Sareta specialises in international criminal, humanitarian, and human rights law. Since 2013, she has consistently been listed as a ranked practitioner in the field of International Criminal Law by Chambers and Partners.
International Criminal, Humanitarian and Human Rights Law
Sareta specialises in international criminal, humanitarian, and human rights law. She is currently a Senior Legal Consultant on projects directed towards furthering accountability efforts for crimes committed in Syria and Iraq, as well as on projects and litigation concerning the crime of genocide. She is a Visiting Scholar with the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.
From February to August 2019, Sareta was based in Iraq as the Senior Analyst on UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh (UNITAD). Prior to this, she was a senior legal consultant with the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Persons Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011, established in December 2016 by UN General Assembly resolution 71/248. She also was a consultant to the Global Justice Center in New York, researching and writing on “Gender, Genocide, and Obligations Under International Law”, as well as with the International Bar Association on a project on complementarity.
From May 2012 to November 2016, Sareta served as the Analyst on the International Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, documenting violations of international law in the context of the ongoing conflict in Syria. While there, Sareta led the investigation and drafting of the Commission's June 2016 report "They Came to Destroy: ISIS's Crimes Against the Yazidis", which determined that ISIS was committing the crime of genocide, as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes, in its attack on the Yazidis of northern Iraq.
Immediately prior to her work on the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, Sareta served as the Analyst on the International Independent Commission of Inquiry on Libya, examining alleged violations of international law by pro-Ghadhafi forces, anti-Ghadhafi armed groups, and NATO. In 2010 and 2011, Sareta was a Legal Adviser to the Office of the Public Counsel for the Defence in the International Criminal Court. In 2009, Sareta worked as a Legal Consultant to the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone Inquiry.
From 2004 to 2009, Sareta was Co-Counsel on the Defence team representing Issa Sesay (interim Leader of the Revolutionary United Front) at trial and on appeal before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. She has a continuing interest in access to justice issues in Sierra Leone and, in 2010, worked in Sierra Leone as a consultant to the Open Society Justice Initiative.
Sareta was a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics Middle East Centre in 2018, the Global Practitioner-in-Residence at Stanford Law School in 2017, and the Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School in 2015. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the International Legal Assistance Consortium, and serves on the Board of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. Sareta is also a HEAT-trained Deployable Civilian Expert (Gender, Conflict and Stability) with the UK's Stabilisation Unit, and is a rostered expert in the investigation of sexual- and gender-based violence with Justice Rapid Response.
