Barbara Lochbihler is a member of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (2019-2023). Prior to this assignment, she was a Member of the European Parliament (2009-2019) and in that capacity Chair and Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights. During her parliamentary mandate, she was the Foreign Affairs Spokesperson of The Greens/EFA group and chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee on UN-EU relations as well as the Iran delegation of the European Parliament; she was also a member of the ASEAN delegation. In the context of FAU’s M.A. Human Rights, Barbara teaches a seminar on Human Rights and the EU.

From 1999-2009 Barbara was Secretary-General of Amnesty International Germany and from 1992-1999 Secretary-General of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Geneva. Before that, she served as Parliamentary Advisor for The Green group in the Bavarian State Parliament and was Head of the Haidhausen Center for the Elderly, Munich.

Barbara is a founding member of the German Institute for Human Rights, Berlin, and a Board Member of the Martin-Ennals-Foundation, Geneva, which awards the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for human rights defenders at risk. She is linked to the Elisabeth-Selbert-Initiative launched in 2020, a German protection programme for human rights defenders. She is a member of Amnesty International and the German Society for the United Nations and WILPF. Barbara frequently acts as an expert on human rights themes and policies for civil society organisations in Europe.

She holds an M.A. in Political Science, with additional concentrations in International Law and Economics from the Ludwig-Maximilian-University, Munich. She also holds a Diploma in Social Work from the Katholische Stiftungsfachhochschule, Munich.