Janine di Giovanni
Founder & CEO
Janine di Giovanni is a geopolitical analyst, award-winning war reporter, and author with 35 years of field experience, specializing in war crimes investigations across five continents. She has reported from 18 war zones and three genocides. Her expertise spans human rights, transitional justice, and accountability, with a regional focus on the Middle East, the Balkans, Ukraine/Russia, and Africa. She is a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, where she teaches human rights.
Di Giovanni has received more than a dozen major awards for her reporting from conflict zones. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ highest nonfiction prize. She has held senior fellowships at Yale’s Jackson School, Yale Law’s Schell Center for Human Rights, Johns Hopkins’ Agora Institute, and Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and was an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Her investigations into war crimes have had global impact. The AOAV named her among the world’s 100 most influential people in reducing armed violence. She has received the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award and two Amnesty International prizes. She is the author of nine books, including The Vanishing, on Christians in the Middle East, and The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria, translated into 28 languages and described by The New York Times as “necessary and devastating.” The book won multiple literary awards and was shortlisted for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism.
A longtime contributor to Vanity Fair, Foreign Affairs, Harper’s, and The New York Times, she is also a Global Affairs columnist for The National and a non-resident International Security Fellow at New America and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. As an academic, she has taught future human rights leaders at Yale, Columbia, and Sciences Po, Paris.
Di Giovanni moderates high-level panels at the World Economic Forum, the Munich Security Conference, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Her TED Talk, “What I Saw in the War,” filmed at the U.S. Institute of Peace, has been viewed more than a million times.
An adviser on the Syria conflict for UNHCR, she has provided policy guidance to the EU, NATO, and other international bodies. She was also a delegate at William Hague’s London Conference on Sexual Violence in Conflict.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA), she holds MAs from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the University of London. She lives in Paris and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an Advisory Board member of the Atlas of Impunity.
Work by Janine di Giovanni
16 items • 10 Media • 6 Advocacy
A Year of Conflict in the Middle East, From a War Reporter's Perspective
Vanity Fair • October 2024
Reflecting on a year of covering the Israel-Hamas conflict and its devastating impact on both Palestinian and Israeli society.
A Call to Document Before It's Too Late
CEO Janine di Giovanni's latest article in Foreign Policy reflects on documenting war crimes in Sudan and the evolving landscape of accountability
Justice is slow, but it will come: a conversation with Janine di Giovanni
Ukrainska Pravda • May 2025
An in-depth conversation about transforming war stories into legal evidence, the importance of accountability, and why memory is our greatest form of resistance.
After War, What Does Justice Look Like?
New Lines Magazine Podcast • March 2025
Janine di Giovanni joins New Lines' Faisal Al Yafai after returning from Syria, discussing accountability, justice, and The Reckoning Project's work in post-conflict reconstruction.
Putin's abduction of Ukrainian children
Politico Europe • June 2025
The fate of Ukraine's children is not just a humanitarian issue — it is central to the broader struggle against impunity and for justice.
Russia's Smoking Guns: How to Prove the Putin Regime's War Crimes in Ukraine
Foreign Affairs • July 2023
An unprecedented effort to collect court-ready evidence of Russian war crimes, setting Ukraine apart from past conflicts in the quest for international justice.
Tents pitched indoors for warmth and makeshift radiators: Ukrainians are freezing to death
The Guardian • January 2026
As a war correspondent I've seen this strategy used before. Putin is weaponising the savage eastern European winter.
TRP's Side Event at the Munich Security Conference
Learn about TRP's pivotal side event at the Munich Security Conference
Two and a Half Years Later, a Disabled Ukrainian Boy Returns Home
New Lines Magazine • 2025
Following the story of a young Ukrainian boy with disabilities whose life was upended by Russia's invasion, and his family's difficult journey home.
In a Propaganda Move, Russia Targeted and Deported Disabled Children From Ukraine
New Lines Magazine • 2024
Exploring the complexities of gathering evidence and pursuing accountability in contemporary warfare, from the frontlines to the courtroom.
Children from Occupation: Donetsk, Mariupol, Crimea
The Reckoning Project • 2024
A powerful documentary exploring the stories of children affected by Russian occupation in Ukraine, highlighting their resilience and the ongoing fight for justice.
Global Women's Summit: Bearing Witness: Ukraine
Watch TRP CEO Janine di Giovanni discuss bearing witness in Ukraine
Stockholm Symposium on Accountability and Disinformation
High-level international symposium addressing war crimes and disinformation with Nobel Peace Prize keynote
TRP's Submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR)
TRP's civil society contribution for review of the Russian Federation
Janine di Giovanni's Appointment as Senior Fellow at Yale University
TRP's Founder and CEO joins Yale University's Human Rights Program
Fareed Zakaria Interview with Janine di Giovanni
CNN GPS • 2023
Janine di Giovanni discusses TRP's groundbreaking work documenting war crimes in Ukraine and the importance of accountability in international justice.