Name Monica Tinta | Role International lawyer | |
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Books The Landmark Rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the Rights of the Child Education Hague Academy of International Law, London School of Economics and Political Science | ||
Mónica Feria Tinta is a leading public international lawyer. She practises as a Barrister at 20 Essex Street Chambers. In 2000 she became the first Peruvian-born lawyer to receive the Diploma of the Hague Academy of International Law in history. Her litigation work led to the first international human rights court decision ordering the prosecution of a former Head of State for crimes under international law. She was awarded the Inge Genefke International Award for her work as an international lawyer in 2006 and was co-recipient of the Gruber Justice Prize 2007, for her contributions advancing the cause of justice as delivered through the legal system. She is a member of the Bar of England and Wales, and the American Society of International Law.
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Education and career
Feria-Tinta studied international law at the London School of Economics receiving her LL.M with merit in 1996. She received further training at the Institut International des Droits de l'Homme in Strasbourg (1997) and at the Institute of Human Rights of the Abo Academy in Turko (Finland) under the sponsorship of the European Commission and the Finish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2001. In 2000 she was among the 24 lawyers selected to be trained by members of the International Law Commission in all areas of General International Law, taking part in the thirty-sixth session of the International Law Seminar in Geneva, pursuant to General Assembly resolution 54/111, under a United Nations Fellowship. Her areas of expertise include State Responsibility (inter alia State Responsibility for crimes against humanity, genocide, extrajudicial executions and torture); command responsibility for gross human rights violations; victim rights under international law.
After teaching Public International Law at the London School of Economics as a Teaching Assistant, Feria-Tinta spent a year as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge.
As a practising lawyer Monica Feria-Tinta has advised States, international organisations and individuals in the area of public international law. She started her practising career working for international tribunals as part of legal internships; first at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and a year later, at the International Court of Justice, gaining experience in the adjudication of complex international litigation both entailing individual international criminal responsibility and State responsibility. She acted as legal advisor for a State Delegation taking part in the negotiations of the Rome Statute, at the Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court in Rome. In litigation, she has appeared as counsel before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Expert opinions provided in different international fora has included a joint Amicus Curiae with Professor John Dugard (former Special Rapporteur on Diplomatic Protection at the ILC) for the Appeals Court of Amsterdam, in the Bouterse case, and expert comments on behalf of the Redress Trust to the Final Report of the UN Independent Expert on the Right of Reparation for Victims of Serious Violations of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Cherif Bassiouni.
Her advocacy work before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights contributed to major changes in that regional system. Monica Feria-Tinta pioneered the rights of victims in the Inter-American system challenging for the first time the use of State appointed Ad hoc Judges in individual petitions before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which led to the end of a practice that had existed for nearly two decades, and advocating the need for a Victims' Fund for legal aid before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to ensure access to justice and equality of arms for victims. A Victims Legal Assistance Fund before the ICHR was finally created in 2010. She litigated the first international human rights case in the world on the protection of the rights of the child in times of war and obtained the first international binding decision on gender justice in the history of adjudication of the Inter-American region, initiating the feminisation of human rights law in the Americas. Feria Tinta's pleadings prompted the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to hold a State accountable for violations of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women ( "Convention of Belém do Pará") for the first time in eleven years, since its entry into force. Most notably, her litigation work on behalf of hundreds of prisoners led to a landmark case on prisoners' rights where the Inter-American Court ruled on a massacre taking place in a prison and on torture practices that had never been tested before an international human rights tribunal, ordering as a consequence, the prosecution of former Head of State Alberto Fujimori for crimes against humanity.
Her forensic experience investigating and documenting torture in international contentious cases, was used as model to train advocates worldwide, representing victims of torture, by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. In 2009 she was commissioned to take part on a project by UNESCO entitled "Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Law's Duty to the Poor" (The Philosopher's Library Series) contributing with a thorough study on litigation in Regional Human Rights Systems (European, Inter-American and African) on the justiciability of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Feria Tinta has been a speaker in human rights issues in different fora worldwide including the Human Rights Caucus of the US Congress, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, the University of Oxford (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies), and Georgetown University Law Center. She has been a guest lecturer at Guangxi Normal University, Faculty of Law, China, and at the Master Program of the Institute Universitaire Kurt Bosch-University of Fribourg, Switzerland.