Annual Human Rights Lecture 2025 : Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC - International Human Rights Lawyer
Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is a barrister and international human rights lawyer. Over the past 25 years, she has acted in many leading human rights cases in the UK, Europe and internationally, including cases concerning the rights of victims of terrorism and redress for survivors of child sexual abuse. Caoilfhionn is an expert in journalists’ safety and arbitrary detention. She has secured the freedom of over 80 imprisoned journalists, business people, lawyers, musicians, cartoonists and activists wrongly imprisoned worldwide (including in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, China, UAE, Russia and Equatorial Guinea), and she has overturned the death penalty for a number of her clients sentenced to death for peaceful protest, rapping and journalism. Her caseload includes leading the international legal teams for Jimmy Lai, the publisher and pro-democracy campaigner unjustly imprisoned in Hong Kong; the bereaved family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the assassinated Maltese journalist; hundreds of BBC News Persian and Iran International journalists targeted extra-territorially by Iran; and Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist from the Philippines. She was appointed an expert witness on State obligations in relation to violence against women journalists before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Jineth Bedoya Lima v. Colombia.

Alongside her practice as a barrister, Caoilfhionn is Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, a Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, a Board Member of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Adjunct Full Professor at University College Dublin. In 2023, she was awarded the President of Ireland’s Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her work.

Professor Carla Ferstman, Director of the Essex Human Rights Centre and Professor, Essex Law School
Professor Ferstman researches, writes, and consults in the areas of human rights, international criminal law and public international law. Before joining academia in 2018, she worked for many years as a human rights practitioner, with civil society organisations, intergovernmental organisations and in private practice. She is the former Director of REDRESS (2004 – 2018) and previously Legal Director (2001 – 2004). She also previously worked with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Rwanda (1995 – 1997), Amnesty International (1998 – 1999) and was Executive Legal Advisor of the Commission for Real Property Claims of Refugees and Displaced Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1999 – 2001). She also served as a judge on the Aban Tribunal (the International People’s Tribunal on Iran’s Atrocities of November 2019).

4.15pm - Guests arrive
4.30pm - Prompt start - Lecture, including a Q&A
5.30pm - Reception

• In person - everyone is welcome (students, staff, members of the public); however, please register via Eventbrite.

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