Late-night flights to New York City and missions to high-risk spots around the globe were staples of Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin’s six years as United Nations Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. During that time, she worked closely with states and United Nations entities to advance human rights protections in some of the world’s most difficult regions, situations, and contexts. 

That intense pace and workload concluded last November when Ní Aoláin completed her second three-year term as the Special Rapporteur. 

“Holding this particular role felt very much like the culmination of a lifetime of work,” Ní Aoláin says. “It is a rare privilege to be on the inside of global conversations, whether that’s in dialogue with members of the Security Council or with member states at the General Assembly, or whether it’s visiting countries and assessing compliance in what for many states is often their most sensitive and politically charged work in security and counterterrorism.” 

A native of Ireland, Ní Aoláin says she “grew up in a conflict where bombs went off on many days of my life.” She has focused her teaching, research, and field work on international law, human rights law, national security law, transitional justice, and feminist legal theory. She serves on the National Advisory Council of the Center for Victims of Torture, a St. Paul-based human rights organization and long-time Minnesota Law partner. 

“Most people don’t run toward conflict or violence,” Ní Aoláin says. “By virtue of where I was born and lived in Ireland — and in Belfast — the issues I studied as a student and thereafter chose to work on as a scholar and practitioner, meant I garnered the set of skills and capacities that meant that when the process for appointing a U.N. Special Rapporteur for counterterrorism opened up, my government and others came to me and said, ‘You should apply for this role.’” 

Because no woman had held it before, Ní Aoláin did not expect to receive the appointment. She even promised her husband — Professor Oren Gross, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Law School — that she wouldn’t get it. 

But then, in 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Council officially appointed Ní Aoláin as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. She was re-elected to a second term in 2020. 

“I had to adjust my life because it changed enormously the day that I took up this position,” Ní Aoláin says. “I understood that it was going to take almost every free moment I had.” 

As part-time experts, special rapporteurs are compensated for travel and expenses but not for day-to-day work, she says, underscoring the independence of their efforts. 

Ní Aoláin continued teaching at the Law School but after finishing her week’s teaching on a Tuesday afternoon, she regularly flew to New York or sometimes Geneva or another country to work there the rest of the week. 

She also led a series of country missions and presented at global conferences that took her to almost every continent. One eight-week summer stretch saw her travel to Costa Rica, Switzerland, and New York before returning to Minnesota for four days. She continued on to Germany, North Macedonia, Switzerland again, Lebanon, Syria, Switzerland once more, and finally Colombia before coming home. 

“It’s enormously satisfying work but at a pace that is obviously intensive and super challenging, whether that was in Syria accompanied by my full-time security team and issues of safety to the fore or meeting with victims of terrorism in countries like Germany and North Macedonia,” Ní Aoláin says. 

Ní Aoláin says she rarely encountered women in roles at her level during her travels. Her all-women team included Minnesota Law graduate Megan Manion ’16, who served as senior legal advisor for her second term. 

“To be a woman who didn’t appear to be afraid of things that are presumed culturally or socially that you would be afraid of, I think that gives you an advantage,” Ní Aoláin says. 

Ní Aoláin made headlines last year when she led the first U.N. visit to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “The conditions of confinement of 9/11 detainees meet the definition of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and may, in particular cases, reach the threshold of torture,” she says. 

Ní Aoláin and her team also met with many family members of those killed on 9/11. 

“One of the major findings of my report is that the use of torture betrayed the human rights of the victims of terrorism because they haven’t had trials,” Ní Aoláin says. “They haven’t had any form of accountability for what my report describes as a crime against humanity on September 11. And they may not have that resolution, and they don't have it because the United States broke domestic and international law by torturing hundreds of Muslim men and boys without cause.” 

With her special rapporteur work complete, Ní Aoláin said she would be taking a break from the front lines. In December, however, she traveled to Ukraine for the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights & the Genocide Convention. 

“I’m not avoiding war zones,” Ní Aoláin says. “My promise was sort of to do less of that. But it felt enormously, emotionally important to be in Lviv, Ukraine, which was the birthplace of the Genocide Convention, and to be there on the 75th anniversary.” 

A royal honor came to Ní Aoláin in January when His Majesty the King of England approved her appointment as one of five new Honorary King’s Counsel (KC Honoris Causa), awarded to those who have made major contributions to the law of England and Wales outside practice in the courts. 

The nomination cited her work in advising the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and civil society, and in informing and shaping the policy and legal work on the protection of social and economic rights and the rule of law in the post-Belfast Agreement context. She attended the appointment ceremony at Westminster Hall in March. 

Ní Aoláin is a University Regents Professor; Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society; and faculty director of the Human Rights Center at the Law School. She is concurrently a professor of law at the Queen’s University of Belfast, School of Law. She has been elected to the International Commission of Jurists for a five-year term.