Chris Esdaile

Chris is a solicitor assisting Shubhaa Srinivasan in international claims and group actions, and is currently working on the case involving a group of Colombian farmers who claim to have had their lands devastated by the construction of an oil pipeline.

Chris qualified in 1993, and then practiced in Birmingham in a large legal aid firm undertaking housing litigation for vulnerable tenants, and was made a partner there in 1997. In 2000 he left with three colleagues to set up a new specialist housing practice, the Community Law Partnership, in which he was also a partner. In 2004 he retired from the partnership to take up a role as legal advisor at a centre for abused women in northern Chile, later assuming the role of Director of this project. After returning to the UK in 2009, he completed an LLM in International Human Rights Law at Queen Mary, University of London, which included research into the enforceability of water rights for Latin American indigenous groups. He then undertook an Internship at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.
 
Chris served on the International Human Rights Committee of the Law Society from 2000 to 2004.  He has also worked in South Africa on human rights issues in the period before the end of apartheid, especially on those problems faced by farmworkers, and was part of the international team monitoring the first democratic elections there.  Chris speaks Spanish.