The Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding is pleased to welcome lawyers Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Alyssa Yamamoto as Visiting Fellows starting January 2022. The team is thrilled to host such accomplished figures and looks forward to the results of this collaboration in the coming months.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who has been serving as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism since 2017, is an expert in the fields of international and human rights law, transitional justice, national security, counter-terrorism, conflict regulation and gender-based violence in times of war. She is Regents Professor and Robina Professor of Law, Public Policy and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School, and she also holds a position as Professor of Law at the Queens University School of Law in Belfast.

Alyssa Yamamoto is a human rights lawyer, who started working as the Robina Fellow to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism in 2021. Previously she worked as a litigation associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where she specialized in public international law and international dispute resolution. She graduated from Yale Law School and Harvard College. 

In March 2022, Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ní Aoláin will be in Geneva to meet with Member States and to present her latest report to the 49th Session of the Human Rights Council.