MONA ALI KHALIL
.jpg/:/cr=t:12.29%25,l:0%25,w:100%25,h:75.43%25/rs=w:1209,h:909,cg:true)
Mona Ali Khalil is the Director of MAK LAW INTERNATIONAL. She is an internationally recognized public international lawyer with more than 30 years of experience including as a Senior Legal Officer in the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency. She holds a Bachelors (Cum Laude) in Government and a Masters in Middle East Studies from Harvard University and a Masters in Foreign Service and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University. She is an Affiliate of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.
She served in the UN Office of the Legal Counsel (UNOLC) from 1993 to 2015 advising the Secretary-General, the Security Council (UNSC) and the General Assembly on a broad range of legally complex and politically sensitive matters relating to the UN's collective peace and security efforts -- peacekeeping, sanctions, disarmament and counter-terrorism.
During her early service in UNOLC, she appeared before the International Court of Justice on a landmark advisory opinion involving and she advised the Rome Conference which adopted the Statute on the establishment of the International Criminal Court and assisted in the election of its judges. She also undertook special assignments relating to the Lockerbie incident and the lead up to and aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War.
Between 2005 and 2009, she was seconded to the Office of Legal Affairs of the International Atomic Energy Agency where she advised on nuclear security and counter-terrorism as well as technical cooperation and compliance with the UNSC non-proliferation sanctions regimes. She regularly provided legal advice to the IAEA General Conference and the Board of Governors.
Between 2010 and 2015, she served as the head of the legal team supporting the UN peacekeeping operations including their rules of engagement and use of force to protect civilians. She also served as the legal adviser to the Security Council's various Chapter VII sanctions regimes. She undertook several special assignments including as Legal Adviser to the UN Mission to Investigate Allegations of the use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic and to the Joint OPCW-UN Mission for the Elimination of the Syrian CW Program.
From 2015-2017, she served as a Legal Advisor with Independent Diplomat, the international diplomatic advisory group, where she promoted inclusive diplomacy and advocated for peace, justice and the international rule of law.
In 2018, she founded MAK LAW INTERNATIONAL to advise Governments and intergovernmental organizations on the principles and policies that govern their rights and responsibilities in the service of “We the Peoples”.
She is a co-author of the UN Security Council Conflict Management Handbook (2023), Reinvigorating the United Nations by Routledge (2024) and the recently released Empowering the UN Security Council: Reforms to Address Modern Threats by Oxford University Press (2024). Among other publications, her chapter on "The Future of Multilateralism" appears in The Future of Diplomacy After COVID-19 by Routledge (2021) and her chapter on “Legal Aspects of the Protection of Civilians in UN Field Operations” appears in The Protection of Civilians by Oxford University Press (2016). She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) and a lecturer at the Vienna Diplomatic Academy and School of International Studies.