Sarah Khan

Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar, Osgoode Hall Law School

Graduate Student Scholar

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Sarah is an LLM research student at Osgoode Hall Law School and as a Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar where she will apply her extensive field operations practice to research. She 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.

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."

Recently Sarah has published in the Deccan Herald, titled India’s arms export is growing, so must its scrutiny, regarding arms exports by India and the protection of civilians.

As well, Sarah was invited to speak at a 6-7 February 2025 conference titled, "Protecting Civilians in Turbulent Times: An Interdisciplinary Workshop" organized by the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo. The topic of her talk was, "Definition of Protection of Civilians: Many definitions, common commitment". In this talk she examined the definition of protection of civilians in the United Nations, European Union, African Union, NATO and among humanitarian organizations and individual member states. She offered suggestions on how to work these varying definitions –for the common commitment to crisis affected people. The conference had speakers from the UN Department of Peace Operations, the African Union, International Crisis group, as well as academics in various disciplines like law and international relations from different institutions namely, Harvard University, McGill University, Swathmore College as well as the Balsillie School. The conference was attended by practitioners, policy makers and PhD and graduate students.

Sarah was also invited to be participant in a panel discussion on "Beyond Compliance:
International Humanitarian Law, Humanitarian Need and Civilian Harm in Armed Conflict": https://peacerep.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Beyond-Compliance-International-Humanitarian-Law-in-Armed-Conflict.pdf

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