DSI’s International Human Rights Law group is our group of practitioners and academic experts who are pioneers of international human rights practice and development. 

Our members offer a breadth of expertise in international human rights law and practice, that stretches across all areas of international law including:

  • Right to life  

  • Prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment 

  • Freedom of expression  

  • Freedom of peaceful assembly  

  • Freedom from arbitrary detention 

  • Rights of persons with disabilities 

  • Rights of the Child 

  • Women’s rights 

  • Business and human rights 

  • Economic, cultural and social rights 

Members of our group also offer expertise in specialist areas of practice such as international media law, international criminal law, sanctions, and climate and environmental justice. For more information on the work of these specialist teams, please follow the links here

Our IHRL expertise is practiced within different strands of work: litigation, advisory work, consultancy, international legal advocacy, broader advocacy work, training and monitoring, and legal and academic research. 

Advocacy in international and regional jurisdictions 

Our group is comprised of practitioners based and qualified in jurisdictions around the world. 

Our members regularly act in cases before the United Nations treaty bodies, including the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and all regional human rights bodies, including the European Court of Human Rights, the African Court and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Inter-American Court and Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. 

IHRL group members have extensive experience within the various United Nations Human Rights Council Special Procedures mechanisms, including the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Special Rapporteurs and Commissions of Inquiry.  

Training and monitoring  

Members of the group regularly compile and conduct training in international human rights law and advocacy for Judges, prosecutors, military, police, NGOs, lawyers and government. Doughty Street International has trained extensively in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Libya, Oman, Tanzania, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Colombia and Tunisia, South Africa, Czech Republic, Egypt, Kenya.