Director of the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs in the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor
In November 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed Professor Achiume the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, making her the first woman to serve in this role since its creation in 1993. In 2016, she was appointed to co-chair the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), she is former co-chair of the ASIL Migration Law Interest Group and currently serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of International Law.
Professor Achiume earned her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She also earned a Graduate Certificate in Development Studies from Yale.
Professor Achiume clerked for Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke and Justice Yvonne Mokgoro on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Following her clerkships, she was awarded the Bernstein International Human Rights Fellowship to work for the Refugee and Migrant Rights Project unit at Lawyers for Human Rights in Johannesburg. Professor Achiume also taught on the faculty of the International Human Rights Exchange Programme based at the University of the Witwatersrand. She then joined the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP as a litigation associate. Immediately prior to her current appointment she was the second recipient of Binder Clinical Teaching Fellowship at UCLA School of Law.
Professor Achiume’s publications include: “Racial Borders,” (forthcoming Georgetown Law Journal) "Migration as Decolonization," 71 Stanford Law Review 1509 (2019) (selected for the 2018 Harvard-Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum); "Governing Xenophobia," Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law (forthcoming 2018); “Syria and the Responsibility to Protect Refugees,” 100 Minnesota Law Review 687, (2015); and “Beyond Prejudice: Structural Xenophobic Discrimination Against Refugees," 45(2) Georgetown Journal of International Law 323 (2014). Professor Achiume is a core faculty member of the UCLA Law School Promise Institute for Human Rights, the Critical Race Studies Program, and the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.
Senior Advisor, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters
Ryan Kaminski has over a decade of experience in human rights, sustainable development, and international public policy. He is currently the LGBTQI+ Advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Inclusive Development Hub. Based in the Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation (DDI) the Hub promotes the rights and inclusion of marginalized and under-represented populations in the development process.
Previously, he was the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Global Public Policy Lead. In this role, he led the organization’s multilateral advocacy strategy at the UN, G7, and G20 with the goal of holding the world’s most influential corporations to account on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and human rights standards. This included leading WBA’s engagement at the UN High Level Political Forum, UN General Assembly, and at the UN Human Rights Council where he worked regularly with diplomats, business leaders, human rights advocates, and other international decisionmakers.
Ryan was also the Human Rights Policy Advisor at the UN Foundation overseeing high-level advocacy, cross-sector partnerships, and campaigns with a focus on LGBTQI+ human rights, the SDGs, and U.S.-UN relations. There he worked to build bridges with hundreds of UNA-USA grassroots advocates across the country and UN human rights mechanisms including the UN Human Rights Council and Universal Periodic Review mechanism. He also briefed congressional membership and staff on developments in the UN human rights system.
He has authored and co-published reports and articles with the Council on Foreign Relations CFR, Center for American Progress, Just Security, The Atlantic, The Advocate, Yale Journal of International Affairs, and Georgetown Journal of International Affairs on topics including human rights, U.S. foreign policy, and international institutions. Ryan's latest piece is a co-authored chapter in the book, The North Korea Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security.
Ryan has also consulted for Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria on the role of civic space in combating global epidemics and was a research associate at the CFR International Institutions and Global Governance Program . He was also previously a U.S. Fulbright Fellow at Education University of Hong Kong. He interned at Papua New Guinea’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York, Amnesty International USA, and at the Brookings Institution.
Ryan is currently a CFR Term Member, Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, and appeared on the Out in National Security Leadership List in 2020. He has also run marathons in Hong Kong, New York, and Chicago and is excited to run the Honolulu Marathon in 2022.
Ryan received his BA from the University of Chicago and MIA from Columbia University. He is based in Washington DC and a Chicago native.
Previously, he was the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Global Public Policy Lead. In this role, he led the organization’s multilateral advocacy strategy at the UN, G7, and G20 with the goal of holding the world’s most influential corporations to account on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and human rights standards. This included leading WBA’s engagement at the UN High Level Political Forum, UN General Assembly, and at the UN Human Rights Council where he worked regularly with diplomats, business leaders, human rights advocates, and other international decisionmakers.
Ryan was also the Human Rights Policy Advisor at the UN Foundation overseeing high-level advocacy, cross-sector partnerships, and campaigns with a focus on LGBTQI+ human rights, the SDGs, and U.S.-UN relations. There he worked to build bridges with hundreds of UNA-USA grassroots advocates across the country and UN human rights mechanisms including the UN Human Rights Council and Universal Periodic Review mechanism. He also briefed congressional membership and staff on developments in the UN human rights system.
He has authored and co-published reports and articles with the Council on Foreign Relations CFR, Center for American Progress, Just Security, The Atlantic, The Advocate, Yale Journal of International Affairs, and Georgetown Journal of International Affairs on topics including human rights, U.S. foreign policy, and international institutions. Ryan's latest piece is a co-authored chapter in the book, The North Korea Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security.
Ryan has also consulted for Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria on the role of civic space in combating global epidemics and was a research associate at the CFR International Institutions and Global Governance Program . He was also previously a U.S. Fulbright Fellow at Education University of Hong Kong. He interned at Papua New Guinea’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York, Amnesty International USA, and at the Brookings Institution.
Ryan is currently a CFR Term Member, Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, and appeared on the Out in National Security Leadership List in 2020. He has also run marathons in Hong Kong, New York, and Chicago and is excited to run the Honolulu Marathon in 2022.
Ryan received his BA from the University of Chicago and MIA from Columbia University. He is based in Washington DC and a Chicago native.
