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.