Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar, Global Health & Humanitarianism

Graduate Student Scholar

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Sarah has worked for over 12 years with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a senior protection officer and senior cluster coordinator. She has worked in areas of human rights, refugee, and international humanitarian law. In her work she supported the development of protection policies for UN/NGO humanitarian country teams; assisted governments with the development of legislation and policy related to internally displaced persons (IDP); designed capacity-building programs on international protection and displacement for armed actors and civil society; developed protection monitoring systems for response and advocacy; and coordinated UN/NGO actors on inter-agency protection platforms.

Her last position was as head of office in Northern Somalia, managing a multifaceted program covering refugees, IDPs, and persons in mixed flows (refugees/migrants). She has also worked with Oxfam, CAFOD UK, and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. At Pearson, she facilitated integrated training courses for NATO/ISAF and UN Mission senior commanders. 

Sarah has lived and worked in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, covering various displacement situations, including in Afghanistan, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria. She has also worked at UNHCR Headquarters at the Global Protection Cluster covering various internal displacement situations, such as those in the Central African Republic, Colombia, Iraq, and the Philippines. 

She is a lawyer by training, with a BA LLB Hons. degree from the National Law School at India University and a master of arts in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Sarah is excited to apply her extensive field operations practice to research as an LLM research student at Osgoode Hall Law School and as a Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar at the Dahdaleh Institute. In the last year, she has completed a research project on the Canadian Armed Forces and the need for a protection of civilians policy. She is currently undertaking a year-long research project on "The Orthodox Framework Governing the Protection of Civilians (POC) Harm of Displacement and NATO's POC Policy 2016."

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