Priyanka Motaparthy

Guest Author

Priyanka Motaparthy (@priyanica) is the Director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict, and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute. 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 brings particular expertise documenting human rights abuses in armed conflicts and exposing security force violations from her nine years as an investigator with Human Rights Watch. Motaparthy’s previous work includes documenting 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. She has advocated with international human rights bodies, governments, and other policymakers, pushing for accountability for such abuses. Earlier in her career, she published detailed reports on the abuses faced by migrant workers in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.

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.