Bantayehu Demlie holds LL.M. in International Law (with specialisations in International Business Law and Human Rights Law) from American University Washington College of Law, and bachelor’s degrees in Law and in Psychology from Addis Ababa University.
Before joining this programme, Bantayehu was a Senior Humanitarian Programme Manager at Irish Aid in Ethiopia. Prior to that, he was a Local Political Officer at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Addis Ababa and a Protection Associate at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
As an Adjunct Lecturer at Addis Ababa University School of Law, he has taught courses such as Refugee Law, Human Rights Law, and Electoral Law.

Bantayehu’s research examines the potential of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM) in advancing the individual dimension of the right to development, including in the context of business and human rights. Discourses on the nexus between development and migration rarely reflect the individual dimension of development despite its pertinence in light of recent voices that frame migration as a function of individual agency, “aspirations,” and “capabilities.” Through doctrinal legal research, the study first establishes defining criteria for the individual right to development and then examines the GCM and its practical implementation to date to see how the process helps the realization of the individual dimension of development.