Brigadier Siachitema is a lawyer with 13 years of experience promoting and advancing human rights, the rule of law and access to justice through strategic litigation, advocacy and capacity strengthening. He joined SALC in January 2015. He is currently a consultant for the SALC, where he leads the Social-Economic Rights Cluster.
From January 2015 to February 2020, he headed SALC’s Women’s Land and Property Rights Programme. Here, he has played a significant role in increasing women’s secure access to land and property in Southern Africa. Mr Siachitema has also been leading SALC’s Business and Human Rights Programme, where he has used civil remedies to hold corporations accountable for violating human rights in Southern Africa. His cases involve communities displaced from their land to pave the way for large-scale land-based investment.
Before joining SALC, Mr Brigadier spent six years as an advocate at the International Justice Mission (IJM), a USA-based organisation that rescued and restored victims of illegal land seizures and gender-based violence in Zambia. Since 2015, he has been the legal advisor and an ex-officio board member for the Zambian Land Alliance, a network of Zambian Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working with rural and urban poor communities to ensure that land policies, laws and practices take their interests into account. In September 2020, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights appointed him as an Expert Member of its Working Group on Extractive Industries, Environment and Human Rights Violation in Africa. His term will end on 2 November 2022.
Mr Brigadier holds an LL. B degree from the University of Zambia, an LL.M degree in Extractive Industries Law in Africa from the University of Pretoria, and an LL.M degree in International Business and Economic Law from Georgetown University Law Center. He is also a Commonwealth Scholar leading for the Master of Studies in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford.