Deprose Muchena is the Regional Director at Amnesty International Regional Office for Southern Africa since March 2014 where he leads a team of campaigners, researchers and communication experts, working to end grave human rights abuses across the region. Over this period, Amnesty has strengthened its focus on human rights themes affecting the region, especially socio-economic rights, inequality, corporate accountability and maternal health and women’s rights, while retaining sharper attention on the freedoms agenda in a shrinking space for civil society.
Since 2010, he was Deputy Director and Head of Programmes at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), a human rights grant making foundation, where he oversaw implementation of programmes that advanced open society ideals. Previously he served as Senior Governance Advisor at USAID/Zimbabwe where he managed a multi-year civil society and governance strengthening programme. He started his career at the Zimbabwe Council of Churches as Programme Officer for economic justice where he led the Council’s work on budget tracking and analysis, economic governance and public participation.
He is co-editor of Tearing Us Apart: Inequalities in Southern Africa (2011) that examines causes, trends and effects of inequality within Southern Africa and drawn from his work at OSISA. In addition, he co-edited Prospects for Democratic developmental state in Southern Africa (2017), that interrogates the changing nature of the political economy of the state and development in Southern Africa.
From these roles, Muchena brings expertise in strategic, development and organisational leadership, multidisciplinary human rights research, campaigns and advocacy with a focus on root causes, integrating political economy analysis in human rights advocacy work and activism.
