Yousuf Syed Khan is a nonresident senior fellow with the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council.

Khan has over twelve years of legal experience dealing with complex conflict situations, with specific expertise on the contributions and practice of United Nations (UN) atrocity inquiries. He has served on four commissions/investigative accountability bodies established by the UN Human Rights Council, regarding situations in Syria, South Sudan, Belarus, and Ethiopia. In these capacities, he conceptualized and led the drafting of over a dozen public UN reports, including the first ever report by a UN-mandated mechanism on starvation as a method of warfare. Several of his most visible legal contributions have centered on the use of siege warfare, attacks against objects indispensable to the survival of a civilian population, and forced displacement as a warring strategy.

In addition to these roles, Khan has worked in human rights with the UN in Afghanistan (both in Kabul and in a Taliban stronghold on the southeast border with Pakistan); led a team monitoring the post-ISIS administration of justice countrywide with the UN in Iraq; and served with the Trial Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Before joining the United Nations, he was a legal consultant to Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni, analyzing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Libya. Khan has published various peer-reviewed articles and chapters in renowned international journals and edited volumes. He holds a JD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an Advanced LLM in Public International Law from Leiden University, where he wrote his thesis under the supervision of eminent jurist John Dugard. Having worked in ten countries across four continents, he currently operates between Kyiv and Geneva.