Monica Iyer is the Clinical Fellow/Senior Lecturing Fellow of the Duke Law International Human Rights Clinic, which she joined in January 2022. Prior to joining Duke, Monica worked for the United Nations, government, and civil society organizations on human rights issues including the environment and climate change, migration, women’s rights and gender equality, human rights and international development, and racial justice.
Most recently, Monica served as a Human Rights Officer at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), where she worked on the human rights of migrants and the environment and climate change and coordinated a project on climate-related migration in the Sahel. Within OHCHR she has also supported the mandates of the Working Group on discrimination against women and the Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity. Monica’s past experience also includes time as an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General and a clerkship with Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis in the Southern District of New York. She has written or contributed to a number of reports and articles related to human rights topics, including on the intersection of human rights and international tax justice.
Monica received her J.D. from the New York University School of Law in 2010, where she was submissions editor of the Review of Law and Social Change. She holds a bachelors degree from the University of Chicago and a masters in international cooperation and development from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy.
