Azadah Raz Mohammed
Azadah Raz Mohammad is a legal advisor at the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council and a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. She is the co-author of the “Handbook on Universal Jurisdiction: Holding the Taliban Accountable for International Crimes”. Azadah also plays a key role in the End Gender Apartheid Campaign, a collective of Afghan and Iranian women leaders, international jurists and activists who are calling for recognition and criminalisation of gender apartheid. She has worked on humanitarian and human rights related projects in close collaboration with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Afghan Ministry of Justice. She has also worked with the Administrative Office of the Afghan President and as an adjunct lecturer of law at American University of Afghanistan.
In 2021, she co-founded the Ham Diley Campaign, a collective of human rights lawyers working to provide support to individuals at risk, mainly through advocacy and policy initiatives. The Ham Diley Campaign established the Afghanistan Support Clinic at the Monash Law Clinics, of Monash University, where Azadah is directing and supervising legal and policy research on Afghanistan as a teaching associate. Azadah holds an LL.M. in international humanitarian law and human rights from the University of Essex, and a second LL.M. in international criminal law from Ohio State University, where she was a Fulbright scholar. Follow her @azadahrm.
This profile was edited by Sareta Ashraph, @saretaashraph.
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What drew you to working in international law/ domestic human rights law? And what were your first steps?
I believe two events shaped my career path from very early on.
First, my childhood memories play a major role in what I am doing today. My hometown was besieged by the Taliban in 1997 and 1998; neither food nor medical supplies were allowed in. I vividly remember the horror of the Taliban’s imminent attack on our small defenceless district. Our only communication with the outside world was BBC Persian Radio. We would listen to the news unfailingly, and there was only bad news. Having joined forces with Al-Qaida, the Taliban was aggressively capturing major cities, killing civilians, destroying livelihoods, and banning access to schools and universities for women and girls. To this day, the voice of the news anchor announcing civilian casualties rings in my ears whenever I read or write about the Taliban’s atrocities. Like millions of Afghans, my family fled Afghanistan at the first opportunity we had in August 1998. Although I grew up outside of Afghanistan, I closely followed developments in the country post-2001, with the hope of returning home one day.
Second, when I was in school, in the evenings, my father and I had a tradition of watching international news together. We would watch the United States and its allies preparing for a war in Iraq, as well as the anti-war demonstrations in many cities around the world. The images of the February 2003 demonstration in London are still fresh in my mind. Watching the news exposed me to a bigger world, to the role and duties of the United Nations, and to political rhetoric. At the same time, I was hearing updates on the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia and seeing the images of countless graveyards of the victims of the conflict. This is how I was introduced to international criminal law for the first time.
At university, while I had a deep interest in human rights and international criminal law, my parents encouraged me to study for an LL.B. in International Commercial Law. In 2009, during the second year of my studies, I visited Afghanistan for the first time since 1998. I saw the capital – Kabul– for the very first time. Although the Taliban had been toppled from power years before, the level of destruction and decades of conflict had taken its toll on the people and the country. It was a fateful visit as it made me determined to move to Afghanistan once I completed my studies – to give back to the country that never left me even though I had no choice but to leave it as a child.
Immediately after graduating from LL.B., I started my LL.M. at the University of Essex. Unlike most of my peers, I had no working experience or academic understanding of human rights law and its institutions. However, as a first step towards a career in international law, studying at the University of Essex was a profound experience for me. It was during my class on the crime of Genocide that I finally understood my grandmother’s stories from the 1900s in her village in central Afghanistan when government agents targeted and killed pregnant women only. It was aimed to prevent births within the population, a genocidal act.
I belong to the Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan, one of the most persecuted and discriminated ethnic groups in the world. The genocide of the Hazaras started around 1890s and continues to recur in various large-scale deliberate attack on the Hazara community, such as schools, hospital, educational centres, among other targeted sites. I learned that the Taliban’s continued brutality against the Hazaras, including the siege of my village in 1997- 1998, was linked to historical persecution and genocidal acts against my people, and also constituted a war crime.
In 2014, I finally moved back to Afghanistan. Against all the adversities, I was hopeful for a better Afghanistan. I started my first job as a programme officer in charge of a major national human rights portfolio with an international organisation based in Kabul. I am grateful to my Essex friend, Ms. Shannon Gogh, who introduced me to a fellow Essex Alumni based in Kabul Ms. Alessandra Greg, who recommended me for the post.
What do you consider to be the most impactful moments of your career and why?
I am not sure – I hope the most impactful moment of my career is yet to come! However, there are highlights of my career that I would like to share.
In 2017, I completed a second LL.M. in international criminal law as a Fulbright scholar. I returned to Afghanistan to work with the government on Afghanistan’s commitment to international human rights conventions. It was a challenging tenure, both personally and professionally. There was a total lack of political will to implement and follow up on the government's obligation under the various Conventions. This was mainly due to former warlords within the government, widespread corruption, nepotism, tribalism – and of course misogyny. Despite that, I consider my work in a senior position at the Office of the President an invaluable experience. An important takeaway for me from working with the government was understanding the fact that criminal accountability for international crimes is an important component of sustainable peace for fragile countries like Afghanistan. Building on this experience, I am currently doing a Ph.D. at Melbourne Law School investigating the question of whether Afghanistan can achieve sustainable peace without addressing the ongoing atrocities committed by the Taliban and what will be the appropriate avenue for investigating and prosecuting the alleged international crimes committed by the group.
In response to the Taliban’s violent takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, together with two colleagues, I co-founded the Ham Diley Campaign and the Afghanistan Support Clinic at Monash University. The Campaign works closely with victim-survivor groups from Afghanistan by conducting legal and policy research to assist with criminal accountability for the alleged atrocities crimes committed by the Taliban. In September 2024, we launched our first publication, Handbook on Universal Jurisdiction Holding the Taliban Accountable for International Crimes. The handbook is translated into Persian and Pashto, Afghanistan’s native languages, and will be widely disseminated within Afghanistan’s diaspora groups. The handbook has been very well received by the community. I am forever grateful to many individuals who made this project a reality, I am especially thankful to my dear colleague Dr. Karin Frode and our project mentor Ms. Sareta Ashraph.
Working closely with victim-survivor groups from Afghanistan has been the forefront of my career. I welcome the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants for the Taliban leadership, announced on 23 January 2025. This is an important first step towards criminal accountability for the atrocities committed by the Taliban. Moving forward, as part of my work at the Ham Diley Campaign and more generally, I will continue to work with victim-survivors to support the Court in expanding their investigation into the alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Taliban.
In March 2023, I joined the End Gender Apartheid Campaign, a collective of Afghan and Iranian women leaders, international jurists and activists who are calling for recognition and criminalisation of gender apartheid. We have inherited the term “gender apartheid” from our predecessors who had to fight against the Taliban’s system of gender oppression and gender apartheid in the late 1990s - when the Taliban was in power for the first time. The campaign is a decentralised global initiative and I have a modest role within an incredible team of international criminal lawyers and brave activists from Afghanistan.
What are some of the challenges that you faced coming up in your career?
When I returned to Afghanistan in 2014, I did not know anyone working on human rights there. I had no network and no friends. Being a woman from a historically persecuted Hazara ethnic group was certainly challenging. I had to work extra hard to be accepted and taken seriously within Afghanistan’s male-dominated justice intuitions. In 2015, I had a meeting with the Minister of Justice. He thought I was the translator who had arrived early to the meeting, and when he realised that the meeting was with me, he was visibly upset – telling his male colleagues ‘What would this young girl possibly know about law?!’.
At times, I was given a chair at the table for symbolic reasons, as a token representation of women. It bothered me and it took me time to use that opportunity to speak up and have an effective engagement. This experience helped me significantly when I joined the government. From the onset, I had to negotiate the terms and conditions of my work. I didn’t want to have a symbolic and nominal position, but I wanted executive powers to be able to implement projects and take initiatives.
There were and are many closed doors. Afghanistan’s situation is very complex, and it is a forgotten story for most parts of the world. As a result, the resources to work on a justice initiative for Afghanistan are direly lacking. Similarly, most prominent organisations are not interested in working on a case involving Afghanistan: it is either a lost cause for them or there is no political support or interest. It takes a lot of hard work and determination to navigate these challenges.
Do you have any advice for people, particularly women, hoping to work in international law/ domestic human rights law in the future?
Build your network and reach out to people in your field who inspire you. Don’t be afraid of rejection, because those who will respond are exactly the type of people whose mentorship you will need, and they will continue to inspire you and guide you throughout your career.
Embrace your cultural background: it will help you to bring diversity and an alternative perspective to your work which could ultimately assist under-represented voices.
Seek to find common ground and collaborate with an opposing party whenever possible. It often led to a productive and positive outcome for all parties involved.
Occasionally reflect on your career path and divide your career objectives into short-term and long-term goals to stay motivated. Set realistic career goals and priorities by learning new skills that could assist you with your work. Continuously seek opportunities for professional developments, such as, effective communication skills, and staying updated with the developments in your field.