Alex Moorehead

Alex Moorehead is Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School and the Director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute. Alex has extensive legal and research experience working on the inter-operability of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in situations of armed conflict. He also has specific expertise on counterterrorism, national security and human rights.

Prior to joining the Institute, Moorehead served in a number of roles as a Human Rights Officer with the United Nations. From 2015-16, he was based in Geneva, Switzerland, providing advice to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on policy and legal issues related to counter-terrorism, security, armed conflict and human rights across the globe. From 2013-15 he was based in Ramallah, occupied Palestinian territory, where he advised OHCHR and other UN entities on human rights and other legal issues and carried out monitoring of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

As a Human Rights Officer based in Kandahar with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan from 2011-12, Moorehead carried out research and monitoring into civilian casualties, the use of force, torture in detention, and violence against women. After leaving Afghanistan, Moorehead joined Amnesty International as the organisation’s legal advisor focused on security, counterterrorism and human rights. Moorehead has also worked with Human Rights Watch and other non-governmental organizations in Egypt, Uganda and the USA, and qualified as a solicitor with the law firm Reed Smith in the UK in 2007.

Moorehead holds a BA in History from the University of Bristol and an LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from the University of Essex.