Thomas Unger
Independent Expert on Transitional Justice, Human Rights and the Rule of Law
Thomas Unger is currently the Director of Policy and Research at Impunity Watch. He is also an independent expert on transitional justice (TJ).
He is regularly advising various other international organisations on TJ matters, including the UN, EU, Council of Europe and the Swiss Foreign Ministry. He has been the Co-Director of the Master of Advanced Studies in Transitional Justice, Human Rights and the Rule of Law. He is the former Senior Adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence. He worked for many years as a human rights officer within the Austrian Foreign Ministry, as well as a legal system monitor with the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, and as a legal clerk with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Since 2022 he is an associated expert to the Dealing with the Past Program at swisspeace. Thomas is teaching a course on TJ and structural violence at the Geneva of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. He is a regular expert lecturer on TJ at the Austrian Centre for Peace.
Thomas has published widely on TJ and holds an LLM degree on international legal studies from NYU School of Law, as well as a European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from the Global Campus on Human Rights in Venice. He has a law degree from the University of Vienna, School of Law.
