O (Lena) Uvarova PhD

Olena Uvarova. PhD in Law (2010), Associate Professor, since 2018, she leads the International Lab on Business and Human Rights at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Kharkiv, Ukraine). In June 2022, Olena became the Visiting Researcher at Wageningen University, Law Group.

Her expertise covers General Jurisprudence, Human Rights, Rule of Law, and Comparative Legal Studies. She also was the developer of the optional courses on Tolerance in the Post-Conflict Societies (in 2016), Gender Equality (in 2018), and Business and Human Rights (in 2019) for NLU.

Olena has more than 15 years of experience in human rights (as a national and international consultant in the UN Women in Ukraine, Council of Europe, OSCE, USAID, UNDP, and UNICEF projects). Since 2017, she has been working on business and human rights in Eastern Europe and Central Asia region. She has been also actively involved in international and regional initiatives on BHR issues led by: the UN Working group on business and human rights; the Global BHR Scholars Association; Business and Human Rights Resource Center; Danish Institute for Human Rights and others.

She was the author of the National Baseline Assessment on Business and Human Rights in Ukraine in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice and based on the methodology developed by the Danish Institute for Human Rights and ICAR. Olena has co-founded the Central and Eastern European Association on Business and Human Rights to advance peer-to-peer learning and networking across the region (together with Beata Faracik, Polish Institute for Human Rights and Business, and Jernej Cerncic, Nova University, Slovenia).

Olena is a guest Co-Editor of the Special Issue on Business and Human Rights in Eastern Europe for ‘Business and Human Rights Journal’ (Cambridge University Press) and a member of the Editorial Board of this journal.

Many initiatives on Business and Human Rights were implemented by her coordination on the national, regional and international level, in particular: Human Rights and Business were subjects of the panel discussions during Annual Kharkiv Legal Forum in 2017-2021 (representatives from 30 countries participated); Co-organizing of the special session on BHR in Eastern Europe during the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in 2020 and 2021; Organizing of the side event on forced labour and migration in the context of corporate accountability during the 1st Regional Forum on Business and Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; Co-organizing of the Regional consultation on international investment agreements and human rights initiated by the UN Working group on Business and Human Rights (April 2021); Coorginising the BHR week initiated by the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights on 10th Anniversary of the UN Guiding Principles in Business and Human Rights (June 2021); Within the Erasmus plus project HRLAW the manual on Business and Human Rights was developed and published (the first BHR manual in Ukraine).