Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies

Axana Soltan is an Afghan-American international lawyer whose work focuses on international criminal law, human rights, and gender justice — with a particular emphasis on advancing the recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. She is a Fellow with the United Nations Office of Legal Counsel in Geneva and a Global Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, where she co-authored the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda policy report for the MENA region, addressing women’s participation in peacebuilding and protection from conflict-related violence. Soltan is a graduate of the University of Oxford and The George Washington University Law School. She has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and is the recipient of the Palace of Justice Lifetime Achievement Award from the Supreme Court of Vienna, Austria.