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).
Background
Claude Ajit Moraes was born in Aden of Indian parents and was an immigrant
from India to the UK aged 4. He grew up in Dundee and Stirling attending
comprehensive schools there 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. He has also been a long-standing
member of the Liberty Council (NCCL).
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.
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