Kristine Beckerle

Kristine Beckerle is the Cover-Lowenstein Fellow at the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights, a Clinical Lecturer in Law, and an Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School. Her work focuses on international humanitarian law violations and international human rights abuses during conflict, with a particular focus on pathways towards credible investigations, accountability and reparations for mass violations, and opportunities for international solidarity in human rights work. Until 2021, Beckerle was the Legal Director of Accountability and Redress for Mwatana for Human Rights, an independent Yemeni rights organization. Beckerle built and led a team that expanded Mwatana’s portfolio of international legal action, including against weapons companies and state actors, built cross-cutting partnerships and coalitions with lawyers, litigation organizations and civil society groups working towards accountability and reparations, and developed Mwatana’s organizational capacity on research methodology, international law and approaches to advocacy. While at Mwatana, Beckerle and her colleagues on the Accountability and Redress team investigated civilian harm resulting from the United States’ use of lethal force in Yemen, the Saudi/UAE-led Coalition and Ansar Allah (Houthi) armed group's failure to provide credible redress or reparations, the warring parties' starvation-related conduct, the role of potentially complicit actors in abuse, and other issues.

Before Mwatana, Beckerle worked in Lebanon and Jordan as a researcher for Human Rights Watch, where she led investigations into rights abuses during the Yemen conflict, including trips to Yemen's north and south, and led the organization's global Yemen response. She also researched rights abuses in other Gulf countries, including in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. As Finberg Fellow at Human Rights Watch between 2015 and 2016, Beckerle researched, wrote and partnered with Saudi women's rights activists to launch a report on Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system. Beckerle previously worked with the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees on issues related to gender-based violence and international protection in Amman, Jordan. Beckerle earned her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as student director of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, and her A.B from Harvard University, where she studied Social Studies and the Arabic language.