MARY MURPHY
Mary Murphy is based in Geneva and most recently was an adviser in the Persons Deprived of Liberty (Detention) Unit at the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, Switzerland. Prior to joining the ICRC in 2011, Mary worked with Penal Reform International (PRI), where she occupied the post of Policy Adviser in the London headquarters and, before that, Director of the South Caucasus regional office and Coordinator of programmes in the Former Soviet Union. She was based in Tbilisi, Georgia for four years, including a period working in the Ministry of Justice of Georgia on a European Union TACIS prison reform project. She participated in development of the UN Nelson Mandela Rules, UN 'Bangkok Rules' for the treatment of women in the criminal justice system, and UN Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid in the Criminal Justice System, as well as on practical implementation of these and other international standards relating to different aspects of criminal justice and the treatment of people deprived of their liberty.
Mary came to PRI from Amnesty International’s (AI) International Secretariat. After an apprenticeship which began in 1985 on AI's North Africa Research Team, she specialised in the Former Soviet Union and worked as a campaigner, researcher and editor on Amnesty’s core mandate issues: torture, fair trials, refugees and the death penalty. She has also worked at the International Centre for Prison Studies, and conducted freelance work in the field of human rights and access to justice on behalf of international charities and governmental aid agencies in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Pakistan and Mongolia. She is a member of the Geneva Association of Prison Visitors and when in London was a member of the Independent Monitoring Board at Her Majesty’s Prison Wormwood Scrubs.
Mary Murphy’s first degree (in Modern Languages) was from the University of Bristol, followed by an MA in Area Studies (Russia and Eastern Europe) at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. She will shortly complete an MA in Psychosocial Counselling, with a thesis on the impact of prison on humanitarian workers.