Áine Macdonald

About

Before joining IHR Advisors, Áine worked at the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) as a Programme Coordinator and as a lawyer in the Office of Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws. Áine was the lead author of the IBAHRI’s report on the destruction of cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as supporting author of reports into Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan and Iran, and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in the DRC. She also worked with civil society organisations to organise Parliamentary sessions on human rights issues, including universal jurisdiction and children’s rights in armed conflict. Earlier in her career Áine worked in the Magistrates’ Secretariat at the Ministry of Justice. She is an unregistered barrister, called to the Bar of England and Wales in November 2023.

Áine holds a First Class Master’s degree in Globalisation and the Law, specialising in human rights, from Maastricht University. During and after the degree, she was a research assistant on a project on how armed conflict affects children in unrecognised states. She earned her LLB in English and European Law from Queen Mary University of London in 2020. As part of that degree she spent a year in Bologna, Italy, studying Gender and the Law and Law and Psychology.

Áine currently volunteers at the South Westminster Legal Advice Centre, as an Independent Custody Visitor in the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and as an advocate for the Free Representation Unit, taking on social security cases. She has also volunteered with the Global Bioethics Initiative, Education Partnerships Africa and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland.

She is qualified to teach English as a second language and speaks English and conversational Lithuanian.