Eileen Donahoe

Eileen Donahoe is the Director of Global Affairs at Human Rights Watch where she represents the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy, with special emphasis on digital rights, cybersecurity and Internet governance. She served as the first US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva from 2010-2013.

Donahoe is a Co-Chair of the NETmundial Initiative on global multi-stakeholder Internet governance. She serves as a member of the Freedom Online Coalition Working Group on Freedom & Security focused on bringing a human rights based approach to cybersecurity policy. She is an Affiliate at the Center for International Security & Cooperation and a Visiting Scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Research interests include implications of digital technology for human rights, adaptation of the international human rights law framework for the digital context, cybersecurity through a human rights lens, development of the multi-stakeholder Internet governance ecosystem, international norms governing use of force, UN reform, and ethical justifications for humanitarian military intervention.

In her earlier career, Donahoe was a technology litigator at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth, a master’s of theological studies from Harvard, a master’s in East Asian studies from Stanford, a J.D. from Stanford Law School, and a Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from GTU at UC Berkeley. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Freedom House and the Council on Foreign Relations.