Activist Karen Kenny (Master in International Law, ’94) was epitome of generation in her field.

Kenny attended Trinity College and King’s Inns, Dublin, subsequently winning a scholarship to the Graduate Institute, where she gained a Master in International Law in 1994. From 1992, Kenny specialised in international human rights fieldwork. She served as a UN human rights adviser in peacekeeping contexts, and was a war crimes investigator with the Security Council’s Commission of Experts in El Salvador, former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She decided against renewing her Rwanda UN contract after coming to the conclusion that the UN model was ineffective in dealing with the Rwandan genocide. This then became an international issue.

In 1995 she founded the International Human Rights Trust, which later became the International Human Rights Network, specialising in the framework and practical policy aspects of the integration of human rights in peacekeeping, development and humanitarian action. Kenny also advised the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the European Commission and individual governments regarding human rights-based approaches. She served as an expert member of the Standing Committee on Human Rights, in the Irish Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, between 1997 and 2014. In her 2001 article, entitled Ireland, the Security Council and Afghanistan, Kenny argued that the role of Ireland as an impartial voice for peace through the promotion of human rights around the world “can, and should be, more than fond perception”.

With the help of her collaborators, Kenny trained thousands of development workers, from a wide range of backgrounds, in the essential human rights dimension of their work. Capacity-building was at the core of this activity, as was holding large, cumbersome or ineffective organisations to account. Her personal life was as busy as her professional one. She was, amongst other things, a fiddle-player and an occasional actor, appearing as Maria in an amateur production of Brian Friel’s Translations whilst working on a human rights project in Belfast.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights when she first met Kenny, this week describing her as someone who had “a true voice who spoke out with great passion on human rights issues”.

Edited from an original article in The Irish Times, 23 June 2015.