It is our great pleasure to introduce our new IntLawGrrls contributor Sareta Ashraph. From May 2012 to November 2016, Sareta served as the Chief Analyst on the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, documenting violations of international law in the context of the ongoing conflict. She was the primary author of the Commission’s June 2016 report “They Came to Destroy: ISIS’s Crimes Against the Yazidis”, which found that ISIS was committing the crime of genocide. From January to March 2017, Sareta served as the Practitioner-in-Residence in Stanford Law School, researching the role gender plays in the commission of the crime of genocide.

Immediately prior to working joining the Syria Commission, she served as the Analyst on the Commission of Inquiry on Libya. In 2010 and 2011, Sareta was the Legal Adviser to the Office of the Public Counsel for the Defence in the International Criminal Court. In 2009, Sareta worked as a Legal Consultant to the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. From 2004 to 2009, Sareta was based in Freetown, Sierra Leone where she was Co-Counsel representing Issa Sesay (the former interim Leader of the Revolutionary United Front) before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Sareta is a member of Garden Court Chambers in London.

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It is our great pleasure to introduce our new IntLawGrrls contributor Natia Kalandarishvili-Mueller! Natia is a Lecturer in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) at Tbilisi State University, Institute of International Law, Faculty of Law. Natia’s professional activities include working as a Chief Legal Specialist in the Division of International Law and International Organizations at the Office of the State Minister of Georgia for Reintegration, a key ministry that dealt with the conflicts in Georgia (January 2008 – August 2009); giving legal advice in International Law to the same ministry (January–March 2013) as well as being an Invited Lecturer for selected classes in the field of IHL at the Geneva University (April 2013), the ETH Zurich (April 2015), and the University of Basel (March 2016). Natia’s professional affiliations include the International Law Association – Swiss Branch. She has recently submitted her PhD thesis in IHL (on military occupation) at the University of Essex, School of Law, and is currently under examination.

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It is our great pleasure to introduce our new intlawgrrls contributor Jennifer Ismat! Jennifer is a lawyer in New York and has spent the past 7 years working as an independent consultant with universities and international organizations. She received her Bachelors degree in Political Science and International Relations at Syracuse University and her Masters degree in Global Affairs from New York University. She also earned her Juris Doctorate in Law from St. John’s University School of Law. She has studied abroad in both Egypt and Malaysia. She was an Arthur C. Helton Fellow. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the New York International Law Review.

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It is our great pleasure to welcome Franziska Brachthäuser to IntLawGrrls! Franziska is currently enrolled in the  joint Amsterdam and Columbia  LL.M. “International Criminal Law”.  Her research interests include gender in international and national law, women’s rights and legal theory. Within the course of the Humboldt Human Rights Clinic in Berlin, she started working on legal aspects of intersexuality.

The current LL.M. led her to focus on sexual and gender-based crimes from an international perspective. In her master thesis, she examines the ICC reparation practice with regards to victims of sexual violence. Franziska holds a German Staatsexamen and a French Maîtrise (Panthéon Assas) in European Law. After the LL.M. she will return to Berlin for her legal clerkship.

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It is our great pleasure to introduce Juli King to IntLawGrrls! Juli is currently at 2L at UC Davis School of Law, focusing on international human rights law. She received her undergraduate degree in International Studies at Boston College. Last fall, Juli was an extern for the International Action Network for Gender Equity and Law, an organization dedicated to harnessing the power of pro bono work to secure equity for women and girls around the world.

This summer, Juli will be interning for Challenging Heights, an anti-child trafficking NGO in Ghana. Last summer, she worked for the ABA’s Center for Human Rights in its Justice Defenders Program working for human rights defenders retaliated against for their work in human rights.

It is our pleasure to welcome Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum to IntLawGrrls! Professor Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum is Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where she directs the Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic. In the Clinic, students gain legal skills through work on human rights projects and cases on issues related to atrocity prevention. Specifically, the Clinic focuses on three areas of work: the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities; the protection of vulnerable populations, including asylum-seekers and victims of torture and sexual violence; and accountability for those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression.
Jocelyn has developed and expanded clinical projects, including in-depth fact-finding on issues of sexual and gender-based crimes, persecution as a crime against humanity and early warning risk analysis, on four continents and in more than ten countries. She also serves as incoming Faculty Director of the Cardozo Law Institute on Holocaust and Human Rights, a leading global center strengthening laws, norms and institutions toward the prevention of mass atrocities. She is particularly interested in mainstreaming atrocity prevention in law school curricula and training lawyers and human rights advocates on early warning risk analysis. Her scholarship agenda includes looking at the intersections of public health and atrocity prevention, especially as it relates to preventing and responding to sexual and gender-based crimes.

Jocelyn holds a JD from Cornell Law School and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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It is our great pleasure to welcome our new IntLawGrrls contributor Daniela Alaattinoğlu!

Daniela Alaattinoğlu (née Åkers) is a PhD Candidate at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. Her PhD project, financed by the Academy of Finland, explores involuntary sterilization and castration as a question of human rights and state responsibility, focusing on international rights development and on international-national rights dialogues in three case studies: Sweden, Norway and Finland. Since 2015, Daniela is one of the coordinators of the EUI Fundamental Rights Working Group.

Before starting her doctorate, Daniela worked as a legal researcher for the human rights NGO TOHAV in Istanbul, as a research assistant at the University of Helsinki, and as a lecturer in criminal law the Police College of Finland. Daniela holds an LLB and LLM from the University of Helsinki, an LLM from the EUI, and she has also studied courses at Istanbul Bilgi University.

Daniela’s research interests and earlier publications cover the topics of human rights, law and gender, gender violence, femicide, law and culture, socio-legal studies, international law, criminal law and comparative law.

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It is our great pleasure to welcome Işıl Aral as an IntLawGrrls contributor! Işıl is a PhD candidate at The University of Manchester and works on unconstitutional changes of government and international legal theory. She graduated from Galatasaray University in 2010 and completed her LLM in human rights law at the London School of Economics. She practiced criminal law for three years at Bayraktar Law Firm, Istanbul. Together with her female colleagues at the Manchester International Law Centre, they founded the Women in International Law Network (WILNET) in February 2016. WILNET’s activities include networking events and web-based content, such as interviews with women international lawyers, providing rich and varied perspectives on how to enter and progress in the profession. WILNET also shares posts highlighting long forgotten contribution of female international lawyers, and invite others to do the same, thereby create a database of prominent historical women figures who have taken part in the advancement of international law.

Heartfelt welcome!