Professor Helen Duffy

University of Leiden

Prof Helen Duffy

Helen Duffy is Professor of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the University of Leiden and runs ‘Human Rights in Practice (HRiP),’ an international law practice specializing in strategic litigation and legal advice. She has brought ground-breaking cases in the European, African, Interamerican and UN human rights systems on a broad range of human rights issues, including in relation to armed conflict. Before setting up her practice in 2011, she held a range of posts including: Legal Director/INTERIGHTS; Counsel/Human Rights Watch; Legal Director/Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) Guatemala; Legal Adviser, Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; lawyer in the UK government legal service. Prof. Duffy has a PHD (Leiden), LLM (University College London) and LLB Hons (Glasgow). She is on the board of several NGOs and is honorary/visiting professor at Glasgow, Oxford, Melbourne and American universities. Her books include ‘Strategic Human Rights Litigation: Understanding and Maximising Impact’ (Hart, 2018), Law Applicable to Armed Conflict (with Bohrer and Dill, CUP 2020) and “The ‘War on Terror’ and the Framework of International law (CUP 2nded. 2015).