Dr Olaitan Oluwaseyi Olusegun

Dr Olaitan Oluwaseyi Olusegun is a researcher interested in child rights, health rights and medical law. She is an AfOx Law Faculty Visiting Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Visiting Fellowship Programme.   

Olaitan is a Medical Law, Human Rights and Nigerian Legal System lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.  Her research interests are human rights, child rights, health rights and medical law.  Olaitan is passionate about mentoring the next generation of Nigerian lawyers. 

Olaitan’s research highlights the implications of traditional beliefs and practices on the health and well-being of children with disabilities (CWD). Her work focuses on evaluating the existing framework for protecting children with disabilities in Nigeria.  It appraises frameworks to safeguard CWD in other African jurisdictions while discussing the challenges and limitations of existing frameworks protecting CWD.   

While at the University of Oxford, Olaitan will be working on the project ‘Protecting Children Living with Disabilities in Africa from Harmful Traditional Practices: An Urgent Call for Implementation of the African Disability Protocol.’ Her research explores the tension between harmful traditional practices (HTPs) and the concerns of children living with disabilities in Africa. For her project: she will use interviews to understand how HTPs affect children with disabilities. Her work distinguishes the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the African Disability Protocol to discuss the challenges hindering the effectiveness of these legal frameworks in protecting children with disabilities.