| Cecilia Bailliet | |
| Birth Date: | 24 April 1969 |
| Birth Place: | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Nationality: | Norwegian, Argentina, and United States |
| Education: | George Washington University Law School and the Elliott School of International Affairs and the University of Oslo, Norway |
| Occupation: | Professor of Law |
| Employer: | University of Oslo |
| Known For: | United Nations Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity |
| Predecessor: | Obiora Chinedu Okafor |
Cecilia M. Bailliet (born 24 April 1969) is a Norwegian/Argentine/US professor of law who became the United Nations Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity in 2023.
Bailliet was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires. She graduated from George Washington University Law School and the Elliott School of International Affairs, both in the United States, with a joint J.D. and Master's degree in International Affairs.[1]
Bailliet 2003 doctoral dissertation at the University of Oslo was titled Between Conflict & Consensus: Conciliating Land Disputes in Guatemala.Thereafter she published an article addressing the need for standards for refugees arriving by sea in “The Tampa Case and its Impact on Burden-Sharing at Sea”, Human Rights Quarterly August 2003
In 2006 she called for guidelines for conscientious objectors applying for asylum in an article "Assessing Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello within the Refugee Status Determination Process: Contemplations on Conscientious Objectors Seeking Asylum", Georgetown Immigration Law Journal Vol. 20 No. 3 Spring 2006. Based on this she was asked to help draft UNHCR guidelines on military service and asylum.
In 2007 she wrote articles on house raids “War in the Home”: An Exposition of Protection Issues Pertaining to the Use of House Raids in Counterinsurgency Operations, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 3, 173-197, 2007 and on women solidiers seeking asylum: Examining Sexual Violence in the Military within the Context of Eritrean Asylum Claims Presented in Norway, International Journal of Refugee Law 2007 Vol. 19 No. 3.
In 2012 she addressed due diligence standards in human rights and refugee cases involving women: "Persecution in the Home: Applying the Due Diligence Standard to Harmful Traditional Practices within Human Rights and Refugee Law.", in 30 (1) Nordic Journal of Human Rights 36 (2012)
In 2013 she examined compliance in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in "Measuring Compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: The Ongoing Challenge of Judicial Independence in Latin America", Nordic Journal of Human Rights 31:4 (2013)
Bailliet is a professor of law at Oslo University where she leads the masters programme in Public International Law.[2]
In 2015 she published a paper about GQUAL which is a campaign to highlight the huge gender disparity among appointments to international tribunals and monitoring bodies. The campaign was highlighted by Viviana Krsticevic who noticed this disparity after she was appointed to lead the as its executive director. The European Court of Human Rights has over 90% male judges and over 96% of the judges of the International Court of Justice are male. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea's judges are 97.5% male.[3] '
Bailliet created the Research Handbook on International Law and Peace in 2020.[4] She created and runs a unique Masters class titled International Law of PeaceBailliet established a series of interviews with international judges on the evolution of international law.
She is Co-Chair of the Latin America Interest Group of the American Society of International Law.
She has contributed lectures to the UN AudioVisual Library of International Law
In January 2022 Bailliet became the Chair the Expert Advisory Group set up to support, Obiora Okafor, who was then the UN's Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity.[5] She created the Research Handbook on International Solidarity which was published in 2024.[6] Bailliet succeeded Obiora Okafor to become the Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity in October 2023 after she was chosen by the United Nations' Human Rights Council.[7]