Rayhan Asat

Guest Author

Rayhan Asat (@RayhanAsat) is a nonresident senior fellow with the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council. As an international human rights lawyer, she focuses on international human rights, atrocity prevention, the rule of law, civil liberties, corporate accountability, and international law. She also is Tom and Andi Bernstein Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School, and a senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and former anti-corruption attorney at a major U.S. law firm, Rayhan has worked on high-profile corruption cases. Rayhan specializes in international human rights law, anti-corruption, and compliance with best business practices. Her legal and policy work centers around enforcing international human rights norms, fighting against corruption, advancing civil liberties, atrocity prevention, curtailing forced labor, and promoting corporate accountability. She previously advised the World Bank and OECD to design Human-Centered Business Integrity Principles, and now works with civil society, diplomats, and lawmakers to address various human rights concerns, particularly the atrocities in Xinjiang. Rayhan has testified before the Canadian House of Commons, The UK House of Commons, the Lithuanian Parliament and the US Congress at a joint hearing called by the China-Congressional Executive Commission and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission concerning egregious human rights abuses. Western democracies and lawmakers, including the United States, have adopted her policy recommendations in their atrocity prevention and response strategy.

Rayhan has been featured in various media outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, Foreign Policy, CNN, Deutsche Welle, Harvard Law Today, Canadian Lawyers Magazine, and Al-Jazeera, among others. As an attorney and policy advisor, her writing has also been published in many legal journals, and her opinions have appeared in Foreign Policy, NBC News, The Hill Magazine, and other prominent publications.

While at Harvard, she co-taught a course with a leading business school professor on emerging markets. She is a sought-after speaker before national and international forums and has given seminars at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and many other universities and institutions. She is a featured speaker at the Geneva Summit for Democracy and Human Rights 2021. For her human rights work and leadership, she received a prestigious Yale World Fellow recognition.

As part of her mission to mentor and educate aspiring lawyers and activists, Rayhan coached American University law moot court team for three consecutive years.