Amal Alamuddin was born in Beirut, Lebanon. Her first name is derived from Arabicأملʾamal, meaning "hope".[8]
Her family left Lebanon when she was two years old, during the Lebanese Civil War, and settled in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.[9] Her father, Ramzi Alamuddin, a Lebanese Druze from Baakline (a village in the Chouf district),[10] received his MBA degree at the American University of Beirut. He returned to Lebanon in 1991.[11][12] Her mother, Bariaa (née Miknass), from a family of Sunni Muslims[13][10] from Tripoli in Northern Lebanon,[13][10] is a political journalist[14] and 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.[15]
Alamuddin has three siblings: one sister and two half-brothers,[15] from her father's first marriage.[16]
Clooney is qualified to practise 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.[20]
Alamuddin 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.[18][20]
Clooney with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland at the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London in 2019.
Alamuddin returned to Britain in 2010,[26] where she became a barrister in London (Bar of England & Wales, Inner Temple) at Doughty Street Chambers.[18] 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.[21][27]
Alamuddin had been involved in high-profile cases representing the state of Cambodia, the former Libyan intelligence chief Abdallah Al Senussi, Yulia Tymoshenko[28] 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.[20]
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.[29][30] 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.[31][32]
Starting in 2014, Clooney represented CanadianAl Jazeera English journalist Mohamed Fahmy who, along with other journalists, was being held in Egypt.[35][36][37][38] 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.[39][40]
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.[41]
In October 2014, Clooney was hired in an attempt to repatriate the ancient Greek sculptures the Elgin Marbles.[42][43] In May 2015, Greece decided to stop legal proceedings to recover the sculptures and dismissed her as their brief.[44]
In January 2015, Clooney began work on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.[45] She is representing Armenia on behalf of Doughty Street Chambers along with Geoffrey Robertson QC.[46] 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.[45] She is representing Armenia in the case against Doğu Perinçek,[47][48] whose 2007 conviction for genocide denial and racial discrimination was overturned in Perinçek v. Switzerland (2013).[45] 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.[49][50]
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.[51] 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".[52]
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.[53] Nasheed was sentenced to 13 years in jail in March 2015 following what was characterized as a politically motivated trial.[54]Amnesty International described his sentencing as a "travesty of justice".[55][56] 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.[57] 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.[58][59] According to The Economist, she has "helped strengthen the backing of Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, for the cause of Maldivian democracy."[60]
Clooney is part of the legal team representing Louis Olivier Bancoult and Chagos islanders on their claim[66] 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.[67]
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.[68] Following the trial, Ismayilova was released from prison and had her sentence reduced to a suspended three-and-a-half year term.[69]
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[70] to represent Nadia Murad as a client in legal action against ISIL commanders.[71][72][73] 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.[74]
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.[75]
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.[76][77]
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".[78]
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.[79][80]
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.[7][81] 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'.[82]
Clooney studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she received an Exhibition[17] and the Shrigley Award.[18] Clooney received the Jack J. Katz Memorial Award for excellence in entertainment law from NYU School of Law.[20][21]
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.[85]
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.[86]
Clooney is fluent in English, French, and Arabic.[88][89]
She became engaged to actor George Clooney on 28 April 2014.[90] They had first met through a mutual friend in July 2013.[91]
On 7 August 2014, the couple obtained marriage licences in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London.[92]
They married on 27 September 2014 in Venice's city hall (at Ca' Farsetti),[93][94][95] following a high-profile wedding ceremony two days earlier, also[96] in Venice.[97][98][99] They were married by Clooney's friend Walter Veltroni, former mayor of Rome.[99][100] The wedding was widely reported in the media.[101] In October 2014, it was announced that the Clooneys had bought the Mill House on an island in the River Thames at Sonning Eye in England[102] at a cost of around £10 million.[103]
In February 2017, it was reported by the CBS talk show The Talk that Clooney was pregnant.[104] Friend Matt Damon confirmed the pregnancy to Entertainment Tonight.[105] In June 2017, she gave birth to fraternal twins.[106]
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.[25]
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". Tatler. 19 January 2016. Archived from the original on 30 August 2017. Retrieved 5 August 2018. '"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, director, producer 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.
Mohammed Waheed Hassan
Mohamed 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.
Muad Mohamed Zaki
Muad Mohamed Zaki is from a prominent left wing political and business family in the Maldives. He migrated to Malaysia with his family in the 1990s after political turmoil in the Maldives that temporarily drove out large private business owners from the country. His father Dato' Mohamed Zaki is a highly respected figure in the Maldives by Presidents and other political figures. The family owns a well-known multinational firm named Nazaki Group of Companies which pioneered international trade between Malaysia and Maldives.
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.
Ben Emmerson
Ben Emmerson, QC is a prominent British barrister, specialising in public international law, human rights and humanitarian law, and international criminal law. From 2011 to 2017, he was the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism. Emmerson is currently an Appeals Chamber Judge of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals sitting on the Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He has previously served as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and Special Adviser to the Appeals Chamber of the ECCC.
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.
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