About Us

Our Team

Rawan Arraf – Executive Director & Principal Lawyer

Rawan is a lawyer with a background in refugee protection, administrative law and international human rights law. She is an experienced and passionate advocate most interested in providing support to affected communities, lawyers and social movements make change possible.

She has over 15 years of legal practice in the public and community legal sectors. She was a senior solicitor at the Refugee Advice and Casework Service in Sydney and worked on challenging and complex cases, including assisting stateless refugee children born in Australia obtain Australian citizenship. Rawan trained in the community legal sector at Community Legal Centres NSW and Redfern Legal Centre.

In 2019, Rawan founded the Australian Centre for International Justice, Australia’s first international justice legal centre. She is actively engaged with lawyers and organisations working on universal jurisdiction litigation globally and in 2018 Rawan trained with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights working closely with the International Crimes and Accountability team on universal jurisdiction matters.

Rawan is an arts and law graduate of the University of Sydney and is a Master of Laws candidate at the University of New South Wales. She has completed specialist human rights and international law courses at the European University Institute in Florence. Rawan is a member of the Global Network of Movement Lawyers hosted by Movement Law Lab and completed specialist training with the Lab in 2020. She is a fellow of the Centre for Australian Progress. Rawan is also a board director at Australia’s eminent legal centre, the Human Rights Law Centre.

Lara Khider – Senior Lawyer

Lara has extensive experience in transnational criminal law, white-collar crime, and sanctions advisory, having worked at a specialist criminal defence firm in Sydney. Before transitioning to criminal defence, Lara gained valuable experience in corporate law at a top-tier commercial firm and a multi-national professional services firm in Sydney. She is passionate about human rights, international criminal law, and public interest advocacy, reflected in her internships at various NGOs and at the Office of the Prosecutor for the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, Netherlands.

Lara graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and a Bachelor of Commerce (Professional Accounting) from Macquarie University in 2019. Currently, she is pursuing a Master of Laws with a specialisation in International Law at the Australian National University. In 2023, Lara completed a Summer Course on International Humanitarian Law at Leiden University. Additionally, she has completed an International Criminal Law Masterclass by the Association of Defence Counsel Practising before the International Courts and Tribunals, as well as a course on Public International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law in 2021.

Melissa Chen – Senior Lawyer (Casual)

Melissa Chen is an Australian lawyer with experience in the community, government and private sector. She began her career as a trainee solicitor at Fitzroy Legal Service in Melbourne, followed by work as a criminal lawyer at the Northern Territory Legal Aid Commission in Darwin. Immediately prior to joining ACIJ, Melissa was a legal officer in the Royal Australian Navy where she advised command in relation to administrative, discipline and international law.

Melissa is an Arts and Law graduate of the University of Sydney where she obtained first class honours and the university medal in law in 2016. She has lectured in transnational law at Charles Darwin University, been a seminar leader/tutor in Foundations of Law at the University of Sydney, assisted as a law tutor at both Women’s and Wesley Colleges, and worked as a PASS facilitator in criminal and public international law at the University of Sydney. Her pro-bono commitments include work as a volunteer solicitor at a community legal centre in Sydney and mentoring law students.

Sofia Yiannikas – Legal Advisor

Sofia Yiannikas began her legal career at a major commercial law firm in Sydney, and subsequently worked in the refugee protection and forced migration space. She worked in various roles including as refugee caseworker for Amnesty International and the Australian Red Cross, and as a humanitarian volunteer in Australian offshore immigration detention centres. She has researched humanitarian crisis response to forced migration in the Mediterranean for the Overseas Development Institute and has conducted reciprocal research with refugee communities from Myanmar living in India with the Centre for Refugee Research based at the University of New South Wales. Sofia has experience working with international crimes following her time with the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Tribunal, at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Sofia attended the University of Sydney, where she graduated with a Combined Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degree as well as a Master of Laws, with a specialisation in International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law. Sofia has also obtained a Master of Social Development (Refugees and Forced Displacement) from the University of New South Wales. She currently teaches International Humanitarian Law at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is co-founder and co-director of Hunar, a collective of academics and artists working with art practices that respond to conflict, crisis and colonisation, as part of her research interest in investigative aesthetics in the context of international crimes. Sofia has also trained in open-source investigation techniques.