Youssef Farhat
Executive Director

Youssef brings over ten years of human rights experience and leadership to the Center and champions this role alongside a talented team of scholars and advocates, and the interdisciplinary direction of four faculty directors renowned in their fields.

In addition to supporting executive dimensions of all areas of work and clusters at the Center, he is one of the Future of Human Rights and Governance (FORGE) program curators, and oversees all student-oriented programs and engagements.

Youssef’s commitment to practice-based education and scholarship is a common thread in his career path especially during his integral role as part of the University of Dayton Human Rights Center founding team. As a lecturer, he taught human rights courses centralizing engaged learning and advocacy projects as well as developed and managed the Malawi Research Practicum, a fellowship program that draws on transdisciplinary research and trains cohorts of students to conduct human rights research in the Global South. He led the Center’s communications and partnerships efforts, including planning and managing four biannual Social Practice of Human Rights Conferences.

Prior to moving to the U.S., Youssef worked in global development spaces with civil society organizations as well as the United Nations Development Programme and the U.S. Agency for International Development in Beirut, Lebanon as a multilingual researcher and coordinator for a series of programs in areas of education, social and economic rights, sustainability, and gender.

Victoria Adelmant
Director, Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project
Technology and Human Rights

Victoria Adelmant leads the Center’s work on technology and human rights as the Director of the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project. She is also an Adjunct Professor at NYU Law, where she teaches courses relating to emerging technologies and digitalization. 

Her research focuses on how the digital transformation of the state – particularly those parts of the state with which low-income and marginalized groups most interact, such as welfare services – impacts human rights. From the shifting of government services online, to digital ID, to financial technologies and biometrics, her research explores the exclusions which are arising as digital technologies are introduced into state services. She is currently co-authoring a book with Christiaan van Veen and Philip Alston on these topics.

Victoria previously worked for the International Human Rights program of the Oak Foundation and at Minority Rights Group International. She has long sought to combine her experience in international human rights organizations with work within grassroots organizations: she has worked with the United Nations, the European Commission and the Academy of European Law, and has advised asylum-seekers and migrants within service organizations in the United Kingdom and campaigned with Oxfam.

Victoria holds an LLM in International Legal Studies from NYU, where she was a Hauser Global Scholar and a Human Rights Scholar and won the Jerome Lipper Award and the David Moses Memorial Prize. She also holds an LLM from the London School of Economics (Distinction) and a BA in Law with German Law from the University of Oxford (First Class Honors).

Sienna Merope-Synge
Co-Director, Caribbean Climate Justice Initiative
Global Justice Clinic

Sienna Merope-Synge is the Co-Director of the Caribbean Climate Justice Initiative and the Director of the Indigenous Land Rights and Earth Defense project through the Global Justice Clinic. Both projects partner with communities and organizations on the frontlines of the climate crisis to defend their environmental, economic, social and cultural rights, and support efforts to secure land rights and build community power.

Sienna was previously the Legal Director at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), where she led the organization’s work seeking accountability for emblematic human and environmental rights violations in Haiti, including efforts to secure remedies for victims of the UN-introduced Haiti cholera epidemic and child support for victims of sexual exploitation by UN peacekeepers. She worked between New York and Port-au-Prince from 2015 to 2020 and speaks fluent French and Haitian Creole.

Sienna received her LLM from NYU School of Law in 2015, where she was a Hauser global scholar. She holds political science and law degrees with first class honors from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Ryan Goodman
Faculty Director

Courses
Publications
Just Security Posts

Ryan Goodman is a faculty director of the Center. He is also a co-faculty director of the Center on Law and Security, and founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security. He is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law and a Professor of Politics and Professor of Sociology at NYU.

Prior to moving to NYU, Ryan was the inaugural Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Program Director at Harvard Law School. He received his JD from Yale Law School, where he served as an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal. He received a PhD in Sociology from Yale University. After law school, he clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Ryan serves on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law and on the Board of Editors of International Theory. He is a member of the US Department of State’s Advisory Committee on International Law, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the US Naval War College’s Board of Advisers for International Law Studies, and a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law.

His articles include “The Detention of Civilians in Armed Conflict,” (American Journal of International Law, 2009), “Humanitarian Intervention and Pretexts for War” (American Journal of International Law, 2006) and “How to Influence States: Socialization and International Human Rights Law” (Duke Law Journal, 2004) (with Derek Jinks). He has also co-authored several books, including International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals (Oxford University Press 3rd ed., 2007) (with Philip Alston and Henry Steiner), and Socializing States: Promoting Human Rights through International Law (Oxford University Press, 2013) (with Derek Jinks).

Rob Lothman
Legal and Policy Director
Prevention Project

Rob Lothman is the Legal and Policy Director of the Prevention Project, where he orchestrates project strategy, research and program administration, cross-workstream initiatives, and development of the prevention framework. 

Prior to joining the Prevention Project, Rob worked in a range of legal, policy, teaching, and business contexts around the globe. As a Global Public Sector Marketing Manager with Cisco Systems, Rob led strategic marketing efforts for a multibillion-dollar global education portfolio, promoted CSR programs expanding access to education, and managed partnerships with governments, universities, and NGOs. At Shrewsbury School, Rob served as Peter J. Gomes Fellow, teaching English, history, philosophy, and social science research methods and developing course modules on transitional justice, human rights, and political repression. Rob also researched nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament at a Moscow-based NGO. 

Rob is a licensed attorney in Massachusetts, and he holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, where he studied intersections between human rights, transitional justice, and constitutional law. Rob received his A.B. in Social Studies and a Minor in Russian from Harvard University, where he studied political repression and mass human rights abuses in the Soviet Union.

Philip Alston
Faculty Director; John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law

Courses
Publications 

Philip Alston is a faculty director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. He is an international lawyer whose research and teaching interests focus primarily on human rights law and the law of international organizations.

Philip served as the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights from 2014-2020 and has visited and reported on countries including Chile, China, Mauritania, Romania, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. 

He was previously UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions from 2004 to 2010 and undertook fact-finding missions to: Sri Lanka, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Philippines, Israel, Lebanon, Albania, Kenya, Brazil, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, the United States, Albania, and Ecuador. 

In 2005 he was elected to chair the Annual Meeting of U.N. Human Rights Special Procedures, which brings together all of the Special Rapporteurs, Working Groups, Special Representatives and Independent Experts working on human rights in the U.N. system (almost 50 in total). In 2005-06 he chaired the Coordinating Committee set up to enhance and promote coordination among these different mechanisms.

He has also been the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law since 1996.

Born and educated in Australia (Law and Economics) and California (JSD), Philip taught during the 1980s at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and at Harvard Law School. He then became Professor of Law and Foundation Director of the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University, a post he held until 1995. From 1996 to 2001 he was Professor of International Law, and for part of that time Head of Department, at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. He was also co-Director of the Academy of European Law and organized the Academy’s summer programs in human rights law. Other posts he has held include chief of staff to a Cabinet Minister in Australia during part of the Whitlam Government, and Discrimination Commissioner for the Australian Capital Territory ( Canberra) for three years.

In the field of international law, Philip has been Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law since 1996 and prior to that was the Co-Editor of the Australian Yearbook of International Law. He co-founded the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law and was founding Vice-President of the European Society of International Law.

Pablo de Greiff
Senior Fellow; Director
Prevention Project, Transitional Justice Program

Courses

Pablo de Greiff directs the Transitional Justice Program and the Prevention Project at the Center. He served as the first UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence from 2012 to 2018, as a member of the UN Independent Investigation on Burundi (UNIIB) in 2015-16, and since 2019 serves in the UN Secretary General’s Civilian Advisory Board.

From 2001 to 2014, Pablo was the Director of Research at the International Center for Transitional Justice. Born in Colombia, Pablo graduated from Yale University (BA) and from Northwestern University (PhD). Before joining the ICTJ, he was an associate professor with tenure in the Philosophy Department at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he taught ethics and political theory. He was also a Laurance S. Rockefeller fellow at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University and held a concurrent fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Pablo is the editor or co-editor of ten books, including Jürgen Habermas’s The Inclusion of the Other (MIT Press, 1998), Global Justice and Transnational Politics (MIT Press, 2002), Las Razones de la Justicia: A Festschrift for Thomas McCarthy (México: UNAM, 2006), and in areas related to transitional justice, The Handbook of Reparations (Oxford, 2006), Transitional Justice and Development: Making Connections (SSRC, 2009), and Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-combatants (SSRC, 2010), among others.

Pablo has published extensively on transitions to democracy, democratic theory, and the relationship between morality, politics, and law, and is on the board of editors of the International Journal of Transitional Justice and of several book series related to the topic.  His articles include “Theorizing Transitional Justice,” in Transitional Justice, NOMOS, vol. LI, Melissa Williams, Rosemary Nagy, and Jon Elster, eds. (NYU Press, 2012).

He has lectured at NYU, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, European University Institute, and in universities across Europe and Latin America.

Pablo contributed to the drafting of the final report of the Stockholm Initiative on DDR, authored the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Rule-of-Law Tools for Post-Conflict States: Reparations Programmes, and was an adviser to the World Bank on the process leading to the World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security, and Development. He has been an adviser to different transitional justice bodies in Peru, Guatemala, Morocco, Colombia, and the Philippines. He is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Open Society’s Justice Initiative, and a member of the advisory boards of the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Archives and Dealing with the Past Project, and a member of the boards of the Global Survivor’s Fund, the Universal Rights Group, and of the International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma.

During his term as Special Rapporteur, Pablo conducted country visits to Uruguay, the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Tunisia, Spain, Burundi, Sri Lanka and presented over a dozen reports to the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly.

Mikhal Shachar
Prevention Project
Policy & Program Manager

Mikhal Shachar joined the Prevention Project in June 2022, after graduating from the NYU School of Law in May 2022 with an LL.M. in International Legal Studies.

As Policy & Program Manager, Mikhal manages the Constitutional and Legal Tools, Security, Civil Society, and Environment workstreams. During her LL.M., Mikhal was a Human Rights Scholar with the Prevention Project.

Between 2017-2021, Mikhal was a legal advisor at the Israeli Ministry of Justice Office of Deputy Attorney General for International Law. She held positions on the Policy and Strategy team and the Foreign Litigation team, where she drafted Israel’s legal position on issues of international law, universal jurisdiction, cyber governance, state immunity, and business and human rights. Mikhal also managed civil litigation and criminal complaints against Israeli officials abroad. Mikhal holds an LL.B. in Law and Political Science from Tel-Aviv University.

During her LL.B. Mikhal was a research and teaching assistant to a number of leading Israeli international law scholars. Prior to law school, Mikhal served as a shift-commander NCO in the Foreign Liaison Department of the Israel Defence Force where she conducted strategic and tactical cooperation with neighboring foreign militaries and U.N. forces. After being admitted to the Israeli Bar Association, Mikhal took on a Staff Sergeant reserve position at the International Law Department of the Military Advocate General.

Michelle Lobo
Research & Litigation Fellow
The Earth Rights Research & Action

Michelle Lobo is a Research & Litigation Fellow at the Center’s Earth Rights Advocacy program, working closely on the More than Human Rights (MOTH) initiative to advance ecocentric stories and innovative legal strategies.

She has a JD from the University of Minnesota where she was a Dean’s Distinguished Scholar. She graduated cum laude, on the “A” Dean’s list, and was awarded the Robina Postgraduate Fellowship for public interest work. She has a BA in History from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, India.

She currently also works with the Fungi Foundation as their legal counsel and board Chair, and is passionately dedicated to its vision and mission. Her past work includes serving as a field researcher for the Delhi Legal Services Authority where she assisted in establishing India’s first All India Legal Aid Cell on Child Rights, and as a legal advisor with Amnesty International in the Philippines advising on issues relating to Universal Jurisdiction and the Rome Statute.

Melina De Bona
Research Scholar & Litigation Associate
The Earth Rights Research & Action

Melina is a Research Scholar and Litigation Associate at the Center’s Earth Rights Advocacy program, working on the nexus between human rights and climate change. She holds a JD from NYU School of Law and a BA in International Studies from the University of Chicago (distinguished honors).

During her time at NYU Law, she specialized in Public International Law, with a focus on socioeconomic rights in Latin America, where she is from. As part of the Center’s Global Justice Clinic and UN Diplomacy Clinic, she worked on the right to water in Haiti and worked within the United Nations system as an environmental advisor to the Permanent Mission of a small island state. As a Center Fellow and Scholar, she interned for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and worked on legal empowerment lawyering models. She also served as a research assistant for various international law professors and practitioners and represented asylum seekers in family detention facilities across the country.

After law school, Melina spent a year working for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, specializing in international arbitration, white-collar crime investigations and sustainability.