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We are deeply saddened at the heart-breaking death of Professor Conor Gearty KC. Conor was a great friend to the Irish Centre for Human Rights, and a leading light of the global human rights movement. His intellectual brilliance, his passion and compassion, shone brightly in all of his work - in his teaching, his writing and in his many and varied public engagements.

Conor was unfailingly warm and generous to colleagues, particularly early career researchers. He was always keenly interested in new ideas, and opportunities for human rights advocacy, and was utterly dedicated to his teaching and to his students.

For Irish human rights and public law scholars, Conor was so often the person we called upon for support, and the person whose advice and guidance we sought in navigating the world of academia, and of human rights scholarship and practice.  Actively engaged as a public intellectual in Britain and globally, Conor retained a keen interest in human rights and public law in Ireland – advocating for abortion law reform, for civil liberties and social rights, and for effective human rights protections, north of the border and south.

Conor loved his work. It defined and shaped his everyday and was the public manifestation of a deeply felt commitment to justice and to equality. He brought his remarkable intellect and wit to all aspects of his work and was as brilliant a teacher as he was an author and public intellectual.

Conor’s witty, engaging conversations filled many rooms with laughter. When he took to the podium, his energy and passion were electrifying – and often hilarious. His irreverent wit and mischievous smile, were both challenging and disarming. His humorous anecdotes, while hilariously funny, were also laced with uncompromising truths and intellectual rigour. He eschewed certainties and an easy consensus.

In his Hamlyn lectures, Can Human Rights Survive, Conor reflected on what he saw as the multiple crises facing the human rights movement. A crisis of legalism, he argued, was leading to a neglect of politics and of activism. A founder of Matrix Chambers, and brilliant legal practitioner, Conor never neglected politics or activism. His generosity and deep commitment to activism were evident in his prolific writing, blogging, podcasting and countless contributions to public debate. He took seriously the responsibility of public scholarship.

Reflecting on the crisis of authority of human rights, Conor called for a return to compassion as the core normative impulse of human rights movements – not compassion as charity or benevolence, but as a commitment to a radical empathy and to justice. For Conor, human rights were rooted in a radical universalism, premised upon an equal humanity. His writings challenged the historical and continuing injustices of settler colonialism, racial injustice, and counter-terrorism laws that seek to silence protest and dissent. He called out the limits of human rights law, the duplicity and, “whiff of hypocrisy” that accompanied the practice of human rights law.  

But Conor believed in the power of law to escape, “its controlling roots”.  Writing on Human Rights after Gaza, he articulated our collective shock and horror at the wilful multiple violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people, and the impunity allowed by Global North power.  He hoped for change, for an independent rule of law that would secure justice,  accountability, and freedom. There was, he wrote, “a reason why both of the UN human rights covenants of 1966 start with a people’s right to self-determination: without freedom, human rights do not stand a chance.” 

We mourn Conor’s death, we will remember him, we will continue to struggle and work for the realisation of a radical human rights universalism and for justice - most urgently in and for Gaza.

At this devastating time, our thoughts are with Conor’s wife, our colleague and friend, Professor Aoife Nolan, and his children, Eliza, Owen, Éile and Fiadh.