Reed Brody, former Advocacy Director of Human Rights Watch, has helped redefine the possibilities of transnational justice, developing innovative strategies that empower victims and reshape legal norms. Brody spent 18 years working with the survivors of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad, whose 2016 conviction for crimes against humanity in Senegal marked the first and only time a former head of state was convicted of human rights crimes in the domestic courts of another country. He has also worked on the cases of Augusto Pinochet, Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, Dési Bouterse of Suriname and Yahya Jammeh of Gambia.
Brody has uncovered U.S.-backed war crimes in Nicaragua, led United Nations missions investigating abuses in El Salvador and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and helped expose the Bush administration’s torture program in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. In 2024, he was appointed by the UN to investigate repression in contemporary Nicaragua. His most recent book, To Catch a Dictator (Columbia University Press, 2022) was called “an absorbing saga” (Washington Post), and “a magnificent narrative … a judicial thriller.” (le Monde).
In addition to his human rights cases. He now works on mobilizing resistance to the Trump administration.
