It is our great pleasure today to introduce international human rights attorney Natasha Fain as an IntLawGrrls contributor.  Currently consulting with the UC Hastings Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, Natasha is a former staff attorney with the Center for Justice & Accountability (CJA).

At CJA, Natasha investigated and litigated Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act cases against perpetrators of human rights abuses found living in the United States.  She successfully litigated seven of CJA’s cases at every stage of the proceedings, working with CJA clients from El Salvador, Haiti, Chile, Somalia, and Peru.  She was the lead CJA attorney on the Yousuf v. Samantar case before the Supreme Court, which resulted in a unanimous ruling for Plaintiffs that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act did not shield individual defendants accused of human rights atrocities like Samantar.

Natasha joined CJA after working as a litigation associate with Morrison & Foerster LLP, where she practiced complex civil litigation and worked pro bono on civil rights and human rights cases and publications with the ACLU, Stop Prisoner Rape, the California Habeas Project, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

Natasha received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2003 and graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1998, receiving her B.A. in International Relations. She is admitted to practice in California and is fluent in French and Spanish.

Natasha’s first post will discuss her work with Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and a group of leading experts co-drafting an Amicus brief urging the Extraordinary African Chambers presiding over the trial of Chad’s Hissene Habré to revise the charges against Habré to more fully account for sexual crimes.  The Amicus brief explains how acts of sexual violence can and should be charged under the Court’s statute and customary international law. Heartfelt welcome!