Michael Camilleri

United States |  Senior Advisor, United States Agency for International Development

Former Director, Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program, Inter-American Dialogue

+1-202-822-900 ˙ press@thedialogue.org ˙

This post is also available in: Spanish

Michael Camilleri served as the Director of the Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program at the Inter-American Dialogue from May 2017 until April 2021. He is now a senior advisor to Administrator-designate Samantha Power at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where he will lead a task force on the Northern Triangle of Central America.

An international lawyer and former diplomat, he served in the Obama administration from 2012 to 2017 as the Western Hemisphere adviser on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and as Director for Andean Affairs at the National Security Council.

Prior to joining the US government, Michael was a human rights specialist at the Organization of American States and a senior staff attorney at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). He also worked with a coalition of civil society organizations in Guatemala and at a large international law firm.

Camilleri’s commentary and analysis on legal and policy issues in the Americas have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Americas Quarterly, BBC, Fox News, Univision, NTN24, and CNN en Español. Michael is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he has been an adjunct professor of law and international affairs at the George Washington University, American University, and the University of Baltimore. He holds a B.A. in history from the University of Notre Dame and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.


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