A discussion addressing the growing challenge of governments and actors who openly defy human rights standards and challenge the very foundation of factual reporting. The persistent threat posed by th...
Caoilfhionn Gallagher
Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is a human rights lawyer. Over the past 25 years she has acted in many leading human rights cases in the UK, Europe and internationally, from acting for the bereaved families of the Hillsborough Disaster and the 7/7 London Bombings; to bringing groundbreaking cases which changed the law on the rights of children in custody; to overturning the death penalty for an Iranian rapper, Toomaj Salehi.
Caoilfhionn has expertise in arbitrary detention, and she has secured the freedom of over 75 imprisoned journalists, bloggers, cartoonists and activists wrongly imprisoned in countries including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia and Equatorial Guinea. She is an expert on journalists’ safety and accountability for crimes against journalists, and she has given testimony on these issues to Parliamentary Committees in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and the Council of Europe. Her caseload includes leading the international legal teams for Jimmy Lai, the British publisher imprisoned in Hong Kong; the bereaved family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the assassinated Maltese journalist; for hundreds of BBC News Persian and Iran International journalists targeted extra-territorially by Iran; and (jointly with Amal Clooney) for Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist from the Philippines. She was appointed an expert witness on State obligations in relation to violence against women journalists bore the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Jineth Bedoya Lima v. Colombia.
Alongside her practice as a barrister, Caoilfhionn is a Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, a Board Member of the Committee to Protect Journalists and an Adjunct Full Professor at University College Dublin. She was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2017 for her “outstanding commitment to enabling the Human Rights Act’s protections” for devising a mass advertising campaign to tell positive human rights stories, Act for the Act. In 2023 she was awarded the President of Ireland’s Distinguished Service Award.
Events IJF 2025
The global assault on press freedom: what we should know, what can be done?
Around the world, the law is increasingly being weaponised to silence independent reporting and to compromise journalists’ freedom, wellbeing, and financial security. As ‘lawfare’ escalates in i...
Conspiracy to commit journalism? The trial of Jimmy Lai and media freedom in Hong Kong
IJF24 is taking place during Jimmy Lai's trial in Hong Kong under the much criticised National Security Law, imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing in 2020. Jimmy Lai, the renowned publisher, writer, pro-dem...
Media freedom, democracy and the rule of law in Hong Kong: the case of Jimmy Lai and Apple Daily
Moderator: Baroness Helena Kennedy KC Speakers: Sebastien Lai, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, Jason Rezaian Jimmy Lai is a 75-year-old British citizen based in Hong Kong. He is a renowned media owner, wr...
At the time of her death, Daphne Caruana Galizia was facing 48 civil and criminal lawsuits in Malta, had her bank accounts frozen, and was receiving a steady barrage of threats from London libel lawye...
As threats to independent journalism continue to accelerate, with efforts to control the free flow of accurate, unbiased information around the world, the law is being weaponised to compromise journal...
The law plays a key role in protecting freedom of speech. However, at the same time, laws ranging from anti-terrorism to criminal defamation and cybercrime are increasingly being used to silence journ...
Photos
Photos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0).