Guglielmo Verdirame, Baron Verdirame

It was announced as part of the 2022 Special Honours that Verdirame would receive a life peerage. On 2 November 2022, he was created Baron Verdirame, of Belsize Park in the London Borough of Camden. He sits in the Lords as a non-affiliated peer.

He practises as a barrister at 20 Essex Street Chambers and was appointed Queen's Counsel in January 2019.

Since 2006, Verdirame has been in practice at the Bar specialising in public international law. His practice includes both commercial (e.g. investment arbitration) and more mainstream aspects of international law (e.g. inter-state disputes, immunity, human rights). He formed part of the UK Government legal team in Miller v. Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (2017) 'the Article 50 case' at the Supreme Court, and was counsel for the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice [Obligations concerning Negotiations relating to Cessation of the Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament (Marshall Islands v. United Kingdom)]. He was also instructed] by Leigh Day on behalf of The United Nations special rapporteur in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court case Shamima Begum v. Secretary of State for the Home Department.

He completed his secondary schooling at the United World College of the Adriatic. He graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2001 with a thesis entitled "UN accountability for violations of human rights".

Verdirame conducted empirical research on international organisations and refugee protection, which formed the basis of a series of articles and the book "Rights in Exile: Janus-faced Humanitarianism", which he co-authored with Barbara Harrell-Bond, an anthropologist whose "Imposing Aid" (1986) was a pioneering critique of international institutions and humanitarianism. While still relying on the earlier socio-legal and empirical research, Verdirame's "The UN and Human Rights: Who Guards the Guardians?" (2011) offers a predominantly doctrinal analysis of the accountability and responsibility of the UN.

Guglielmo Verdirame, Baron Verdirame, KC (born 25 August 1971) is a legal scholar and barrister. He is Professor of International Law at King's College London in the Department of War Studies and the School of Law. He was previously a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, a university lecturer in law at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, a Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School, and a visiting professor at Columbia Law School. He was born in Reggio di Calabria, Italy.