Speaker details

Biography

Francesca Restifo is a Senior Human Rights Lawyer and the UN Representative of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI). Francesca worked in Central America for three years with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR Regional Legal Unit for the Americas) in the field as Senior Legal Expert, where she worked on analysis and implementation of national and regional legal frameworks concerning refugees and asylum-seekers. Later, she worked at UNHCR’s Headquarters in Geneva, as advisor in the Division of International Protection.  Francesca has extensive work experience on advocacy and multilateral diplomacy with the UN Human Rights system, and the UN Human Rights Mechanisms.  She was the Deputy Executive Director and International Advocacy Director in a Geneva-based International human rights NGO where she led a team of lawyers and advocates. Francesca has also served for a few years as human rights advisor at the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) where she worked on addressing the root causes of torture.  During her professional experience Francesca worked extensively in Africa and Latin-America, directly with local communities and human rights defenders, grassroots activists, refugees and asylum seekers, as well as women, girls and children victims and survivors  of sexual and gender based violence.  From 2003 until 2007 Francesca worked at the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels, as Legal and Policy Advisor for the EP Committees on Civil Liberties and Sub-Committee on Human Rights. Francesca was the principle Legal Adviser on the European Parliament’s Inquiry Commission on human rights violations and other crimes under international law, in the context counter-terrorism policies and the so-called CIA ‘Extraordinary Renditions Programme’. Francesca carried also research demonstrating the involvement of European States in human rights violations in the context of the CIA extraordinary renditions programme.  Francesca has a Master Degree in Law at the University “La Sapienza” (Rome, Italy) specialised in International law. She further specialized in Human Rights, International and European Law at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), has a LLM in Law and Economics at the Universities of Vienna (Austria), Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Hamburg (Germany), a diploma from Oxford University on the course “From Poverty to Prosperity: Understanding Economic Development”.   Francesca authored a number of articles, handbooks and publications on human rights and international law, as well as a number of UN contributions. Francesca speaks fluently and works in English, French, Spanish and Italian.