Prof. Helen Duffy

Helen Duffy runs an international legal practice, ‘Human Rights in Practice,’ and is Gieskes Chair of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the Grotius Centre of the University of Leiden. Her areas of specialisation in her academic and practical work include terrorism, security and rule of law. Her practice engages in strategic human rights litigation and she has litigated groundbreaking cases in the European, African and Inter-American regional systems and before international and national courts and bodies. Cases address a broad range of rule of law issues such as CIA rendition and torture (e.g. Abu Zubaydah v Poland/Lithuania), terrorism prosecutions (e.g. Sabbeh v Egypt), judicial independence (Garzon v Spain), slavery or trafficking (e.g. Mani v Niger) and genocide (e.g. Plan de Sanchez  v Guatemala).  Before setting up her own practice in 2011 she was Legal Director of INTERIGHTS, and prior positions include Legal Director of the Centro para Accion Legal en Derechos Humanos Guatemala, Counsel to Human Rights Watch, and Legal Officer International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Her books and publications include ‘The War on Terror on the Framework of International law (2^nd ed., Cambridge, 2015.)