Amal Clooney Keynote Speaker

Amal Clooney is a keynote speaker who is a British human rights lawyer practicing at Doughty Street Chambers in London, where she specializes in international law and human rights. She is also a Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School, where she teaches Human Rights.

Her clients have ranged from political prisoners and ousted Heads of State to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the Republic of Armenia. She has appeared before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights and various courts in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Oxford-educated lawyer is a frequent adviser to governments on international law. She has held a number of posts within the United Nations, including senior adviser to Kofi Annan when he served as the UN Envoy on Syria. She was also legal counsel to the UN commission investigating the murder of Lebanon’s Prime Minister and counsel to the UN inquiry on the use of drones in war.

Over the last decade she has worked on milestone cases in international justice. While in The Hague she worked on the genocide trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Since then she has challenged the detention of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymonshenko at the European Court of Human Rights. She has advised the Greek government on the return of the Parthenon Marbles, the Chagossians on their right to return to their islands, and the Armenians on the recognition of their genocide.

She recentlly represented three political prisoners: Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who was convicted in the “Al Jazeera trial” in Egypt; former President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, who was imprisoned on false terrorism charges; and award-winning Azerbaijani journalist “Khadija”, who was arrested in Baku after reporting on corruption by the Azerbaijani President. All have now been released from detention.
She is currently legal counsel to genocide survivor Nadia Murad and other Yazidi women who have been sexually enslaved by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and is working to secure accountability for the crimes committed by ISIS in national and international courts.

She is the co-founder, with her husband George Clooney, of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which seeks to advance justice in courtrooms, classrooms and communities around the world.