Amal Clooney

Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin; born (1978-02-03)3 February 1978) is a French-British-Lebanese international human rights lawyer. She has represented several high-profile clients, including former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad, Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova, and Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy.

Clooney is Professor of Practice in International Law at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Technology and Justice, an institute she co-founded to harness the power of AI to increase access to justice. In 2016, she and her husband, American actor George Clooney, co-founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice.

Early life and education

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

Her father, Ramzi Alamuddin, 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), is from Tripoli in the North Governorate. She was a political journalist and foreign editor of the London-based newspaper al-Hayat, which is owned by Saudi Arabian prince Khalid bin Sultan Al Saud. She is also related to the late Ziad Takieddine, a Lebanese-French businessman and arms broker, who was her father's first cousin.

Clooney attended Dr Challoner's High School, a girls' grammar school in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire. She then studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she received an exhibition grant and the Shrigley Award. In 2000, she graduated with an upper second-class 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 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.

Legal career

Clooney is qualified to practice law in New York and England and Wales. She was admitted to the New York Bar in 2002. In 2010, Clooney was called to the Bar of England and Wales, Inner Temple. She is a practising barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. 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. In 2024, Clooney was the recipient of a Legal 500 lawyer of the year award in recognition of her outstanding work and contributions in the field of international law.

Clooney 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 the 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. She prosecuted the case against five members of Hezbollah, accused of assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri and others in 2005.

Clooney's practice focuses on human rights. She regularly represents journalists and was appointed in 2019 as the inaugural Deputy Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom by Lord Neuberger. In March 2018, Clooney joined the international legal team that represented the Pulitzer Prize-winning Burmese journalists for Reuters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were sentenced to seven years in prison in Myanmar for reporting on the murders of ten Rohingya men by Buddhist villagers and Myanmar paramilitary police in the village of Inn Din in September 2017. They were released in May 2019. In July 2019, she and Irish barrister Caoilfhionn Gallagher became the leaders of the international legal team that represented Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa. Ressa faces legal charges that could lead to decades in prison. Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her "courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines".

Clooney represents victims of mass atrocities, including genocide and sexual violence. In January 2015, she became a member of a legal team that represent Armenia on an appeal before the European Court of Human Rights against Turkish politician Doğu Perinçek who was convicted of denying the Armenian genocide. In November 2021, Clooney was co-plaintiff's and victims' counsel in the first case in which an Islamic State member, Taha al-Jumailly, was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. Al-Jumailly was sentenced to life in prison. Clooney was also co-plaintiff's counsel in the case against Al-Jumailly's ex-wife, German-born Islamic State member Jennifer Wenisch, for her role in crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in a foreign terrorist organization. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Clooney previously represented 126 victims of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, in a case at the International Criminal Court against Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, who was a senior leader of the pro-government "Janjaweed" fighters. This is the only trial that has, in October 2025, resulted in a conviction for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

In December 2023, Clooney filed a civil case on behalf of over 800 Yazidi-American plaintiffs against French cement manufacturer Lafarge for conspiring to provide material support to the Salafi jihadist group Islamic State. The lawsuit seeks to hold Lafarge accountable for its admitted criminal conspiracy with ISIS and obtain compensation for the Yazidi people. Clooney's long time client Nadia Murad is the lead plaintiff in the case. Clooney provided a statement on Sexual Violence in Conflict during the 8514th Meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Women, Peace and Security.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Clooney and other prominent international human rights lawyers led a legal task force created at the request of the Government of Ukraine to provide legal advice on the potential avenues to secure criminal accountability for Russia in national jurisdictions, the ICC, and the United Nations. She was also appointed to a group of international legal experts by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy to advise on legal mechanisms for survivors of the conflict to claim compensation. On April 27, 2022, Clooney delivered remarks at a UN Security Council Arria-Formula Meeting on Ensuring Accountability for Atrocities Committed by Russia in Ukraine.

In May 2024, it was announced that Clooney had served on an advisory panel that reviewed the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court's investigation into potential war crimes committed in the Gaza war. The panel was convened by the ICC in January 2024 at the request of ICC Prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan. She and five other legal experts unanimously recommended that an application be made for arrest warrants against five individuals: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar, two other Hamas leaders and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. In her statement, Clooney said there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that all five individuals committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. On 20 May 2024, Financial Times published an op-ed article written by Clooney and the other panel experts.

In 2025, Clooney was appointed Professor of Practice at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government. In October 2025, Clooney Co-Founded the Oxford Institute of Technology and Justice, a collaboration between Oxford University and the Clooney Foundation for Justice to harness AI and new technologies to increase access to justice.

From 2015-2025, Clooney was a visiting faculty member as well as a senior fellow at Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute, where she co-taught 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.