Associate Professor Andrew Erueti

Andrew (Anaru) Erueti

I whakapapa to Ngā Ruahinerangi and Ngāti Ruanui (Taranaki), Ati Haunui-a-Pāpārangi (Whanganui), and Ngāti Pākehā (Ōhai, Southland).

I am Associate Professor of Law and (formerly) Associate Dean (Māori) at the University of Auckland, where I teach and research Te Tiriti o Waitangi, tikanga Māori, constitutional law, and comparative and international Indigenous rights.

Although I have spent most of my career teaching in New Zealand law schools, my work has combined academic scholarship with legal advocacy and public service in New Zealand and internationally. I completed my PhD at the University of Toronto (2017), was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Colorado Law School (2018), and worked for Amnesty International in London and Geneva (2008-13) as its global Indigenous Rights Expert. I have advised and represented Māori and Indigenous peoples before the Waitangi Tribunal and international human rights bodies, including the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the UN Human Rights Committee, the International Labour Organization, and the Inter-American human rights system.

From 2019 to 2024, I served as a Commissioner on New Zealand's Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions. The Commission's final report, Whanaketia – Through pain and trauma, from darkness to light, was released in July 2024.

My most recent book, The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A New Interpretative Approach (Oxford University Press, 2022), develops a new framework for understanding the normative foundations of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 2025, I was awarded a Borrin Foundation Fellowship. From 2026 to 2030, I hold a Royal Society Te Apārangi Tāwhia te Mana Research Leader Fellowship (Mana Tūānuku). The fellowships underpins new work investigating legal frameworks to address inequities in health and child welfare and to strengthen Indigenous self-determination in the delivery of public services.