Amal Clooney was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in recognition of her outstanding contribution to human rights and law.
Amal is a barrister who specializes in international law and human rights described in the legal directories Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners as ‘a brilliant legal mind’ who is ‘in a league of her own at the Bar’. She frequently represents victims of mass atrocities, including genocide and sexual violence, before national and international courts. Her contributions have been recognised by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the American Society of International Law, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Kings Trust and Time Magazine. In 2024, she won the Legal 500 Award for international lawyer of the year.
Amal frequently represents victims of mass atrocities, including genocide and sexual violence. She has represented victims in the only trials in the world that have resulted in convictions of ISIS members for genocide or crimes against humanity. And she represented victims in the only trial that has resulted in a conviction for crimes against humanity in Darfur. She represents over 800 Yazidi victims in the first civil case in a U.S. court seeking to hold ISIS financiers responsible for complicity in terrorism. She has represented Armenia in a case involving the Armenian genocide. In 2022, Amal led a Legal Task Force that advised the government of Ukraine on legal avenues to secure accountability for war crimes and compensation for victims in Ukraine.
Amal also represents political prisoners around the world and has helped to secure the freedom of journalists arbitrarily detained for their work across the globe. Her work has included defending Reuters journalists who uncovered evidence of genocide in Myanmar, journalists covering protests in Egypt and a leading investigative journalist exposing corruption in Azerbaijan, all of whom were released following her work. She currently represents Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, who faces decades behind bars for her work as a journalist in the Philippines.
Amal has been appointed to the Attorney-General’s ‘A’ Panel on Public International Law, a small group of expert lawyers selected by the UK government on international law and represent the United Kingdom in cases involving international law in national and international courts. Amal has also served as a senior advisor to Kofi Annan when he was the UN’s Envoy on Syria, as Counsel to the UN Inquiry on the use of armed drones and as a rapporteur for the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute on independence of the judiciary. She has been appointed to the United Kingdom’s Team of Experts on preventing sexual violence in conflict zones. From 2019-2021 she also served as the UK’s Special Envoy on Media Freedom and as deputy chair of an International Bar Association Panel of Legal Experts chaired by a former UK Supreme Court President that produced legal and policy advice on protecting freedom of the press to over 50 governments.
Amal co-founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which provides free legal aid in defence of free speech and women’s rights in over 40 countries. Its work has led to dozens of journalists being set free and thousands of women receiving free legal support to defend their rights, including their rights to be free from child marriage, violence and economic discrimination. In 2022, the Foundation partnered with the Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance and Melinda French Gates to advance gender equality and reduce levels of child marriage worldwide. The Foundation also provides a fellowship program to help young women lawyers across Africa launch careers in human rights.
Amal is a Professor of Practice in International Law at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, and a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Technology and Justice, a institute she co-founded to harness the power of AI to increase access to justice. Amal is also an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh’s College, Oxford. She has co-authored the leading textbooks The Right to a Fair Trial in International Law and Freedom of Speech in International Law, published by Oxford University Press. Amal holds law degrees from Oxford University and New York University School of Law and prior to joining the London bar, she practiced as a litigation attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York.
Amal Clooney read Law at St Hugh’s in 1996 where she received an exhibition scholarship and the prestigious Shrigley Award given for excellence in law studies. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Jurisprudence in 2000. The following year she entered New York University School of Law to study for the Master of Laws (LL.M) degree.
