Jelena Pia-Comella, adjunct lecturer in the Department of Political Science, was elected an expert member of the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

CEDAW, which consists of 23 independent experts from around the world, monitors implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Convention, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, established an international bill of rights for women and an agenda for action by countries to guarantee the enjoyment of those rights.

Pia-Comella teaches international human rights law and gender justice for conflict-related sexual and gender-based crimes in the Human Rights and International Crime and Justice MA programs. In addition to teaching at John Jay, Pia-Comella consults with the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes and teaches at Hofstra University, Senghor University and the UN Institute for Training and Research. 

Pia-Comella previously served as deputy permanent representative of Andorra to the UN and chargée d’affaires to Canada and the US, consultant to the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and Women’s Environment and Development Organization, deputy executive director of the World Federalist Movement Institute for Global Policy and adviser to the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. She has also written on the role of women in preventing mass atrocity crimes and gender justice for conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence.

Pia-Comella is the treasurer and board member of the Global Justice Center and is a member of the African Coordination of Human Rights for the Armed Forces, the Women Network on the Responsibility to Protect, Peace and Security at Leeds University (UK) and SOS-Torture/Burundi. She speaks four languages - English, French, Catalan and Spanish - and earned an MA from Fordham University and a BA from Fribourg University (Switzerland).