Rita Siemion

As Director of National Security Advocacy at Human Rights First, Rita Siemion (@ritasiemion) advocates for national security and counterterrorism policies that respect human rights and the rule of law. She is an expert in the intersecting legal frameworks that govern counterterrorism operations at home and abroad, including the law of armed conflict, international human rights law, and state sovereignty law. She leads the organization’s effort to ensure that US national security policies comply with these bodies of international law as well as with domestic law limitations on the authority to use force and conduct war.

Rita also serves as Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and Associate Adjunct Professor at American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches courses on national security, human rights, foreign relations, the law of armed conflict, and war powers. Before joining Human Rights First, Rita worked on a range of national security issues as Senior Counsel at The Constitution Project, including surveillance and privacy rights in the digital age, and spent several years in private practice litigating civil and human rights matters.

Rita holds an LL.M. in National Security Law, with a certificate in International Human Rights Law, from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she graduated with distinction and was a peer review editor for the Journal of National Security Law & Policy. Rita received her J.D., with honors, from the George Washington University School of Law, where she has also taught as an Adjunct Professor of Legal Research and Writing. While in law school, she co-founded the Human Rights Law Society, worked on targeted killing and extraordinary rendition litigation with the International Human Rights Clinic, and studied human rights and counterterrorism at Oxford University. She has a B.A. in English, with a minor in Philosophy, from Seattle University, where she graduated from the Honors Program. Rita is also on LinkedIn.