The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law

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Hannah Garry

Executive Director, Professor from Practice

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Prof. Hannah R. Garry is Professor from Practice and Executive Director of The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law. She is an internationally-recognized legal scholar, teacher and advocate with over 25 years’ experience, spanning more than 25 countries, in human rights, international criminal law, international refugee law, and transitional justice, and has held prior faculty appointments at University of Southern California (USC) Law and University of Colorado Law.

In 2022, Hannah was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Norway. Her scholarship has been published by Oxford University Press; Kluwer Publishers; T.M.C. Asser Press; Edward Elgar Publishing; the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights; the European Public Law Journal; the International Journal of Refugee Law; the Journal of International Criminal Justice; and Berkeley Journal of International Law; among others. She has received funding for her research from the European Union and the Ford, Nuffield, and Rotary Foundations. She is regularly sought as an expert for media outlets such as the New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, BBC, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, and The Hill. 

Hannah has been a recipient of the USC Mellon Award for Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students in recognition of her excellence in teaching. She has taught international criminal law, international human rights law and public international law to law and undergraduate students over 16 years. As Clinical Professor of Law at USC Law, she was Founding Director of its International Human Rights Clinic, training over 100 student attorneys as the next generation of human rights advocates. 

Hannah has held visiting academic positions at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre; the University of Oslo Faculty of Law PluriCourts Centre; the San Remo International Institute of Humanitarian Law; the Peking University Law School Human Rights Research Center; Makerere University’s Institute of Social Research; the International Criminal Court (ICC); and the European Court of Human Rights. 

Hannah has extensive experience over 20 years in international and national courts and legislatures, as well as before UN human rights bodies. She provided legal drafting and analysis for over 10 judgments and numerous appeals decisions on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and torture. Her prior roles include Deputy Chef de Cabinet and Legal Officer to Judge Fausto Pocar during his presidency at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and Legal Officer in the Appeals Chamber of the Yugoslav and Rwandan Tribunals. She has been Legal Adviser and amicus curiae before the ICC, the Cambodia Tribunal, the Lebanon Tribunal, and the U.S. Supreme Court. When she was an associate at Freshfields, Bruckhaus, Deringer LLP, she assisted Commissioner Lucy Reed on assessment of compensation claims brought by civilians and prisoners of war brought before the Eritrea Ethiopia Claims Commission. She clerked for the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the 11^th Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals. She is admitted to the New York Bar and the United States Supreme Court Bar. 

Hannah regularly testifies and drafts expert submissions, including before the ICC and the UN Human Rights Committee on behalf of torture survivors; the UK House of Lords Parliamentary Inquiry on Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan on behalf of women and girls; the Canadian House of Commons on Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis; and the UN Office of the Human Rights Commissioner for Human Rights on Black Lives Matter. Together with experts from the University of Oxford and University of Toronto, she filed a brief on behalf of refugees with the ICC Prosecutor’s office documenting crimes against humanity in Cameroon. She serves on the Clooney Foundation’s Expert Panel for its TrialWatch Initiative documenting fair trial rights violations against journalists, academics, and human rights defenders in her reports.  

As a longstanding member of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), Hannah is as an elected member of its Executive Council and Committee. In 2024, she co-chaired the ASIL Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. featuring 50 expert international law panels and hosting over 1,100 attendees. She was invited by the International Law Association (America Branch) to serve on its Crimes Against Humanity Treaty study group. She is a member of the Leadership Circle for Foreign Policy for America. Hannah also serves on the faculty advisory boards for USC’s Shoah Foundation Institute Center for Advanced Genocide Research as well as UCLA’s The Promise Armenian Institute, and is a member of the Human Rights Watch Los Angeles Committee.  

Hannah holds a Juris Doctorate in Law from UC Berkeley Law where she was Managing Editor of the Berkeley Journal of International Law and recipient of several awards and scholarships in international law and human rights. She obtained a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University with high honors, and a Bachelor of Arts in history and political science summa cum laude from Wheaton College. She also holds a Graduate Certificate in Forced Migration Studies with distinction from Oxford University where she was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.