Aliya Hana Hussain is the Associate Director of Advocacy at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She leads the Advocacy department in implementing strategies for increased alignment, collaboration, and planning within the organization. As a senior member of the Advocacy team, Aliya further develops the Center for Constitutional Rights’ movement-advocacy approach, supports the department’s capacity to effectively shift discourse and policy, and represents the organization in key external coalition, partner, and movement spaces.

This role builds off more than a decade of Aliya’s experience and expertise as a social justice advocate at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Previously, she was an Advocacy Program Manager, leading  the organization’s advocacy and campaigns challenging the so-called “War on Terror,” including indefinite detention at Guantánamo, the profiling and targeting of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities, and torture and other war crimes. This work included regular travel to Guantánamo to meet with the Center for Constitutional Rights’ clients and extensive public speaking on panels and public actions. 

Aliya’s writing about Guantánamo has appeared in Teen Vogue, and in Obama’s Guantánamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison, and Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations | Chicago to Guantánamo (which she co-edited). She has also appeared on CBS Sunday Morning news.  

Aliya holds a MSc in Gender, Development, and Globalisation from the London School of Economics and Political Science and graduated from Vassar College with a B.A. in History.