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Karen Kenny (1966-2015) was an Irish lawyer and human rights activist. She was born in Bristol, UK to Mayo parents. She lived in Ireland from the age of 7 and studied law at Trinity College Dublin, where she was one of the founders of the Trinity Free Legal Aid Clinic and a founding co-editor (with Mary Robinson) of Irish Centre for European Law monthly Bulletin of European Legal Developments. She qualified as a Barrister and attended the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies on a Swiss Government Scholarship. From 1992 onwards, she specialised in international human rights fieldwork, serving as a UN human rights adviser/war crimes investigator in peacekeeping contexts including El Salvador, former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, including as Interview Coordinator to the UN Security Council’s Commission of Experts on the former Yugoslavia. In 1994, she declined to renew her UN contract with the UN Centre for Human Rights in Rwanda in protest at the failure to adequately resource the investigation into the genocide. ,,.

Post-UN Career: In 1995 she founded, the International Human Rights Trust with Brian McKeown (1939-2009) founding Director of Trócaire. IHRT specialised in advocating and researching the integration of human rights in peacekeeping, development and humanitarian action. Her work included a range of applied and policy activities, including design and delivery of training programmes for the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peace-Keeping Training Center, Scuola Superiore di Santa Anna in Pisa, the Austrian Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Essex University Human Rights Centre, Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre, Swedish National Defence College, & Swedish Armed Forces International Command, Irish Defence Forces, the EC Civilian Crisis Management Programme, and for a range of INGOs including, Novib, Concern Worldwide and Medecins sans Frontiers. For several years she served as an independent member of Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, NGO Standing Committee on Human Rights (1998-2015). and on the International Law Association, Committee on Accountability of International Organisations (1997-2005). On Brian McKeown’s retirement in 2003, the Trust developed into the International Human Rights Network (IHRN), which she co-directed, with Patrick Twomey, until her death in 2015. IHRN provides capacity-building support for human rights based approaches to development, peace-building, humanitarian aid etc.

She died in May 2015, aged 49. The annual Trinity FLAC Moot was renamed the Karen Kenny Memorial Moot and a bench was dedicated to her and TCD classmate Avril McDonald (1965-2010) in Fellows Square Trinity College in 2017 by Mary Robinson.