CITRONI GABRIELLA

Gabriella Citroni (ph.D.) is professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.

Since August 2021, she is a member of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (since September 2024, she is the Chair-Rapporteur).

She is also lecturer at the Geneva Academy of Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (Switzerland), holding a course on “Enforced Disappearances in International Law” for LL.M. students in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. In 2015, she was invited professor at the university Panthéon-Assas (Paris, France) and held a course for the students of the Master Droits de l’Homme et droit humanitaire. She is also the international legal advisor for the Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of Disappeared People (FEDEFAM) and Senior Legal Advisor at TRIAL International. Her research focuses on subjects related to international human rights law and she cooperates with a number of NGOs providing legal assistance to victims of gross human rights violations and their relatives in different countries, including Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Honduras, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, and Peru. She has written a number of articles and books on international human rights law.

From 2003 to 2005, she was a member, as legal advisor, of the Italian delegation at the United Nations during the negotiations of the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. In 2010, she was an external consultant for the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances for the drafting of the study on best practices on enforced disappearances in domestic criminal legislation. In 2015, she was an external consultant for the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe for the drafting of an issue paper on missing persons and victims of enforced disappearance in Europe. In 2016, she was appointed consultant of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to review the Tunisian draft law on the crime of enforced disappearance. In 2018, she was an external consultant for the International Committee of the Red Cross, in charge of drafting a gap analysis on preventing and resolving the tragedy of missing migrants. She acted as expert witness before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in three cases of enforced disappearance (Comunidad campesina de Santa Bárbara v. Peru, Vereda La Esperanza v. Colombia, and Alvarado and others v. Mexico).