Sophie Richardson Joins Chinese language Human Rights Defenders Community
Specialist on Human Rights in China Named Co-Government Director

(January 2, 2025) – Sophie Richardson, a veteran human rights advocate and a number one scholar of Chinese language politics, human rights, and international coverage, has been named the Community of Chinese language Human Rights Defenders’ Co-Government Director, the group mentioned right now. Dr. Richardson assumes the place on January 2, 2025.
The Community of Chinese language Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) is a coalition of Chinese language and worldwide human rights non-governmental organizations. The community is devoted to the promotion of human rights via peaceable efforts to push for democratic and rule of legislation reforms and to strengthen grassroots activism in China. Based in 2005, CHRD is acknowledged globally by civil society, governments, United Nations our bodies, and journalists as a key supply of experience, help and knowledge.
“Dr. Richardson brings many years of analysis experience, rigorous analytic abilities, and a daring imaginative and prescient for a strategic rights-based method to addressing systemic human rights challenges in China,” mentioned Renee Xia, CHRD’s founding director, who will share the co-executive directorship.
In 2024, Dr. Richardson was a Visiting Scholar on the Heart on Democracy, Growth and the Rule of Regulation at Stanford College, the place her analysis centered on democracies’ capability to problem the Chinese language authorities and Chinese language Communist Occasion’s more and more world human rights violations. Her forthcoming e book is titled Nice Adjustments Unseen in a Century: How you can Save Democracy and Human Rights from Xi Jinping.
From 2006 to 2023, Dr. Richardson served because the China Director at Human Rights Watch, overseeing the group’s analysis and advocacy. She has printed extensively on human rights and testified to the Canadian Parliament, European Parliament, and the US Senate and Home of Representatives. Dr. Richardson is the creator of China, Cambodia, and the 5 Ideas of Peaceable Coexistence (Columbia College Press, Dec. 2009).
Dr. Richardson earned her doctorate from the College of Virginia, a certificates from the Hopkins-Nanjing Program, and her BA from Oberlin Faculty. She first went to China in August 1989, dwelling in or touring steadily to Beijing, Hong Kong, Kunming, and Nanjing over the following years till being sanctioned by the Chinese language authorities in July 2021.
Dr. Richardson will co-direct CHRD’s programmatic, operational, authorized and coverage, and growth work, with particular concentrate on analysis, advocacy, and communications. She brings to the position many years working with activists, constructing robust groups and broad coalitions, and urgent these in energy to prioritize the views and safety of human rights defenders from China.
“Human rights defenders throughout and from China are important on each essential concern, from girls’s rights to free speech, from the local weather disaster to crimes towards humanity—but they face unprecedented threats from Xi’s authorities,” Richardson mentioned. “I’m humbled to work with CHRD’s extraordinary workforce in service of this group.”
For extra data, please contact:
Renee Xia, Co-Government Director, CHRD
reneexia@nchrd.org
Contact@nchrd.org