Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers. She has acted in a wide range of landmark cases, including representing bereaved families of terrorist attacks; advising governments on their obligations to child soldiers; bringing groundbreaking test cases in the UK on the rights of survivors of gender-based violence; and overturning the death penalty for a rapper in Iran.

Gallagher’s work for wrongfully imprisoned people has seen her take on governments around the world, and she has secured the freedom of over 85 wrongly imprisoned journalists, bloggers, cartoonists, businesspeople, and activists. She is the leading expert on accountability for deaths of journalists and regularly gives expert evidence to international bodies and parliaments. Her cases on media freedom include leading the international legal teams for the bereaved family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the assassinated Maltese journalist; for Jimmy Lai, the British publisher imprisoned in Hong Kong; for hundreds of   BBC News Persian  and  Iran International journalists targeted extra-territorially by Iran; and for Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist from the Philippines. 

In 2023 Gallagher received the President of Ireland’s Distinguished Service Award, and in 2025 she won Irish Tatler’s International Woman of the Year Award.