Monica Feria Tinta is a British/Peruvian barrister, a specialist in public international law, at the Bar of England &amp; Wales. She practises from Twenty Essex, London.
In 2000 Monica Feria-Tinta became the first and only Peruvian-born lawyer to receive the prestigious Diploma of The Hague Academy of International Law in history, the year Professor Pierre-Marie Dupuy delivered the General Course. Her litigation work led to the first international human rights court decision ordering the prosecution of a former head of state for crimes under international law. In 2006 she was awarded the Inge Genefke International Award for her work as an international lawyer and in 2007 she became the youngest lawyer to be awarded the Gruber Justice Prize, for her contributions to advancing the cause of justice as delivered through the legal system; an honour she received at a ceremony chaired by US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Washington DC.
Feria-Tinta was the first Latin American lawyer to be called to and practising at the Bar of England and Wales. She is also a member of the American Society of International Law, a partner fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, and a visiting fellow at Jesus College, University of Cambridge. In 2019 she was amongst the 64 distinguished women barristers selected to feature in the celebratory exhibition of a Century of Women in Law at the Middle Temple. The exhibition marked 100 years since women were permitted to enter the legal profession in England &amp; Wales, led by Helena Normanton, the first woman to practise as a barrister in England. Feria-Tinta is a Bencher at Middle Temple.
In 2019 she made news as acting Counsel in the first-world climate change litigation brought by peoples from low-lying islands against a State, before the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Torres Strait Islanders case. In a ground-breaking decision, the U.N. Human Rights Committee found that the failure of a Sovereign State to adequately protect indigenous peoples from low-lying islands against adverse impacts of climate change violated their rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. She has been a leading expert on climate change litigation globally, including on a potential Advisory Opinion before the International Court of Justice and/or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
Education and career.
Feria-Tinta studied international law at the London School of Economics receiving her LL.M. with merit in 1996. She received further training at the Institut International des Droits de l'Homme in Strasbourg (1997) and at the Institute of Human Rights of the Abo Academy in Turko (Finland) under the sponsorship of the European Commission and the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2001. In 2000 she was among the 24 lawyers selected worldwide to be trained by members of the International Law Commission in all areas of General International Law, taking part in the thirty-sixth session of the International Law Seminar in Geneva, pursuant to General Assembly resolution 54/111, under a United Nations Fellowship. Her areas of expertise include international dispute settlement, immunities, consular law, diplomatic protection, treaty law, recognition of state and governments under international law, self-determination under international law, boundary delimitation, law of the sea, territory, investment law, transboundary harm, environmental law, human rights, use of force, laws of war, State Responsibility (inter alia State Responsibility for crimes against humanity, genocide, extrajudicial executions and torture); command responsibility for gross human rights violations; victim rights under international law.
After teaching public international law at the London School of Economics as a teaching assistant to Sir Christopher Greenwood (then professor at LSE), Feria-Tinta spent a year as a visiting research fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, at the time under the directorship of former Whewell Professor of International Law, James Crawford.
As a practising lawyer Monica Feria-Tinta has advised states, state-owned entities, non self-governing peoples, governments in exile, corporate bodies, international organisations, non-governmental organisations, indigenous peoples, and individuals, in the area of public international law. She started her practising career working for international tribunals; first at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and a year later, at the International Court of Justice, gaining experience in the adjudication of complex international litigation both entailing individual international criminal responsibility and State responsibility. She acted as legal advisor for a State Delegation taking part in the negotiations of the Rome Statute, at the Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court in Rome. During 2018–2019 she served as assistant legal adviser to the Foreign &amp; Commonwealth Office.
In litigation, Feria-Tinta has appeared as counsel before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights the United Nations Human Rights Committee, UN Special Procedures, OECD Procedures, The High Court (England), and has advised parties before the International Court of Justice, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, UN CEDAW Committee, Court of Appeal (England) and Court of Appeal (Hong Kong). Expert opinions provided in different international fora have included an Amicus Curiae to the Constitutional Court of Ecuador (on the Rights of Nature), the UN Human Rights Committee, the Constitutional Court of Colombia (on the Special Jurisdiction for Peace), the Supreme Administrative Court of Colombia (Consejo de Estado), the Supreme Court of Mexico, a joint Amicus Curiae with Professor John Dugard (former Special Rapporteur on Diplomatic Protection at the ILC) for the Appeals Court of Amsterdam, in the "Bouterse" case, and expert comments on behalf of the Redress Trust to the Final Report of the UN Independent Expert on the Right of Reparation for Victims of Serious Violations of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Cherif Bassiouni.
Her advocacy work before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights contributed to pivotal changes in the Inter-American regional system.
Monica Feria-Tinta pioneered the rights of victims in the Inter-American system challenging for the first time the use of State appointed Ad hoc Judges in individual petitions before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which led to the end of a practice that had existed for nearly two decades. She also advocated for the need of a Victims' Fund for legal aid before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to ensure access to justice and equality of arms for victims. A Victims Legal Assistance Fund before the ICHR was finally created in 2010.
She litigated the first international human rights case in the world on the protection of the rights of the child in times of war and obtained the first international binding decision on gender justice in the history of adjudication of the Inter-American region, initiating the feminisation of human rights law in the Americas. Most notably, her litigation work on behalf of hundreds of prisoners led to a landmark case on prisoners' rights where the Inter-American Court ruled on a massacre taking place in a prison and on torture practices that had never been tested before an international human rights tribunal, ordering as a consequence, the prosecution of a former head of state for crimes against humanity.
Her forensic experience investigating and documenting torture in international contentious cases, was used as model to train advocates worldwide, representing victims of torture, by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims.
In 2009 she was commissioned to take part on a project by UNESCO entitled "Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Law's Duty to the Poor" (The Philosopher's Library Series) contributing with a thorough study on litigation in Regional Human Rights Systems (European, Inter-American and African) on the justiciability of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Feria Tinta has been a speaker in International law in different fora worldwide including Lancaster House (UK Foreign &amp; Commonwealth Office), the Human Rights Caucus of the US Congress, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, the University of Oxford (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies), the United Nations (Geneva), Trinity College, Dublin (Distinguished Speakers Series), the British Institute of Comparative and International Law, Universidad de los Andes Law Faculty (Colombia), and Georgetown University Law Center. She has been a guest lecturer at Guangxi Normal University, Faculty of Law, China, University of Cambridge (LCIL Executive Course on Investment Law and Arbitration), the National &amp; Kapodistrian University of Athens (Faculty of Law), Universidad de Chile (Faculty of law), Jindal Global Law School (India), Leiden University and at the Master Program of the Institute Universitaire Kurt Bosch-University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
She has taken part in expert missions to Kenya (2020), Myanmar (2016), Guatemala (2015) and has trained South African advocates on international law (2017), Colombian lawyers on judicial processes in the context of transitional justice (2017) and members of the Honduran Bar on international arbitration (2016) under the sponsorship of the UK Mission in Honduras.
Cases.
Arbitral appointments include:-
Selected cases include:-
References.
 ;templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" / ;