Amal Clooney

Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin; Arabic: أمل كلوني; born (1978-02-03)3 February 1978) is a British international human rights lawyer. Notable clients of hers include former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed, Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Iraqi human rights activist Nadia Murad, Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova, and Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy. She has held various appointments with the Government of the United Kingdom and the United Nations, and is also an adjunct law professor at Columbia Law School. In 2016, she and her husband, the American actor George Clooney, co-founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice.

Early life and education

Amal Alamuddin (أمل علم الدين) was born in Beirut, Lebanon, on 3 February 1978. Her father is Druze Lebanese and her mother is a Sunni Muslim from Lebanon. When she was two years old, Amal's family left Lebanon to escape the Lebanese Civil War and arrived in the United Kingdom, where they settled in Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire. Amal has three siblings: one sister (Tala Alamuddin) and two half-brothers from her father's first marriage.

Her father Ramzi Alamuddin is of the Alam al-Din dynasty and is from Baakleen in the Chouf District. He received his MBA degree at the American University of Beirut and returned to Lebanon in 1991, one year after the Lebanese Civil War ended.

Her mother Baria (née Miknass)'s Sunni father is from Tripoli in the North Governorate. She was a political journalist and foreign editor of the Saudi-run newspaper al-Hayat. She is a founder of the public relations company International Communication Experts, which is part of a larger company that specialises in celebrity guest bookings, publicity photography, and event promotion.

Amal attended Dr Challoner's High School, a girls' grammar school located in Buckinghamshire's Little Chalfont. She then studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she received an exhibition grant and the Shrigley Award. In 2000, she graduated with a BA degree in Jurisprudence and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh's. Speaking in 2023, Clooney commented "St Hugh’s took a chance on me and it really opened my eyes; it opened my mind; and it has opened so many doors. I have always been so grateful to St Hugh’s for giving me my shot and my legal compass."

The following year, she enrolled at the New York University School of Law (NYU Law) to study for an LLM degree. She received the Jack J. Katz Memorial Award for excellence in entertainment law. While at the university, she worked for one semester in the office of American lawyer and jurist Sonia Sotomayor, who was then a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and an NYU Law faculty member.

Career

Amal is qualified to practice law in the United States and England and Wales. She was admitted to the bar in New York in 2002, and called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2010. She has also practised at international courts in The Hague, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

She worked at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City for three years as part of the Criminal Defense and Investigations Group, where her clients included Enron and Arthur Andersen.

She completed a judicial clerkship at the International Court of Justice in 2004, serving under Judge Vladlen S. Vereshchetin from Russia, Judge Nabil Elaraby from Egypt, and ad hoc Judge Sir Franklin Berman from the United Kingdom.

She was subsequently based in The Hague working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where she was Judicial assistant to Judge Patrick Robinson, Presiding Judge. The case charged the former President of former Republic of Yugoslavia with crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Clooney also worked as a Prosecutor at The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the first UN-created court dealing with terrorism. She prosecuted the case against five people accused of assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri and others in a terrorist attack in Beirut in 2005.

In 2010, Amal was called to the Bar of England and Wales, Inner Temple. She is a practising barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. Clooney is ranked in the legal directories Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners as a leading barrister in international human rights law, public international law, and international criminal law. She is described as ‘a brilliant legal mind’, a ‘first-class international lawyer’, a ‘natural lead advocate’ who is ‘tactically first class’ and ‘a rare combination of intellectual depth and pragmatism’. They also emphasize that she is ‘fantastically innovative’, ‘very sophisticated in pushing the boundaries’ with an ability to galvanize ‘heads of state, foreign ministers and business … in a way that is very effective’ for victims of human rights abuses.’ She is described in the legal rankings as having a ‘passionate commitment to the law and compassion for the people it serves’, ‘one of the finest advocates for the rights of victims in the sphere of international criminal prosecution’ and ‘in a league of her own at the Bar’.

Amal represents clients before international courts including the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. She represents victims of mass atrocities, including genocide and sexual violence. She is currently representing a group of Iraqi victims from the Yazidi community, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, who are seeking accountability for genocide and other crimes against humanity perpetrated by ISIS. She is representing Nadia Murad and over 400 Yazidi-Americans in a civil case against French conglomerate Lafarge S.A. for conspiring to provide material support to ISIS. The lawsuit, seeks to hold Lafarge accountable for its admitted criminal conspiracy with ISIS and obtain compensation for the Yazidi people. In 2021, She was co-plaintiff's and victims' counsel in the first case in which an ISIS member was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison.

Amal regularly represents journalists and she is currently leading the international counsel team which is acting for the Filipino journalist and CEO of the news website Rappler, Maria Ressa. Ressa faces a series of legal charges that could lead to about 100 years in prison. Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her 'courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines'. She previously represented Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists from Myanmar who were sentenced to seven years in prison by the government of Myanmar for reporting on crimes which were committed against Rohingyas by the Myanmar forces. They were released in May 2019.

Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Amal led a Legal Task Force created at the request of the Government of Ukraine to provide them with advice in relation to legal avenues to secure criminal accountability and/or reparations in national jurisdictions, the International Criminal Court and the United Nations. The Task Force included Lord Neuberger, former President of the UK Supreme Court and Baroness Helena Kennedy, head of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.

Since 2015, Amal has been a visiting faculty member as well as a senior fellow at Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute, where she co-teaches the Human Rights Course with Professor Sarah H. Cleveland. Clooney has also lectured students on international criminal law at the SOAS School of Law in London, The New School in New York City, The Hague Academy of International Law, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In 2024, she served on an advisory panel that reviewed the International Criminal Court prosecutor's investigation into potential war crimes committed in the Israel–Hamas war. The panel was convened by the ICC prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan KC. Clooney and seven other legal and academic experts unanimously recommended that an application be made for arrest warrants against the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, two other Hamas leaders and the Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant. In a statement, Clooney said there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that all five individuals committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Appointments

• Appointed as Special Adviser to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, Without Portfolio.
• Appointed to the UK Attorney General's Office Public International Law Panel (Panel C from 2014 to 2019 and Panel B from 2020), a panel of experts on international law which is called upon to advise and represent the UK in domestic and international courts.
• Appointed as UK Special Envoy on Media Freedom (2019–2020) by the UK Foreign Secretary (2019–2020).
• Appointed as Deputy Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom (2019–2021) by Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, former President of the UK Supreme Court.
• Member of Expert Panel of Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) formed by former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague to gather evidence of sexual crimes committed in conflict zones.
• In 2013 she was appointed to a number of United Nations commissions, including as adviser to Special Envoy Kofi Annan on Syria and as Counsel to the 2013 Drone Inquiry by UN human rights rapporteur Ben Emmerson KC into the use of drones in counter-terrorism operations.
• Appointed to the Human Dignity Trust Bar Panel, a small panel of barristers who act pro bono and provide advice on cases challenging discrimination against the LGBT community.

Philanthropy

Clooney is the co-founder and co-president of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she co-founded with her husband, George Clooney, in 2016. Their goal is to wage justice to create a world where human rights are protected and no one is above the law. The organization gathers evidence of mass human rights abuses, provides free legal support to victims and works to ensure that perpetrators are held to account. CFJ now operates in more than 40 countries: investigating war crimes in Ukraine, monitoring sham trials targeting women and journalists, and fighting back against a global trend of authoritarianism that seeks to punish those who speak truth to power. Its latest initiative, Waging Justice for Women, uses strategic litigation to reform discriminatory laws and increase accountability for gender-based abuse.

She partnered with the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative in beginning the Amal Clooney Scholarship, which was created to send one female student from Lebanon to the United World College Dilijan each year, to enroll in a two-year International Baccalaureate (IB) programme.

Clooney and her husband sponsored a Yazidi student, Hazim Avdal, whom she met via her work with Nadia Murad as Avdal worked at Yazda. Avdal was attending the University of Chicago.

In 2017, the Clooneys awarded a $1 million grant to the Southern Poverty Law Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, to combat hate groups in America.

In 2018, following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the Clooneys pledged $500,000 to the March for Our Lives and said they would be in attendance. They also donated $100,000 to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, through the Clooney Foundation for Justice, to help migrant children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Amal and George Clooney donated $100,000 to three Lebanese charities, the Lebanese Red Cross, Impact Lebanon, and Baytna Baytak, who helped provide aid to those affected by the 2020 explosion in Beirut.

In 2020, the Clooneys donated $1 million to coronavirus relief efforts. This included money for the NHS to help provide assistance to frontline workers and to The Lebanese Food Bank which helps single mothers, the elderly and vulnerable people who could not work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The couple also made a donation to The Mill at Sonning Theatre, located close to their Berkshire home, which helped ensure its survival through the pandemic.

In 2022, Amal Clooney, along with Michelle Obama and Melinda French Gates, launched the 'Get Her There' campaign that seeks to catalyse educating and empowering teenage females.

Personal life

Clooney is a dual Lebanese-British citizen. She is fluent in English, French, and Arabic.

On 28 April 2014, she became engaged to American actor George Clooney, whom she had first met through a mutual friend in July 2013. On 7 August 2014, the couple obtained marriage licences in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the city of London. Two days after their high-profile wedding ceremony, the duo married on 27 September 2014 at Ca' Farsetti in the city of Venice; they were married by Clooney's friend Walter Veltroni, an Italian politician who served as the country's deputy prime minister between 1996 and 1998 and as the mayor of Rome between 2001 and 2008. In October 2014, it was announced that the Clooneys had bought the Mill House on an island of the River Thames at Sonning Eye at a cost of around £10 million.

In February 2017, it was reported by the American television talk show The Talk that Clooney was pregnant. American actor Matt Damon, a friend of the family, confirmed the pregnancy on the American television series Entertainment Tonight shortly thereafter. In June 2017, Clooney gave birth to fraternal twins: a boy and a girl.

Published works

Books

• Special Tribunal for Lebanon: Law and Practice, co-edited with D. Tolbert and N. Jurdi (Oxford University Press, 2014).
• Clooney, Amal; Webb, Philippa (2020). The Right to a Fair Trial in International Law. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-198-80839-8. OCLC 994411014. The book was awarded the top prize in academic book publishing, the American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit for High Technical Craftsmanship and Utility to Practicing Lawyers and Scholars, and has been cited by the UK Supreme Court.
• Co-editor with D. Neuberger of Freedom of Speech in International Law (2024)

Book chapters and journal articles

• "Human Rights", chapter in I. Roberts (ed.), Satow's Diplomatic Practice (7th Edition, Oxford University Press, 2017) (update for 2022 edition in progress).
• "The Right to Insult in International Law?", with P. Webb, in Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 2017, Vol. 48, No. 2.
• Alamuddin, Amal; Bonini, Anna (2014). "Chapter 4: The UN investigation of the Hariri assassination: The relationship between the UN investigation commission and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon: Problems of Principle and Practice". In Alamuddin, Amal; Jurdi, Nidal Nabil; Tolbert, David (eds.). The Special Tribunal for Lebanon: Law and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 50–72. ISBN 978-0-19-968745-9. OCLC 861207456.
• Alamuddin, Amal (2014). "The role of the Security Council in starting and stopping cases at the International Criminal Court: problems of principle and practice". In Zidar, Andraž; Bekou, Olympia (eds.). Contemporary Challenges for the International Criminal Court. London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law. pp. 103–130. ISBN 978-1-90522-151-6. OCLC 871319445.
• Alamuddin, Amal; Hardman, Nadia (February 2014). "Separating Law and Politics: Challenges to the Independence of Judges and Prosecutors in Egypt". Report of the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), Supported by the Open Society Foundations Arab Regional Office. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
• Alamuddin, Amal; Webb, Philippa (15 November 2010). "Expanding Jurisdiction over War Crimes under Article 8 of the ICC Statute". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 8 (5): 1219–1243. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqq066. ISSN 1478-1387. OCLC 775833494.
• Alamuddin, Amal (2010). "II. Before the Trial Begins; 6. Collection of Evidence". In Khan, Karim A. A.; Buisman, Caroline; Gosnell, Christopher (eds.). Principles of Evidence in International Criminal Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 231–305. ISBN 978-0-19-958892-3. OCLC 663822377.

Selected articles and blogs

• Clooney, Amal, Fulford Adrian, Meron Theodor, Friedman Danny, Kennedy Helena, Wilmshurst Elizabeth (20 May 2024), "Why we support ICC prosecutions for crimes in Israel and Gaza" Financial Times
• Clooney, Amal and Wolosky, Lee (17 December 2023), "Why We’re Helping Yazidi Americans Get Justice" New York Times
• Clooney, Amal and Skilbeck, Rupert (19 October 2023), "Amal Clooney and Rupert Skilbeck on why Britain fails to hold war criminals to account" Economist
• Clooney, Amal (29 July 2021). "Don't Let the Autocrats Win – How Biden Can Use the Democracy Summit to Build Back Media Freedom". Just Security.
• Clooney, Amal (17 May 2021). "Yazidis Deserve Justice for Genocide: How Biden's Team Can Lead the Way". Just Security.
• Clooney, Amal (11 May 2021). "An ISIS torturer was complicit in genocide. The U.S. is making it hard to bring her to justice". The Washington Post.
• Clooney, Amal (12 June 2020). "A test for democracy in the Philippines". The Washington Post.
• Clooney, Amal (22 September 2017). "Finally, We Have a Coordinated Effort to Bring ISIS to Justice". Huffington Post.
• Clooney, Amal (14 October 2015). "Maldives Backslides Into Repression as the World Calls for President Nasheed's Release". Huffington Post.
• Clooney, Amal (2 August 2015). "It Is Time for Sisi to Set Al Jazeera Journalist Mohamed Fahmy Free". Huffington Post.
• Clooney, Amal (30 April 2015). "Release Mohamed Nasheed – an innocent man and the Maldives' great hope". The Guardian.
• Clooney, Amal (26 February 2015). ""Egypt Should Send Canadian Journalist Mohamed Fahmy Home". Huffington Post.
• Clooney, Amal (18 August 2014). "The Anatomy of an Unfair Trial". Huffington Post.
• Alamuddin, Amal (10 December 2012). "Will Syria go to the ICC?" (PDF). The Lawyer. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
• Alamuddin, Amal (April 2012). "Does Libya Have to Surrender Saif Al-slam Gaddafi to The Hague?" (PDF). Mizaan: The Newsletter from Lawyers for Justice in Libya (1). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 28 September 2014.

Awards and recognition

• Clooney was chosen as Barbara Walters' Most Fascinating Person of 2014. At the 2014 British Fashion Awards, she was shortlisted for Best British Style alongside David Beckham, Kate Moss, Keira Knightley and Emma Watson.
• 2016 World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
• 2018 United Nations Correspondents Association Global Citizen of the Year Award.
• In 2019, Charles III launched the Amal Clooney Award to celebrate "incredible young women".
• The Simon Wiesenthal Center honoured Amal and George Clooney with its Humanitarian Award at its 2020 virtual gala.
• 2020 Committee to Protect Journalists Gwen Ifill Award for "extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom".
• 2021 Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press' Freedom of the Press Award.
• American Society of International Law "Champion of the International Rule of Law" Award.
• In 2021, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center's recognised Amal and George Clooney for their work in social justice and modern-day freedom efforts at the International Freedom Conductor Awards Gala.
• 2022, Fellow of The Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet (known as the WS Society)
• 2022, Time magazine, Woman of the Year.
• 2022, Article 3 Human Rights Global Treasure Award.
• 2023, Doctor Honoris Causa of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
• 2023, BBC, 100 Women list.