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.