Céline da Graça Pires is a Business and Human Rights (BHR) specialist and qualified French lawyer. She holds the Certificate of Aptitude for the Legal Profession (Certificat d’aptitude à la profession d’avocat – CAPA). Céline has been working in the field of BHR for over a decade, supporting companies across diverse sectors in fulfilling their responsibility to respect human rights, integrating and upholding human rights principles, using the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as the North Star.

She has extensive experience engaging affected stakeholders worldwide, including migrant workers, affected communities, and Indigenous and Tribal peoples. Passionate about fieldwork, she has conducted Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIAs) and led community engagement worldwide, including in high-risk contexts. Recent fieldwork has included Mozambique, Belize, Honduras, Colombia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Argentina, and France across the agriculture, logistics, extractive, and renewable energy industries.

She led a dedicated task force at the UN Global Compact France to develop the first practical, field-based guide: ‘Business-Affected Communities: Adopting a Human Rights-based Approach for Meaningful Engagement and Effective Impact Management”, published in March 2025 (French version) and in November 2025 (English version).

She is also a Research Associate & Lecturer at the NOVA Centre on Business, Human Rights, and the Environment (Portugal) & Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Germany).

Céline is a native speaker of Portuguese, Spanish, and French. She is fluent in English and conversational in Italian.