Payoshni Mitra
A former badminton player, Dr Mitra is a prominent athlete’s rights activist and leading campaigner in the abolition of sex testing policies in women’s sport, working closely with affected athletes across Asia and Africa to enable them to address human rights violations in sports.
Her work includes helping athletes communicate with local or national sport governing bodies, sport ministries and other stakeholders, as well as actively resisting unnecessary and unsolicited physical examinations and scrutiny through direct intervention. Dr Mitra has also been instrumental in assisting Indian athlete Dutee Chand to regain her rights to compete in athletics, and was one of the ten member team who testified for South African Olympian Caster Semenya at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. She has been involved with international human rights agencies in preparing reports on discrimination in sports on the basis of gender and race, most notably as co-author of a Human Rights Watch report on lived experiences of athletes facing abusive sex-testing in athletics published in December 2020.
