Claude Moraes Biography

Claude Moraes MEP was elected to the European Parliament for London in 1999 and again in 2004 where he led the London List of candidates. One of the first Asian MEPs ever elected to the European Parliament, he was previously Director of JCWI, the national immigration and refugee charity. Before that, he was a national officer at the TUC, a representative to the European TUC, House of Commons adviser to MPs John Reid and Paul Boateng, and a CRE commissioner. With a legal background, he has campaigned and written widely on human rights issues and recently co-authored the Politics of Migration (Blackwells 2003).

Background in Human Rights and other key areas:

Claude Ajit Moraes was born in Aden of Indian parents and was an immigrant to the UK aged 5. He grew up in Dundee and Stirling and studied Scots and English Law, Administrative Law and International Law at Dundee University, London University (Birkbeck College) and the London School of Economics.

Claude has worked in London since 1987, first for Dr John Reid MP and Paul Boateng MP in the House of Commons, and then as a national policy officer at the TUC's Congress House where he was also a representative to the European TUC working on social policy and employment issues. In 1992, he was appointed Director of JCWI, the UK's only national independent organisation working on immigration, refugee and EU free movement issues. Here he helped raise the profile of these sensitive issues and was involved in key High Court, Court of Appeals, and European cases on asylum and in key immigration campaigns. He was appointed a CRE Commissioner in 1998, and has maintained a strong involvement in the local and national voluntary and NGO sectors, and in the trade union movement.

Elected in 1999 to the European Parliament, he was one of the first group of Asian MEPs ever elected to the European Parliament and London's first ethnic minority MEP.

In the European Parliament he is a member of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee, President of the Intergroup on Anti-Racism and Diversity, Co-President of the Intergroup on Ageing, and active on the issues of regeneration and social exclusion; older peoples' issues, human rights; rights at work; international development issues; and justice and home affairs including migration. One of only a handful of ethnic minority MEPs elected to the European Parliament, Claude is an expert on the rise of the Far Right and writes regularly on this and human rights issues.

You can find out more about Claude by visiting his website www.claudemoraes.net

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