<span class="vcard">Priyanka Motaparthy</span>

Priyanka Motaparthy

Guest Author

Priyanka Motaparthy (@priyanica) is the Director of the Center for International Human Rights and a Clinical Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. She was previously the director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict, and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, where her work included advocating with the U.S. Department of Defense to better protect civilians in armed conflict; seeking redress for civilians harmed in U.S. military operations; and promoting accountability for human rights abuses and war crimes in Yemen.

Prior to joining HRI, Motaparthy served as acting Emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, where she led the Emergencies division’s investigations and reporting on global atrocities and human rights crises. She documented torture and rampant abuse in Syrian detention centers, potential war crimes in Syria and Yemen, excessive use of force by police and military in Egypt, and sexual and gender-based violence by security forces in South Sudan and Myanmar.

Motaparthy has worked throughout the Middle East and spent four years living in Cairo. She is a regular media commentator and her writing has appeared in outlets including CNN, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, and the New Yorker online.

Motaparthy received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and her B.A. with Honors in Literature and Economics from Brown University. She speaks Arabic and Telugu. She is also on LinkedIn.

Articles by this author:

Graffiti showing a US drone is depicted on a wall to protest against US drone strikes on September 19, 2018 in Sana'a, Yemen.
Rescue workers carry the body of a victim killed by aerial attacks carried out by aircraft of the coalition led by Saudi Arabia targeting a prison in the Houthi stronghold Saadah Province, on January 22, 2022 in Saadah, Yemen. The assault reportedly killed at least 90 prisoners and injured more than 100 others. (Photo by Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
Two tall greyscale rectangles cast dark shadows representing the Twin Towers. Text reads, “How Perpetual War Has Changed Us: Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11”
Women wait with children in a ward at a malnourishment treatment centre in Yemen's northern Hajjah province on November 22, 2020. The beds the children lie in are covered in netting, and the walkways between beds are very small since the beds are crowded together.
The damaged interior of the hospital in which the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) medical charity operated is seen on October 13, 2015 following an air strike in the northern city of Kunduz.

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