Krista Oinonen is the Director of the Unit for Human Rights Courts and Conventions at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and the Agent of the Government before the European Court of Human Rights. She is the Chairperson of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH) and its Bureau and has chaired drafting groups under the CDDH. She has served in the Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations (UN) Office in Geneva in 2008-2011 and worked at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2004-2007. She has received her Master's degree in Law from the University of Lapland in 1998 and joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland in 1999.

Clare Ovey became the Director of Human Rights on 1 August 2024. Born in London, she studied Law at Cambridge University and qualified as a solicitor in England, working primarily in the field of criminal law. After three years working in the criminal law team of the Law Commission of England and Wales, an independent statutory law reform body, she joined the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights in 1995. She started working on the execution of the Court’s judgments in 2015 when she was seconded to the Secretariat of the Committee of Ministers, with primary responsibility for the Committee’s human rights (DH) meetings. In April 2018 she transferred to the Department for the Execution of the Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, where she became Head of Department in July 2020. She is the author of one of the leading English-language textbooks on the Convention system.

Dr. Michael O'Flaherty was elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in January 2024. He is the fifth Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe. The Commissioner's mandate lasts for six years and is non-renewable.

An Irish human rights lawyer, Commissioner O'Flaherty has served as the Director of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (2015-2023), as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (2004-2012), as Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (2011-2013), and in various posts at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, notably in setting up operations in conflict-affected countries such as Sierra Leone and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Commissioner O'Flaherty has held professorships of human rights at the Universities of Nottingham (U.K.) and Galway (Ireland), where he has also led their Human Rights Centres. He is currently Adjunct (Honorary) Full Professor at the University of Maynooth and at University College Dublin. He has published widely in the field of human rights.

Marta Hirsch-Ziembinska is the Principal Adviser on international cooperation and fundamental rights at the European Ombudsman’s Office. She previously had the role of the Head of Unit dealing with inquiries and ICT. Prior to joining the European Ombudsman in 2003, she worked in the Polish Diplomatic Service, holding different positions in Latin America and Europe with the last diplomatic rank of minister plenipotentiary. She was a lecturer of international law at the University of Mannheim and University of Warsaw. She holds a PhD in Law from the University of Silesia and two master’s degrees from the University of Warsaw (in Law and Administration, and in Iberian Languages). She has also completed the public leadership executive education at the JFK School of Government in Harvard. 

Delphine Freymann is the Deputy Secretary of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) as of 1^st September 2023.

She holds a Degree in Law from the University Panthéon-Assas, Paris II, France.

She started her career at the Council of Europe in 2000 as a case lawyer at the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights. She then worked in various positions in the Council of Europe, including in the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights and in the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. She also headed the Programming and Resource Mobilisation Department of the Office of the Directorate General of Programmes of the Council of Europe.

She has field experience, having held the position of the Head of the Council of Europe Office in Tirana. She also worked for the European Commission at the European Union Office in Kosovo.

Since 2010, Professor Dr Beate Rudolf is the Director of the German Institute for Human Rights, the independent National Human Rights Institution of Germany (A-status). From March 2016 to March 2019, she also chaired the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI). Since 2022, she is a member of the Board of the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI), after having served on the Board from 2013-2019. Previously, she taught public law, public international law, and European law as a junior professor in the Department of Law at Freie Universität Berlin. She also led the project "International Law Standards for Governance in Weak and Failing States" in the Collaborative Research Center "Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood."

Tamar Gvaramadze is the First Deputy Public Defender of Georgia, a position she has held since January 2018. With 17 years of professional experience in human rights protection, policy development, and institutional leadership, she oversees the work of the Public Defender’s Office across roughly 20 thematic areas and leads its international relations portfolio. She represents the institution globally in both thematic and strategic engagements.

Before joining the Public Defender’s Office, she held senior leadership positions at the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), including serving as Executive Director. Under her management, GYLA significantly expanded its impact—tripling its funding, advancing major legislative reforms, and achieving important national and international legal precedents. Earlier in her career, as a human rights lawyer, she personally represented and protected the rights of hundreds of individuals.

Ms. Gvaramadze has extensive expertise in organizational development, legal advocacy, and strategic reform. She previously served as Head of the Human Resources Department at the Ministry of Education, where she introduced new systems that improved institutional efficiency and training standards. As a head of the Law Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), Ms. Gvaramadze developed a national education concept for higher education programmes of the security and law enforcement system.

Alongside her public service, Ms. Gvaramadze is a Doctor of Law and an Associate Professor at Tbilisi State University, with more than a decade of academic experience. She has authored multiple studies and reports for international organizations, including the Council of Europe, GIZ, and the German Research Foundation. She has also contributed to human rights governance through roles on the supervisory boards of leading civil society organizations and was a member of the National Preventive Mechanism’s Consultative Council. In 2022, Tamar was selected as a German Marshall Fund Fellow.

Since 2000, Vladlen Stefanov has been a UN staff member in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Department for Political Affairs in the New York UNHQ and in UN peacekeeping. For more than 10 years, he has carried out various UN field assignments, including in conflict situations as a Human Rights Officer in the UN peacekeeping mission in Georgia and as head of an OHCHR office in the Balkans during the wars there, and in post-conflict peace-building activities as Human Rights Advisor to UN Country Teams in the Southern Caucasus. Since 2010, Mr Stefanov has been working in OHCHR’s HQ in Geneva, coordinating programmes and activities aimed at supporting the establishment and strengthening of national human rights institutions around the world, and supporting their access to the international human rights system. He has also been involved in strengthening the cooperation between UN and regional human rights mechanisms, as well as with a broad range of civil society actors. Before joining the UN, Mr Stefanov worked for 12 years in the Bulgarian diplomatic service with assignments with the Permanent Mission to the UN in New York and in embassies in Europe and the Caribbean. Mr Stefanov holds an LLM in international law. He is married and has a son and a daughter.