Mona Ali Khalil is an Affiliate of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (HLS PILAC).

Ms. Khalil is an internationally respected public international lawyer with 30 years of UN and other international legal and diplomatic experience. She obtained an AB in Government and an AM in Middle East Studies from Harvard University in 1988 and an MS in Foreign Service and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University in 1992.

In addition to serving as a Senior Legal Officer in the UN Office of the Legal Counsel (UNOLC) in New York and the IAEA Office of Legal Affairs in Vienna, Ms. Khalil has undertaken several special assignments, including serving as Legal Adviser to the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on post-Saddam Iraq and to the UN Support Mission in post-Qaddafi Libya. She also served as Legal Adviser to the UN Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic and to the Joint OPCW-UN Mission for the Elimination of the Syrian Chemical Weapons Programme. 

Between 2010 and 2015, she was head of the UNOLC peacekeeping team and lead lawyer on Security Council sanctions where she advised, inter alia, on the use of force by, and applicability of international humanitarian law (IHL) to, UN peacekeepers, as well as on the human rights challenges and humanitarian impact of counterterrorism sanctions.

Between September 2015 and December 2017, Ms. Khalil served as a Legal Advisor at Independent Diplomat (ID), an international diplomatic advisory group, where she provided advice on public international law to promote greater inclusivity, rule of law, and justice in international diplomacy.

In January 2018, she founded MAK LAW INTERNATIONAL — a legal advisory and strategic consulting service to assist Governments, IGOs, and NGOs to secure their legal rights and fulfill their legal obligations.

She is a co-author of the UN Security Council Conflict Management Handbook recently launched in November 2023 as well as Reinvigorating the United Nations published by Routledge in May 2024 and the forthcoming Empowering the UN Security Council: Reforms to Address Modern Threats to be published by Oxford University Press in September 2024. Her chapter on “The Future of Multilateralism” appears in The Future of Diplomacy After COVID-19 published by Routledge in May 2021 and her chapter on “Legal Aspects of the Protection of Civilians in UN Field Operations” appears in The Protection of Civilians in International Law published by Oxford University Press in June 2016.

Contact

E-mail: mak@maklaw.org

Biography last updated: August 2024.