Fahim Abrar Abid

I hold an LLB (Honours) with High Distinction from BRAC University, Bangladesh. As an Erasmus Mundus Scholar, I obtained an LLM in International Law of Global Security, Peace and Development from the University of Glasgow, UK, a Master's in International Security from the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, Spain, and an MA in International Law and Human Rights from the University of Tartu, Estonia, each with Distinction. I have been an Open Society Foundation Scholar at Central European University, Austria, as well as in Birkbeck, University of London, studying Critical Theory. As an A.A. van der Kaa Scholarship awardee, I have received training from Tilburg University on conflict-related sexual violence and on the trafficking of human beings. Also, I have been an Mundus Awardee of the Advance training in Public International Law at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Germany.

I accept instructions on six countries. I set out below the basis of my expertise in each, and its limits, so that those instructing me can assess its suitability for a given case.

Bangladesh (22 opinions)

Bengali is my first language, and I work directly with Bangladeshi statutes, law reports, court records, gazette notifications and the Bengali-language press. As Coordinator of the Bangladesh Campaign at Global Human Rights Defence, a UN ECOSOC-accredited organisation, I directed country-conditions research on minority rights through the July 2024 uprising, the fall of the Awami League government and the interim administration, and am lead author of the Annual Human Rights Report 2024: Election, July Revolution, and Minorities in Bangladesh. My peer-reviewed work includes studies of the criminalisation of civil wrongs and its compatibility with the ICCPR, and of the human rights failures preceding the 2024 uprising, both in the Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Brill 2025); work on the Jumma peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Routledge 2025); and research on internet shutdowns and surveillance during the July Revolution. I curated the Cambridge International Law Journal Blog symposium on the July Revolution and co-edit the two-volume Bangladesh, International Law and Security in post-July 2024 (Springer, forthcoming). My LLB thesis addressed the right to education in the Rohingya context.

Issues: political opinion and party affiliation, including Awami League, Chhatra League, Jubo League, BNP, Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Chhatra Shibir; the persistence of local political networks after the 2024 transition and the February 2026 elections; honour-based violence and forced marriage; Hindu and Christian religious minorities; fabricated criminal proceedings and misuse of process; detention conditions; sur place activity; state protection and internal relocation. I also undertake documentary verification against Bangladeshi court and police registers, including first information reports, general diaries and court orders.

India (3 opinions)

My expertise on India derives from sustained academic research. My Master's thesis at the University of Tartu, jointly assessed by the University of Glasgow, examined security, religion and refugee children's right to education before the Indian courts and under international human rights law. My Master's thesis at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals examined regime change and securitised push-backs in India's border strategy following Bangladesh's July 2024 revolution. I serve as National Consultant for India and Bangladesh to the Institute for Human Rights at the China University of Political Science and Law on a study of ethnic and religious minorities, and I teach ethnicity, citizenship and human rights at the Rohingya Academic Research Institute. I also speak Hindi fluently.

Issues: the position of religious minorities and the treatment of converts; anti-conversion legislation at state level; communal violence and the response of state authorities; caste-based discrimination; citizenship, documentation and statelessness; the treatment of refugees and irregular migrants, including push-backs at the Bangladesh border; the practical operation of FIR registration and police response; state protection and internal relocation.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Somalia (Total 47 opinions)

My expertise on these four countries rests on a common foundation and I set it out once. It derives from my regional research remit at Global Human Rights Defence, a UN ECOSOC-accredited organisation, where my work covered minority and refugee rights across South Asia and the position of undocumented populations, including in Iran; from my postgraduate specialisation in international security at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, including terrorism and counter-terrorism and the governance practices of violent non-state and quasi-state armed actors, with Al-Shabaab among the cases examined; and from my study of the protection of marginalised groups in international human rights law at the University of Tartu.

I am Principal Investigator of the research project Non-State Actors and Protection: Sufficiency of Protection Where the State Is Absent, Captured or Hostile, for which these four countries are the country strands. The project examines the different relationships in which non-state actors stand to the protective function of the state: in Somalia, where clan and kinship structures substitute for an absent central authority; in Pakistan, where a functioning state is displaced locally by family, community and party-affiliated structures; in Afghanistan, where the feared actor now controls the policing, intelligence and judicial institutions; and in Iran, where the state exercises coercion in part through delegated and informal structures. That comparative framework underpins my assessment of sufficiency of protection and internal relocation in each.

I state the limits of this expertise. I speak Urdu, which assists with Pakistani oral and broadcast material. I do not read Dari, Pashto, Persian, Kurdish or Somali, and for those sources I rely on translation and on English-language specialist reporting, including Kurdish and Iranian human rights organisations. I have not conducted fieldwork in any of these four countries, and my assessments rest on published country-of-origin information and academic literature. Where a question requires localised knowledge beyond what that material supports — tribal or provincial dynamics in Afghanistan, or clan genealogy and sub-clan territorial control in Somalia — I say so rather than extrapolate.

The issues on which I accept instructions in each country are as follows.

Pakistan (22 opinions) — honour-based violence, forced marriage and marriage contracted without family consent, including the operation of jirga, panchayat and biradari structures and the Criminal Law (Amendment) (Offences in the Name or Pretext of Honour) Act 2016; domestic violence and the position of divorced and remarried women; sexual orientation and gender identity; religious minorities, including Christians and Ahmadis, and blasphemy allegations; political opinion, including Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf affiliation and proceedings arising from the events of 9 May 2023, and PML, JUD and TTP-related claims; misuse of the criminal process and FIR registration where a complainant is politically or socially influential; the effect of NADRA biometric registration, tenant registration, SIM verification and call data records on traceability; state protection and internal relocation.

Afghanistan (12 opinions) — reprisal against persons formerly associated with the displaced government and its security forces, including the Afghan Local Police, Arbaki and auxiliary structures; the 2021 general amnesty and its enforcement in practice; imputed political opinion arising from alleged collaboration with foreign forces, foreign-linked companies or contractors; the capacity of the present authorities to identify such persons through inherited records, biometric material and local informant networks; risk arising from disputes with individual Taliban figures; tazkira documentation; nationality and statelessness, including children born in Iran to undocumented Afghan parents; the absence of protection where the feared actor controls the state apparatus; internal relocation.

Iran (5 opinions) — the position of Kurdish populations, particularly in the border provinces of West Azerbaijan and Kurdistan; low-level affiliation with Kurdish political organisations including Komala and the KDPI, and kolbar work; surveillance by the Ettelaat and the operation of informant networks; Christian converts and house-church participants; sur place demonstration and social-media activity and the monitoring of nationals abroad; illegal exit, returnee screening and risk at the point of return; national-security offences and the Revolutionary Courts; the cumulative assessment of risk factors under HB (Kurds) Iran CG [2018] UKUT 00430 (IAC) and SSH and HR (Iran) CG [2016] UKUT 308 (IAC); nationality law under Articles 976, 979 and 983 of the Civil Code and the Civil Registration Law, and the treatment of undocumented Afghan populations.

Somalia (8 opinions) — coercive recruitment by Al-Shabaab and retaliation against those who refuse, escape or assist the departure of others; the persistence of adverse interest over time and distance; the extent and limits of territorial control and the group's reach into areas nominally under government authority; clan and kinship protection, including xeer and diya-paying structures; minority and occupational-caste clan status, including Gabooye; criminal groups operating with the appearance of official authority; state protective capacity; internal relocation and the application of MOJ & Ors (Return to Mogadishu) Somalia CG [2014] UKUT 00442 (IAC) and subsequent country guidance.

Across all six countries I do not hold expertise in purely medical, psychiatric or forensic document-examination matters and express no opinion on them. I make no findings on credibility, which is a matter for the Tribunal.