Region Area

Barristers

Nina Tavakoli

Nina Tavakoli

Position

Nina has a diverse practice that spans International Criminal Law and Inquiries both in the UK and internationally. She is ranked as a leading international criminal lawyer in UK legal directories Chambers UK and Legal 500, and is co-chair of Chambers’ International practice group.

Nina has extensive experience of genocide and war crimes prosecutions. She is currently Co-Counsel for Hashim Thaçi, former Kosovan President, who is on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. She has previously acted in ground-breaking cases before the International Criminal Court (Rohingya jurisdiction), the Special Court for Sierra Leone (President Charles Taylor), and numerous cases before the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Nina is highly experienced in International Investigations, with particular expertise working with male survivors of sexual violence and torture. She advises on best practice in war crimes investigations and on securing accountability for these crimes at the national and international levels.

Nina qualified as a solicitor in 2003. She transferred to the Bar in 2014, and for the first four years at the Bar concentrated almost exclusively on criminal trial work prosecuting and defending before the criminal courts at all levels.

Nina sits on Chambers’ Equality and Diversity Committee and is a mentor for the Kalisher Trust, a charity established to encourage and support students to pursue a career in the law and to promote a more diverse profession and judiciary.

Career

Called to the Bar: 2014

Inn: Inner Temple

Member of the UK Government’s team of independent experts on preventing sexual violence in conflict, 2012 (PSVI); and a justice expert in post-conflict and fragile states, 2014 (DCE)

JRR-UN Women sexual and gender-based violence roster of experts (2018)

Publications:

‘A crime that offends the conscience of humanity: a proposal to reclassify trafficking in women as an international crime’, International Criminal Law Review 9, 2009

Languages

French, Farsi

Memberships

International Bar Association: War Crimes Committee & Human Rights Institute

BHRC

CBA

South Eastern Circuit

Education

LLM Public International Law, London School of Economics

BA History (Hons), University of Birmingham

Mentions