CONSULTANCY

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Yousuf Syed Khan is also an independent Senior Consultant and Strategic Adviser with over 12 years’ legal experience dealing with conflict situations across a range of countries and contexts, including: Ukraine; Syria; Afghanistan; Iraq; Libya; Gaza; the Golan Heights; Ethiopia; Sudan; South Sudan; Myanmar; Belarus; and the former Yugoslavia. He is widely considered an expert on starvation as a method of warfare. In the context of urban siege warfare and starvation crimes, he has led public legal findings on the sieges of Aleppo, eastern Ghouta, Madaya (Syria), Tigray (Ethiopia), and Mariupol (Ukraine), among several others.

Yousuf is adept at drafting incisive legal analyses and working with the vast volumes of evidence that are typical of core international crimes. His legal analysis has been cited by Member States in their written comments before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in expert commentary to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), by UN Special Rapporteurs, and elsewhere. He has also been quoted extensively by the media for his legal analysis, including BBC World, The Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian, Reuters, Al Jazeera, France24, Deutsche Welle, The Independent, and The Telegraph, and has further appeared on BBC World, CNN, and other live television networks.

For nearly a decade, Yousuf served with the United Nations where he led the public findings on several major conflicts. He was responsible for conceiving and leading the first major international legal finding that the humanitarian evacuation of eastern Aleppo amounted to the war crime of forced displacement, and for conceiving and leading the original finding that the camps for internally displaced persons in northeast Syria are de facto detention (internment) sites, both of which have since been widely recognised and accepted by the international community.

Yousuf also regularly provided strategic guidance to several high-level UN officials; trained various State officials including the judiciary law enforcement, and senior ministry in Ukraine, Iraq, and Afghanistan on international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international human rights law; and led local community engagement, including through cultivating relationships with tribal chiefs and elders in the Middle East, East Africa, and Central Asia. Moreover, he is highly experienced in conducting in-country investigations in hostile conditions during active armed conflicts, and can be relied on to produce work of the highest standard under the most difficult circumstances.

Yousuf is known for providing specialist advice and tailored services, including:

• Expertise on starvation as a method of warfare, famine, and food insecurity in emergencies
• Drafting complex legal opinions
• Drafting comprehensive (public) human rights reports
• Carrying out survivor-centred and trauma-informed field investigations, including survivor, witness, and defector interviews
• Designing and delivering bespoke training programmes on international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international human rights law
• Managing eDiscovery platforms
• Providing legal assessments of open-source intelligence (OSINT) data including social media intelligence (SOCMINT), digital forensic data, geospatial analysis, and satellite imagery analysis, and
• Conflict analysis, including actor mapping

He has been entrusted with strictly confidential empirical data and commissioned to produce in-depth studies and public reports on myriad violations and crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and two potential situations of genocide. He has become well-known for the complexity of his legal and conflict analyses which regularly call on his creativity.

Yousuf's most recent clients include:

• a major nonpartisan think tank, for which he was contracted to research and author a comprehensive investigative report on Iran’s military involvement, role(s), and violations perpetrated by its armed forces and militia groups in the Syrian conflict;
• a prominent organisation based in Geneva, where he played a key role in advancing high-impact strategic litigation efforts on behalf of victims and survivors of core international crimes (including starvation as a method of warfare), before national jurisdictions including in Europe and Africa;
• [redacted], for which he provided considered legal analysis to a national government pursuing war crimes prosecutions during an active and on-going armed conflict (including assessments of starvation as a method of warfare and associated starvation crimes);
• the United Nations, for which he was contracted as an Expert to work on atrocity crimes determinations (including assessments of starvation as a method of warfare and associated starvation crimes); and
• a leading NGO, for which he was commissioned as a Senior Legal Adviser to carry out interviews and produce a  report concerning the efficacy of the evidence preservation efforts made by UN atrocity inquiries.