Internationally, Caoilfhionn’s work for wrongfully imprisoned people has seen her take on governments around the world, and she has secured the freedom of over 85 wrongly imprisoned journalists, bloggers, cartoonists, businesspeople, and activists (and one rapper). She is the world’s leading expert on accountability for deaths of journalists and regularly acts for bereaved families of journalists killed for their work. Caoilfhionn was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2017 for her “outstanding contribution to the protection of human rights,” for devising a mass advertising campaign to highlight positive stories about the Human Rights Act. In 2023 she was awarded the President of Ireland’s Distinguished Service Award and in 2025 she was Irish Tatler’s International Woman of the Year.