Amal Alamuddin was born in Beirut, Lebanon. Her first name is derived from Arabicأملʾamal, meaning "hope".[6]
Her family left Lebanon when she was two years old, during the Lebanese Civil War, and settled in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.[7] Her father, Ramzi Alam Uddin, from a Lebanese Druze family from Baakline (a village in the Chouf district),[8][9][10][11][12][13] received his MBA degree at the American University of Beirut and was the owner of COMET travel agency. He returned to Lebanon in 1991.[14][15] Her mother, Bariaa Miknass, from a family of Sunni Muslims[16][17] from Tripoli in Northern Lebanon,[16][17] is a foreign editor of the Pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat and a founder of the public relations company International Communication Experts, which is part of a larger company that specialises in celebrity guest bookings, publicity photography, and event promotion.[8][18]
Amal’s mother, Baria Alamuddin, is a well-known political journalist.[19] She states, "My pregnancy with Amal was a rather difficult one," as she had placenta praevia and spent two months in the hospital. "At some point, I was told that I should lose the baby. I said no. I kept on having these dreams in which I would see her face and how she was going to look. In the end, [she] was born exactly as I saw her." The birth came during a lull in Lebanon's civil war, so her father named her Amal – Arabic for "hope".
Amal has three siblings—one sister, Tala, and two half-brothers, Samer and Ziad,[8] from her father's first marriage.[20]
Amal is qualified to practice as a lawyer in the United States and the United Kingdom. She was admitted to the bar in New York in 2002 and in England and Wales in 2010. She has also practised at international courts in The Hague including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.[24]
Amal returned to Britain in 2010,[30] where she became a barrister in London (Bar of England & Wales, Inner Temple) at Doughty Street Chambers.[22] In 2013 Clooney was appointed to a number of United Nations commissions, including as adviser to Special Envoy Kofi Annan on Syria and as Counsel to the 2013 Drone Inquiry by UN human rights rapporteur Ben Emmerson QC into the use of drones in counter-terrorism operations.[25][31]
Amal has been involved in high-profile cases representing the state of Cambodia, the former Libyan intelligence chief Abdallah Al Senussi, Yulia Tymoshenko[32] and Julian Assange, and was an adviser to the King of Bahrain in connection with the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry headed by Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni.[24]
For the spring 2015 and 2016 academic semesters, Clooney was a visiting faculty member and a senior fellow with Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute.[33][34] She was a co-professor with Sarah H. Cleveland in Cleveland's course on human rights and taught a class on human rights litigation to students in the school's Human Rights Clinic.[35][36]
Starting in 2014, Amal represented CanadianAl Jazeera English journalist Mohamed Fahmy who, along with other journalists, was being held in Egypt.[39][40][41][42] He was eventually sentenced to three years in prison and lost a retrial in August 2015 before finally being pardoned by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.[43][44]
In August 2014, Clooney declined a UN commission to look into possible violations of the rules of war in Gaza during the Gaza war of 2014.[45]
In October 2014, Clooney was hired in attempt to repatriate the ancient Greek sculptures the Elgin Marbles.[46][47] In May 2015, Greece decided to stop legal proceedings to recover the sculptures and dismissed her as their brief.[48]
In January 2015, Amal began work on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.[49] She is representing Armenia on behalf of Doughty Street Chambers along with Geoffrey Robertson QC.[50] She said Turkey's stance was hypocritical "because of its disgraceful record on freedom of expression", including prosecutions of Turkish-Armenians who campaigned for the 1915 massacres to be called a genocide.[49] She is representing Armenia in the case against Doğu Perinçek,[51][52] whose 2007 conviction for genocide denial and racial discrimination was overturned in Perinçek v. Switzerland (2013).[49] A "minor internet frenzy" resulted from her bon mot prior to the 28 January 2015 hearing. In response to a journalist pestering her over what designer gown she would be wearing in court, she replied "Ede & Ravenscroft" – the tailors who make her court robes.[53][54]
On 8 March 2015, Clooney filed a case against the Government of the Republic of the Philippines before the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a body under the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, for the continued detention of former Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.[55] Arroyo was a sitting Pampanga congresswoman at the time. On 2 October, The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention later released its opinion that the detention of former President Arroyo "violates international law" and is "arbitrary on a number of grounds".[56]
On 7 April 2015, it was announced that Clooney would be part of the legal team defending Mohamed Nasheed, former President of the Maldives, in his ongoing arbitrary detention.[57] Nasheed was sentenced to 13 years in jail in March 2015 following what was characterized as a politically motivated trial.[58]Amnesty International described his sentencing as a "travesty of justice".[59][60] Prior to visiting the Maldives, the local co-counsel working on the case was stabbed in the head, an indication of the danger and instability in the country.[61] In January 2016, Clooney gave a series of interviews about the UN-condemned trial and imprisonment of Nasheed and put forth efforts to support imposing sanctions on the Maldives.[62][63] According to The Economist, she has "helped strengthen the backing of Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, for the cause of Maldivian democracy."[64]
Clooney is part of the legal team representing Louis Olivier Bancoult and Chagos islanders on their claim[70] that they had been forced off their island, Diego Garcia, in 1971 by the UK government to make way for a U.S. military base.[71]
In 2016, it was announced that Clooney would represent Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova at the European Court of Human Rights. Ismayilova's investigative work had resulted in her imprisonment.[72] Following the trial, Ismayilova was released from prison and had her sentence reduced to a suspended three-and-a-half year term.[73]
In September 2016, Clooney spoke – for the first time at the United Nations – before the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to discuss the decision she made in June 2016[74] to represent Murad as a client in legal action against ISIL commanders.[75][76][77] Clooney characterised the genocide, rape, and trafficking as a "bureaucracy of evil on an industrial scale" by ISIL, describing a slave market existing both online, on Facebook and in the Middle East that is still active today.[78]
Clooney, along with Ara Darzi, was involved in securing the release of two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, from Myanmar on 7 May 2019.[79]
On 25 February 2014, the UK Attorney General's Office appointed Clooney for the period 2014 to 2019 to the C Panel of the Public International Law Panel of Counsel.[80][81]
In May 2014, Clooney was a signatory of UNICEF UK and Jemima Khan's open letter that called for "action from UK Government to protect women and children".[82]
On 2 January 2015, it was reported by The Guardian that before Clooney was involved as Rapporteur in the case against Mohamed Fahmy, she had written a report in February 2014 for the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) that was critical of Egypt's judiciary process. Clooney and others were warned that there was a strong possibility they would be arrested if they entered Egypt, as a result of the criticism.[83][84]
In April 2019, Clooney became a special envoy at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, advising the Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt on global media freedom.[5][85] In her role as media freedom special envoy, Clooney will chair a panel of international lawyers to 'develop and promote legal mechanisms to prevent and reverse media abuses'.[86]
Clooney studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she received an Exhibition[21] and the Shrigley Award.[22] Clooney received the Jack J. Katz Memorial Award for excellence in entertainment law from NYU School of Law.[24][25]
Clooney is the president of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she co-founded with her husband George Clooney in late 2016 to advance justice in courtrooms, communities, and classrooms around the world.
Clooney partnered with the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative in beginning the Amal Clooney Scholarship, which was created to send one female student from Lebanon to the United World College Dilijan each year, to enroll in a two-year International Baccalaureate (IB) programme.[89]
Clooney and her husband sponsor a Yazidi student, Hazim Avdal, who Clooney met via her work with Nadia Murad as Avdal worked at Yazda. He is attending the University of Chicago.[90]
Amal Clooney is fluent in English, French, and Arabic.[92][93] Her father is a Lebanese Druze[11][12][13][16][94] and her mother is a Lebanese Sunni Muslim.[16][17] Some reports have described Clooney as a Druze.[94] However, it is unlikely that she considers herself a part of the religion in any capacity, due to the Druze restriction on exogamy, her mother's Muslim faith, and her marriage to non-Druze George Clooney.[95][96] She has not publicly discussed her religion, but her husband said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that Amal Clooney is "nondenominational....not religious at all".[97]
She became engaged to actor George Clooney on 28 April 2014.[98] They had first met through a mutual friend in July 2013.[99] In July 2014, George Clooney publicly criticised the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail after it claimed his fiancée's mother opposed their marriage on religious grounds.[100] When the tabloid apologised for its false story, he refused to accept the apology. He called the paper "the worst kind of tabloid. One that makes up its facts to the detriment of its readers."[101]
In February 2017, it was reported by the CBS talk show The Talk that Clooney was pregnant, and that she and her husband were expecting twins.[114] Friend Matt Damon confirmed the pregnancy to Entertainment Tonight.[115] In June 2017, she gave birth to daughter Ella and son Alexander.[116]
Alamuddin, Amal; Webb, Philippa (15 November 2010). "Expanding Jurisdiction over War Crimes under Article 8 of the ICC Statute". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 8 (5): 1219–1243. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqq066. ISSN1478-1387. OCLC775833494.[29]
Alamuddin, Amal (2014). "The role of the Security Council in starting and stopping cases at the International Criminal Court: problems of principle and practice". In Zidar, Andraž; Bekou, Olympia (eds.). Contemporary Challenges for the International Criminal Court. London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law. pp. 103–130. ISBN978-1-90522-151-6. OCLC871319445.
Alamuddin, Amal; Bonini, Anna (2014). "Chapter 4: The UN investigation of the Hariri assassination; The relationship between the UN investigation commission and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon: Problems of Principle and Practice". In Alamuddin, Amal; Jurdi, Nidal Nabil; Tolbert, David (eds.). The Special Tribunal for Lebanon: Law and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 50–72. ISBN978-0-19-968745-9. OCLC861207456.
^Amal Clooney - the most wanted woman in Britain, Matthew Bell tries to hang out with Mrs Clooney, Tatler, Tuesday, 19 January 2016: '"I remember her as humane and brainy," adds Ghil'ad Zuckermann, now a professor of linguistics at the University of Adelaide, Australia, who was also at St Hugh's with Amal. "Students were talking about Amal even then, especially those from Middle Eastern backgrounds. I remember being told around 1997 about her famous journalist mother."
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the recipient of three Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards, one for acting in Syriana (2006) and the other for co-producing Argo (2012). In 2018, he was the recipient of the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award.
Cherie Blair
Cherie Blair, also known professionally as Cherie Booth, is a British barrister, lecturer, and writer. She is married to Tony Blair, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Mohamed Nasheed
Mohamed Nasheed, GCSK is a Maldivian politician, who served as the fourth President of the Maldives from 2008 to 2012. He was the first democratically elected president of the Maldives and one of the founders of the Maldivian Democratic Party.
The Mill at Sonning
The Mill at Sonning is a theatre and restaurant, converted from an 18th-century flour mill, on an island in the River Thames at Sonning Eye in the English county of Oxfordshire.
Mohammed Waheed Hassan
Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik was the 5th President of the Maldives from 7 February 2012 to 17 November 2013, having succeeded to office following the disputed resignation of President Mohamed Nasheed, under whom Waheed had served as the Maldives' first Vice President in over half a century since 2008. He had previously worked as a news anchor, a United Nations official with UNICEF, UNDP and UNESCO, and a member of the Maldivian Parliament. Waheed was the first citizen of the Maldives to receive a Ph.D., having received it at Stanford University in the U.S., and reportedly the first person to appear on Maldivian Television.
The Island President
The Island President is a 2011 documentary film about the efforts of then-President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed to tackle rising sea levels resulting from climate change. Produced by Actual Films, an Oscar- and Emmy-winning American documentary film company based in San Francisco, and directed by Jon Shenk, the film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival.
Ca' Farsetti
Ca' Farsetti is a palace in Venice, Italy. It is located in the sestiere (district) of San Marco, and faces the Grand Canal, not far from the Ponte di Rialto.
Peter Greste
Peter Greste is an Australian journalist and correspondent, who holds dual citizenship of Australia and Latvia. He has worked as a correspondent for Reuters, CNN and the BBC, predominantly in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
Alhan Fahmy
Alhan Fahmy was a Parliament member of the 17th People's Majlis sitting of Maldives representing the Addu Atoll Feydhoo Constituency.
Mohamed Fahmy
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy is an Egyptian-born Canadian award-winning journalist, war correspondent and author. Fahmy has worked extensively in the Middle East, North Africa, for CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera English.
Maafushi Prison
Maafushi Prison is a prison in Maafushi on Kaafu Atoll in the Maldives, 18 miles (29 km) south of the capital, Malé. It is the largest prison on the islands and has held numerous political prisoners over the years, most notably the former president, Mohamed Nasheed.
Nadia Murad
Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist who lives in Germany. In 2014, she was kidnapped from her hometown Kocho and held by the Islamic State for three months.
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