Brad Adams

Brad Adams is the founder and executive director at Climate Rights International. Prior to that Adams was executive director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch from 2002-2022, overseeing investigations, advocacy and media work in twenty countries, including China, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma/Myanmar, Thailand,  Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, and North Korea. Adams has worked on issues including the protection of civil society, human rights defenders, and environmental activists; freedom of expression, association, assembly, and information; media freedom; political prisoners; women’s rights; children’s rights; land rights; labor rights; refugees and migrants; international justice; and armed conflict.

Adams has also written articles for different media including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and Foreign Affairs. He has regularly appeared on the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and other major broadcast, print and digital media.

Prior to his work at Human Rights Watch, Adams worked in Cambodia for five years as the senior lawyer for the Cambodia field office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and as legal advisor to the Cambodian parliament’s human rights committee, conducting human rights investigations, supervising a judicial reform program, and drafting and revising legislation.

Adams was the founder of the Berkeley Community Law Center (now the East Bay Community Law Center), where he worked as a legal aid lawyer, focusing on housing, homelessness, and public benefits. He received a grant from the Berkeley Law Foundation to start the law center. He periodically teaches International Human Rights Law and Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and is a member of the California State Bar.

Adams has an M.Sc. in European Studies from the London School of Economics and a B.A. in Economics from Pepperdine University, where he played baseball. Adams was an All-CIF baseball and basketballplayer in high school at Montclair Prep in Van Nuys, California. He was CIF basketball Player of the Year in 1977. Adams later played basketball professionally for London Docklands. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.