International Criminal Court Bar Association

Haydee Dijkstal is a UK barrister and US attorney with over 15 years of experience practicing international criminal and human rights law before international tribunals including the ICC. Haydee’s practice includes work before the ICC, ICTY, SCSL, ECtHR, African Commission and Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and various UN bodies.  Haydee has been a member of legal teams before the International Criminal Court since 2011 representing parties including the defence, victims and Governments. Haydee has extensive experience with victim representation before the ICC.  She is currently representing victims at the ICC in the Situation in Afghanistan and Situation in Ukraine, and previously acted on legal teams for victims in a number of other situations and to raise victims’ interests in Article 15 submissions. Other instructions before the ICC include acting on the defence team for Abdullah Al-Senussi in the Libya Situation; and on the legal team for the Kenyan Government. In addition, she has been instructed as counsel for amicus curiae submissions before the Court.

I was sworn in to the Bar of Senegal on March 9, 1990. This long experience allowed me to familiarize myself with the different legal systems and instruments of the world. In addition to my registration on the ICC List of Counsel, I am also registered on the List of Counsel for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. In addition, I am a Member of the Executive Council of the Coalition for an African Court and President of the Senegalese Section of Avocats-Sans Frontières. I was Vice-President of the Senegalese League of Human Rights and representative of counsel on the Advisory Committee of the Court. I also led one of the teams of lawyers, before the Extraordinary African Chambers. I have also been duty counsel on many occasions, in the situation of Côte d'Ivoire and Burundi. In addition to having participated in practically all the training sessions organized by the Registry for Counsel, I was also part of the team of Expert Trainers twice, at the sessions held in Arusha and The Hague, in the months of February and June 2016. Finally, I am currently part of the LRV team in the Central Africa II case.

Megan Hirst is an Australian lawyer, practicing from the London bar. She has been working at and before the ICC since 2009, with a particular focus on victim participation. At the ICC she has undertaken victim representation in the Ongwen Case, the Bangladesh/Myanmar Situation and the Afghanistan Situation. From 2019 until 2022 she was International Lead Co-Lawyer for victims participating as civil parties in Case 002/02 at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Megan was previously a legal officer in the Registries of the ICC and the STL, primarily working on victim participation. Megan has previously served three terms on the Executive Council (2019-2021, 2023-2024) and in 2019-2021 was also Vice President for Victims and a member of the Victims’ Committee.

Jessica Lescs is a practising lawyer in France. She has been defending victims of international crimes, asylum seekers and refugees before national, regional and international courts and authorities for over ten years. She is currently particularly active in defending the families of Afghan refugees and foreigners shipwrecked in the English Channel and the Mediterranean sea. Former legal officer with the Pre-Trial Chambers of the International Criminal Court on the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur, she worked on the Court's first decisions on victim participation and reparation. She also acted as legal counsel for Avocats sans frontières France before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and in the Legal Affairs Division of the French Office for the Protection of Refugees. She was a member of the French coalition for the International Criminal Court. For nearly fifteen years, she taught international criminal law at University, and Sciences Po Paris, and for three years directed the training of Counsel on the ICC list.

Kimberley Motley has been a litigator for 20 years, with a focus on international criminal law, human rights, and victim rights.  She is admitted lawyer in the ICC as Counsel, U.S. Supreme Court, Federal District Courts in Wisconsin, Colorado, and Oklahoma, the U.S. Appellate Courts in the 2nd, 4th, 7th, 9th, and 10th districts.  In 2008 she an international law practice in Afghanistan and became the first and only foreigner litigating in the criminal, civil, and commercial courts.  Her success has included securing a Presidential Pardon for an Afghan woman charged with adultery which subsequently decriminalized running away as a crime in Afghanistan, successfully working on international child abduction cases which resulted in the return of British and Australian children between the ages of 2 to 10, and representing the Prime Minister of Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim. Her work has been internationally reported and she has trained and/or mentored thousands of lawyers around the world on how to practice law in their respective jurisdictions.  Additionally, her work was profiled in an award-winning documentary entitled MOTLEY’s LAW.  She has written a book entitled LAWLESS, and her TED TALK  on:  How  Defend the Rule of Law has garnered over a 1.2 million views.

Anand A. Shah is an American attorney, and presently Associate Counsel on the team of the Common Legal Representative of Victims in the Abd-Al-Rahman (“Ali Kushayb”) trial before the ICC. Prior to this he assisted in the representation of defendants in the Darfur, Kenya and Libya Situations before the ICC, in cases before the STL, and acted as counsel before the ICC Disciplinary Board. He is the current ICCBA Vice President for Victims, and has previously served on the Executive Council, as well as the following Committees: Victims, Professional Standards, Amicus, Legal Advisory, and Counsel Support Staff. He has also taken a leading role on ICCBA working groups addressing matters of legal aid, taxation, and work place harassment.

Regina is a human rights barrister based in Tasmania, Australia, where her domestic civil practice as counsel principally relates to historical sexual and serious physical institutional abuse of minors and other vulnerable persons. From 2007 to 2016, Regina was an ICC prosecution lawyer in the formative years of the Court, where she worked on cases emanating from Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo amongst others. She prosecuted war crimes and crimes against humanity including sexual and gender-based violence in the context of large-scale atrocities, worked in situ with victims and witnesses of SGBV and has appeared as prosecution counsel before the Pre-Trial and Trial Chambers of the ICC. Prior to her call to the Bar, Regina held senior legal positions in the Australian Federal Government. Regina is also Chair of the Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Committee in Tasmania and an advisory board member of the Hague Justice Portal.