Lamya

 
1. Who are you, and can you tell us about the pro bono project you have been working on? 

My name is Lamya, and I am a 2025–26 Critical Race Studies Fellow and LL.M. graduate specializing in International and Comparative Law. I received my LL.B. and B.A. (Hons) in History from the University of Sydney. I was very fortunate to work with The Promise Institute on a pro bono project for the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation. The project examined the role of water during armed conflict for inclusion in a future report. In my case study of Gaza and the West Bank I looked at the denial and manipulation of water access, and how this could be seen as a form of collective punishment against civilian populations. 

What first drew you to pro bono work, and what made you want to be involved with this project specifically? 

Not all law schools offer the chance to do pro bono work for international organizations (let alone with the U.N.) so when this opportunity came up, I knew I wanted to take it. I was drawn to this project in particular because it engaged with the realities of violence in Gaza and the West Bank in a way that felt both urgent and often underexamined in broader international discussions. I felt really fortunate to contribute in a small but concrete way, to legal work that seeks to unearth and confront those realities. It also offered a chance to apply my legal skills in a context that felt personally and intellectually meaningful. 

Can you share a moment during your work on the project that challenged your perspective on law, justice, or advocacy? 

This project reinforced for me that rights on paper do not automatically translate into protection or accountability in practice. I was struck by the gap between legal frameworks and lived realities, and how unevenly different experiences are recognized within legal systems. It challenged me to see law not just as doctrine, but as a process of translating lived experience into legal language, and how critical that translation is to meaningful human rights work.  Advocacy, in turn, felt less about applying existing rules and more about making certain realities legally visible and legible.  
 

What skills or insights have you gained through this experience that you feel will stay with you in your future career?

I touched on this above, but this project taught me how to identify and assess different forms of evidence and connect them to legal analysis. It made me more aware that legal arguments (especially regarding human rights) are built not only through doctrine, but through choices about what information is treated as credible, what is foregrounded, and how different pieces of information can be assembled into a coherent legal narrative. Learning how to give that depth and context to a case will stay with me for a long time in my career.  
 

For those graduating this semester: how has working on this project shaped the kind of lawyer or professional you hope to become, and what is next for you after graduation? 

I want to become a big-picture thinker, and ultimately a lawyer who is comfortable working in international law and deeply understands what it is grounded in. Even if you work in a domestic sphere, I think there is a lot to be learned from international law because it forces you to think back to first principles. For example, what rights mean, where they come from, and how they are meant to operate across very different contexts. That return to fundamentals feels valuable because it gives you a way of thinking that is less dependent on any single jurisdiction, and more attentive to the ideas that underpin legal systems more broadly. (Which is especially useful for lawyers working in the common law tradition!). I think it can make you more creative and exploratory in your legal thinking. That is what I hope to bring into my development as a lawyer, especially as I plan to keep working in litigation.  
  

What would you say to other students who are considering joining a pro bono project for the first time? 

I would say: choose what genuinely interests you, and do not worry about whether or not you are qualified enough to assist with the work. Imposter syndrome is real, especially when you are a student with limited legal experience, and it can easily make you second-guess whether you belong in the room. But at this stage, what matters less is what you already know, and more whether you are willing to engage fully with the work in front of you. Law school can sometimes feel abstract or draining, so I would see pro bono work less as an obligation and more as an opportunity to reconnect with the reasons you came to law school in the first place.