Karima Bennoune

Karima Bennoune (X – BlueSky) is the Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches international law and human rights. Her influential study, entitled “The International Obligation to Counter Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan,” and incorporating interviews with Afghan women human rights defenders, appeared in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review in November 2022. She addressed the United Nations Security Council on this issue in 2023. In 2025-2026, she chaired the Afghan-International drafting committee which compiled the International Declaration on Gender Apartheid and Its Destructive Consequences (www.genderapartheiddeclaration.org).

Professor Bennoune served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights from 2015 to 2021. She also was appointed as an expert for the International Criminal Court in 2017 during the reparations phase of the groundbreaking case The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Fai Al Mahdi, concerning intentional destruction of cultural heritage sites in Mali. She is currently Vice-President of the American Society of International Law (ASIL). From 2018-2026, she was a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law (AJIL). She now sits on the Advisory Board of the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law. A former legal advisor for Amnesty International, she has carried out human rights research in most regions of the world. She carried out fact-finding missions to Afghanistan in 1996, 2005 and 2011.

Her book, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, received the 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for nonfiction. Released by W.W. Norton & Company, the book addresses the work of many people of Muslim heritage against extremism and terrorism. The related field research took her to numerous countries, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Niger, Pakistan, and Russia. For more information, see www.karimabennoune.com. The TED talk based on the book, “When people of Muslim heritage challenge fundamentalism,” has received more than 1.5 million views.

Bennoune was named one of the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America in 2017 . She won the Advocacy Leadership Award from the Women and Children Research and Advocacy Network (WCRAN), presented at the Canadian Parliament, in December 2025, and the Prominent Woman in International Law Award, from the Women in International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law in 2024.

Currently, she sits on the Scholar Advisory Board of Muslims for Progressive Values.