User:Tshiswaka Masoka Hubert/sandbox

Tshiswaka Masoka Hubert is a Congolese (DRC) human rights lawyer, born in Lubumbashi (1965), Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He is member of the Lubumbashi Bar association (Barreau de Lubumbashi) and speaks English, French, Swahili, Tshiluba and Lingala. Tshiswaka is also the General Director and the founder of the ‘Institut de Recherche en Droits Humains’ (IRDH) and leading the project ‘Talk to Communities Consulting and Training’ (TCCT). He is also the editor of the monthly bulletin of the IRDH (on paper and online) and online weekly newsletter. (www.tcct.co.za).

Mr Tshiswaka Masoka Hubert was working, previously, as consultant at the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) and later as Country Director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) – both are parts of the Open Society Foundations (OSF). He established the OSISA office in the DRC, managing grant portfolio, coordinating administrative work, building capacity for civil society organizations, and facilitating relationship between NGOs, the DRC government and OSISA management.

Subsequently, he was travelling frequently, both within the DRC and worldwide. He was speaking in conferences on Human Rights and Business, mining and communities’ rights, Gender equality, Economic Justice, International Criminal Justice. Tshiswaka known as Hubert still have a regular presence in national and international Medias, to promote values, principles and good practices.

Few of OSISA’s achievements in the DRC are the implementation of the Southern Africa Resource Watch project (SARW, www.sarwatch.org) which is working successfully with the government, mining companies, civil society organizations and communities based organizations; the setting up of national network monitoring election in the DRC (Agir pour des Elections Transparentes et Apaisées, www.aeta-network.org); and monitoring of the Floribert Chebeya trial (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa).

The OSISA wonderful work was built on Congolese networking with local communities. In fact, Hubert Tshiswaka is a grass root human rights advocate who used to be the representative, in Katanga, of the Association Africaine de defense des Droits de l’Homme (ASADHO) (1996 to 2004); then he founded the Action Contre l’Impunite pour les Droits Humains (ACIDH) where he was the first Executive Director ACIDH (2004 to 2006), advocating for civil rights and social justice. Before joining OSJI and OSISA (2006 – 2013).

Tshiswaka Masoka Hubert has a LLM from the Witwatersrand University of South Africa, an LLB from the University of Lubumbashi (DRC); an Undergraduate Diploma in commercial sciences, from the Business College, EFOBANC/Lubumbashi (DRC); a Diploma in Human Rights and international advocacy from Colombia University, New York (USA); and a Diploma in Human Rights and international Humanitarian Law from the University of Geneva (Switzerland).