Aidan Joseph McQuade is a former Director (Chief Executive) of Anti-Slavery International from 2006-2017. He comes from South Armagh, Northern Ireland. McQuade is a contributor to ''The

Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unite ...

,'' ''Equal Times'' and ''The

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

'' on issues of slavery, forced labour and related matters. In 2013 he highlighted the need for slavery eradication to be made a post-2015

Sustainable Development Goal The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked objectives designed to serve as a "shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future".United Nations (2017) R ...

. In 2014 he called for greater regulation of international business to reduce slavery in global supply chains. In an article for The Independent in March 2015 he accused

Sepp Blatter Joseph "Sepp" Blatter (born Josef Blatter; 10 March 1936) is a Swiss former football administrator who served as the eighth President of FIFA from 1998 to 2015. He has been banned from participating in FIFA activities since 2015 as a result of ...

Fifa FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

of moral responsibility for the death and enslavement of South Asian construction workers preparing

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it sh ...

for the

2022 World Cup The 2022 FIFA World Cup is an international football tournament contested by the men's national teams of FIFA's member associations. The 22nd FIFA World Cup is taking place in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December 2022; it is the first Wo ...

. In 2012/13, he won the BBC's ''Mastermind'' Quiz with specialist subject,

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...

. When asked about the stress of the quiz, MacQuade replied "It takes as much energy to think as to panic". He received an honorary OBE for his work in anti-slavery in 2017, which he returned in 2024 in response to government policies, in particular the plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McQuade, Aidan Oxfam people Alumni of the University of Strathclyde Alumni of Queen's University Belfast Honorary Officers of the Order of the British Empire