Solange Bandiaky-Badji

Dr. Solange Bandiaky-Badji is Coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of over 150 organizations advancing the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples. She also serves as President of the Rights and Resources Group, the nonprofit coordinating body of the coalition based in Washington, DC. Bandiaky-Badji previously led RRI’s strategy for engagement in Africa with a focus on tenure rights reform. She built synergies around new strategic analyses, giving local and global actors a more strategic understanding of trends, issues, options, and gender in Africa. She also spearheaded RRI’s Gender Justice thematic program and ensured the implementation of a global gender strategy on women’s tenure rights. Before RRI, she was with PartnersGlobal, where she led programs on access to justice, security sector reform, and peacebuilding. She has also worked as a regional expert on gender and climate change for the Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP) and the UNDP/ BDP Gender Team in New York. Bandiaky-Badji holds a PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies from Clark University, Massachusetts, and an MA in Environmental Sciences and in Philosophy from Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal. She has published and contributed extensively to research in relation to natural resource management, decentralization, local forest tenure reforms, and women’s participation in climate solutions and peacebuilding