the Bar by the Inner Temple.  He previously worked as a litigation solicitor for Thompsons Solicitors in London and represented some of the largest unions in the UK, including Unite, Unison, the National Union of Journalists, and the Public & Commercial Services Union.  He specialises in trade union law, human rights law, and environmental law following an LLB at Trinity College Dublin and an LLM in European and International Labour Law at the University of Amsterdam.  

Declan has also worked for the International Centre for Trade Union Rights, the legal department of the International Trade Union Confederation, and the Bureau for Workers’ Activities of the International Labour Organisation. Declan is Chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers in the UK and is on the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. He has a passion for ecojustice and operates as CEO of a social enterprise called Ecojustice Ireland. He is an expert with the UN Harmony with Nature Agency on the Rights of Nature and in international environmental law, advocating the mainstreaming of human rights within ecojustice law and policy.