Karen O’Reilly is a country expert who has produced over 300 reports for asylum, criminal, deportation, high profile and country guidance cases in the UK, US, and Canada. Her expertise derives in large part from her extensive experience as a Refugee Resettlement Expert and Protection Officer for UNHCR, beginning in 2006. She is also a writer who has published extensively on refugee-related issues.
Karen’s expertise derives in large part from her vast experience working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a Refugee Resettlement Expert and Protection Officer. Since 2006, she has worked for UNHCR in Uganda, Kenya, the Central African Republic, Senegal, Guinea, Cameroon, and Jordan. She has interviewed and worked on the cases of several thousand refugees in West and East Africa and the Middle East. She has researched, written and reviewed country of origin information for more than a thousand UNHCR resettlement applications. Between UNHCR deployments she has worked in a pro bono capacity with recently resettled refugees in the US through the refugee resettlement programs administered by Catholic Charities and Lutheran Family Services. She has been the Bertelsmann Transformation Index Ethiopia expert for several years. Karen is also a writer who has published extensively on refugee experiences, human rights and development education, globalization and conflict, and travel in Africa and the Middle East, including a critically-acclaimed book on refugee experiences published in November 2019. Before working with UNHCR, she was a human rights educator for Amnesty International. Karen holds MAs in Understanding and Securing Human Rights (University of London, with Distinction) and English Literature (University of Edinburgh). |
Karen O’Reilly has provided country expert reports for over 300 hearings in the UK, US, and Canada. She has also testified in criminal court (The Old Bailey) and at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. She was the FGM expert for the first successful FGM prosecution in the UK, and for the first successful prosecution in the UK for FGM carried out in another country. She was also the FGM expert for a country guidance case on FGM in Sierra Leone. |
Tell Me Why You Fled, a memoir about working with refugees in East Africa, 2019; numerous Tell Me Why You Fled, a memoir about working with refugees in East Africa, 2019; numerous essays about refugee issues and travel in Africa and the Middle East for The Dublin Review, The Daily Mail and others; speaker on refugee-related issues at conferences and on the radio, including BBCessays about refugee issues and travel in Africa and the Middle East for The Dublin Review, The Daily Mail and others; speaker on refugee-related issues at conferences and on the radio, including BBC