Erin Mooney is an internationally recognised senior expert adviser, advocate, and researcher on forced migration, human rights, protection of civilians, humanitarian affairs, and peacebuilding, with over 30 years of UN and other international professional experience, both at UN Headquarters and in more than 30 conflict and disaster contexts in Africa, the Middle East, Europe (Ukraine, South Caucasus, Western Balkans), Asia and the Americas.
Her extensive work experience with the United Nations since 1995 includes serving as Chief of Civil Affairs for the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2024-2025), Senior Protection Adviser with the UN’s Protection Capacity (2006-2023), a Senior Adviser to successive UN Representatives of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons (1996-2006), and with a wide range of UN offices including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN Development Programme (UNDP), UNICEF, the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict, International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN peacekeeping mission for Darfur (UNAMID) and as a senior expert to the UN-African Union peace process for Darfur, Sudan.
She also has served as a consultant on human rights and humanitarian issues to several Governments (e.g., Switzerland, US, Canada), regional organizations (e.g., Council of Europe, African Union), international NGOs, universities and thinktanks, including serving as Deputy Director of the Brookings Institution Project on Internal Displacement (2001-2006), Deputy Director of the Centre for Displacement Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (2002-2004), and Deputy Team Leader of the first-ever UN Independent Review on the Global Humanitarian Response to Internal Displacement, undertaken by the U.K.’s Overseas Development Institute (2023-2024), at the request of the UN Secretary-General.
From 2008-2010, she was Professor (Adjunct) of International Relations at the University of Toronto. Since 2024, she is a Senior Fellow of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History and a non-stipendiary Professor of International Practice at the Institute for the Study of International Development at McGill University.
Her more than 100 publications on human rights, humanitarian and peacekeeping issues include both academic publications and numerous official guidance published by the United Nations and regional organizations on a range of specific crises and on thematic issues including: internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, durable solutions to displacement, protection of civilians, children and armed conflict, education in emergencies, electoral rights, gender mainstreaming, and genocide prevention.
