Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is a barrister and international human rights lawyer. Over the past 25 years she has acted in many leading human rights cases in the UK, Europe and internationally. Her
work is wide-ranging, spanning children’s rights, violence against women, redress for survivors of child sexual abuse, open justice, the discriminatory impact of welfare cuts, reproductive rights, the right to protest, and State accountability for wrongful deaths.
Caoilfhionn is also an expert in journalists’ safety and arbitrary detention. She has secured the freedom of over 80 imprisoned journalists, business people, lawyers, musicians, cartoonists and activists wrongly imprisoned worldwide (including in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, China, UAE, Russia and Equatorial Guinea). Her caseload includes leading the international legal teams for Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist from the Philippines; the bereaved family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the assassinated Maltese journalist; and hundreds of BBC News Persian and Iran International journalists targeted extra-territorially by Iran. She was appointed an expert witness on State obligations in relation to violence against women journalists before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Jineth Bedoya Lima v. Colombia, and she has given evidence on human rights issues before Parliaments in Australia, the USA, UK, Ireland, Germany, the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Alongside her practice as a barrister, Caoilfhionn is a Commission Member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, a Board Member of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Adjunct Full Professor at University College Dublin. In 2023 she was awarded the President of Ireland’s Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her work.