Daughter of the AUB professor Ramzi and Journalist Baria Alamuddin, Amal was born in Beirut where she spent two years of her childhood before her family fled Lebanon to escape the ravages of the civil war.

Alamuddin’s family settled in London, England in 1980, where Amal achieved her studies. Being an excellent and distinguished student, she earned, in 1996, a scholarship to attend Oxford University.

Back then, she developed an interest in human rights and graduated from the institution with a bachelor’s degree in law in 2000.
Alamuddin completed her master’s degree studies in 2002 and after passing the same year the New York State Bar, she was then employed at the New York City–based Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the top-ranked law firms in the world.

In 2010, Amal returned to London to work as a barrister for Doughty Street Chambers, a firm with a strong history of civil liberties work.

Her name was already shining when she met George Clooney, the famous actor, after they were both introduced by mutual friends in 2013. On the 7th of August 2014, the couple obtained marriage licenses at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, and subsequently married in Venice's city hall, Italy in September 2014, following a high-profile wedding ceremony two days earlier.

Amal’s clients have ranged from political prisoners and ousted Heads of State to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the Republic of Armenia.
She has appeared before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights and various courts in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Oxford-educated lawyer is a frequent adviser to governments on international law.
She has held a number of posts within the United Nations, including senior adviser to Kofi Annan when he served as the UN Envoy on Syria.
She was also legal counsel to the UN commission investigating the murder of Lebanon's Prime Minister and counsel to the UN inquiry on the use of drones in war.

Over the last decade she has worked on milestone cases in international justice. While in The Hague she worked on the genocide trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Since then she has challenged the detention of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymonshenko at the European Court of Human Rights.
She has advised the Greek government on the return of the Parthenon Marbles, the Chagossians on their right to return to their islands, and the Armenians on the recognition of their genocide.

In the last year she successfully represented three political prisoners: Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who was convicted in the ‘Al Jazeera trial’ in Egypt; former President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, who was imprisoned on false terrorism charges; and award-winning Azerbaijani journalist ‘Khadija', who was arrested in Baku after reporting on corruption by the Azerbaijani President.
All have now been released from detention.

She is currently legal counsel to genocide survivor Nadia Murad and other Yazidi women who have been sexually enslaved by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and is working to secure accountability for the crimes committed by ISIS in national and international courts.

Clooney is on the UK government’s list of experts on international law and on the government’s panel to prevent sexual violence in conflict.

 

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