As part of our ongoing Lawyer Abroad series, we spoke with Pat de Brún, an Irish human rights lawyer currently based in London. Pat serves as Head of Big Tech Accountability and Deputy Director of Amnesty Tech, Amnesty International’s global programme on technology and human rights. His path has taken him from Carlow to Cambodia, Berlin and beyond, working on everything from international criminal justice to grassroots activism and tech accountability. Pat reflects on his career, his motivations and the urgent challenges facing the human rights field today.

As you may have already heard, James Douglas recently became our new Executive Director. With us since 2020 as Director of Programmes, James has already made significant contributions to our work and brings with him eight years of previous experience working on different human rights issues for civil society and the United Nations. Following his appointment, he kindly agreed to answer a few questions for us.

In the latest in our series profiling Irish and Northern Irish Lawyers who have worked, or are working abroad, we spoke with Cóman Kenny from Roscommon who is currently working as a lawyer with the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, which was created by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate the most serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011. Cóman previously worked as a lawyer in the prosecution at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.