Elham Saudi

Elham Saudi is the director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya.

As Director of LFJL, Elham has worked on fact finding alleged human rights violations in Libya in the period since 15 February 2011. She has advised a number of Libyan, European and international bodies in relation to the conflict in Libya, including the National Transitional Council in Libya on a number of matters of international law, including drafting of its guidelines for opposition fighting. As part of LFJL’s Destoori project, she accompanied a team of Libyan lawyers and social activists, who travelled to over 35 communities across Libya in order to engage members of the public in discussions about the upcoming constitutional drafting process.

Elham has been a keynote speaker at various events including at Chatham House and ‘Milestones in International Criminal Justice’, on several panels at the Hay Festival Beirut, discussing women’s rights in Libya, as well as the end of dictatorship and the road to democracy and at the event ‘Through the Lens of Nuremburg: the International Criminal Court at its Tenth Anniversary’. Elham’s media appearances include BBC World Service, Radio 4, Channel 4 News, BBC News and Al Jazeera.

After finishing her degree in Arabic and Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, Elham studied law at Nottingham Law School. Elham practised commercial law at Slaughter and May, a leading corporate law firm in the City of London, from 2003 to 2010.  In that period, she had a finance practice and her clients included Arsenal Football Club, Cadbury plc, Whitbread plc, COLT, and the World Bank.

She completed an LLM in International Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2011, obtaining a Distinction. Her focus was on international human rights law and international humanitarian law, with her dissertation entitled “The ‘Protected Revolution’: The Libyan Uprising and the Responsibility to Protect.”

Elham is also an Associate Fellow in the International Law Programme at Chatham House, an independent policy institute based in London.

Elham is fluent in Arabic, English and Spanish.