HELEN DUFFY has practiced international law in diverse contexts for over thirty years. Her litigation experience has spanned ground-breaking cases in regional and international human rights courts and bodies, including the European African, and Inter-American systems, the ECOWAS court, UN human rights bodies, and national courts. Positions prior to establishing Human Rights in Practice included: Legal Director of INTERIGHTS; Legal Officer in the Prosecutors Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; Counsel to Human Rights Watch on International Justice (including International Criminal Court negotiations and universal jurisdiction); Legal Director of CALDH Guatemala (litigating genocide among other violations in the Inter-American system); Assistant Secretary to Lord Justice Scott’s 'Arms for Iraq Inquiry and Legal Adviser to the UK Government legal service.
Helen is Professor of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Leiden University, Honorary or Visiting Professor at Glasgow, Melbourne, Oxford and American Universities, and has an LLB. (Glasgow), LLM. (University College London), Dipl. Legal Practice (Edinburgh) and PHD (Leiden). She is on the board of several NGOs. In 2026 she was appointed by the Spanish government to the Truth Commission investigating human rights violations during the Spanish civil war and Franco dictatorship.
Her publications include “The ‘War on Terror’ and the Framework of International law (CUP, 2nd ed. 2015), ‘Strategic Human Rights Litigation: Understanding and Maximising Impact’ (Hart, 2018) and Law Applicable to Armed Conflict (with Bohrer and Dill), CUP 2020. A new book on ‘Litigating Atrocities in Armed Conflict’ (with Leach) is pending publication (Routledge 2026). Fuller list here.