Dr Nadia Awad

Palestine Expert — Human Rights, Political Situation & Asylum Cases

Expert at The Human Rights Experts, an international expert witness organisation.

We provide expert witness reports for asylum cases worldwide, covering human rights violations, political persecution, and systemic oppression. Our reports are trusted by lawyers, courts, and immigration authorities, in full compliance with procedural standards and tribunal requirements in the UK (CPR Part 35, Upper Tribunal PD, First-tier Tribunal IAC PD), USA (Federal Rules of Evidence), Canada, and the EU.

Occupation

• Country Witness Expert on Palestine and Israel
• Human Rights Specialist
• Legal Researcher and Academic Consultant
• Independent Journalist and Investigative Reporter on Human Rights

Expertise

I provide expert analysis on all five Refugee Convention grounds — political opinion, religion, ethnicity, membership of a particular social group (including LGBT and gender-based cases), and nationality — with a focus on the following countries:

Palestine: Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem face a comprehensive system of military occupation and administrative control that restricts movement, demolishes homes, and subjects communities to collective punishment through closures, permit regimes, and settler violence backed by security forces. Political activists, journalists, and community organisers affiliated with factions opposing the occupation — as well as critics of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas — face arbitrary detention and torture by Israeli military authorities and Palestinian security services alike. Women in Gaza face severe restrictions on movement and personal autonomy under Hamas governance, and honour-based violence persists across Palestinian territories with inadequate legal protections. LGBT Palestinians face acute danger from family and community violence with no institutional protection, and the fragmented jurisdictional landscape leaves populations in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem subject to different and overlapping systems of law that deny consistent access to rights and remedies.

Israel: While Israel maintains democratic institutions for its citizens, Palestinian citizens of Israel face structural discrimination in land allocation, planning permissions, education funding, and political participation, with the 2018 Nation-State Law codifying Jewish national identity as the exclusive basis for self-determination. Asylum seekers and migrants, particularly from Eritrea and Sudan, face prolonged detention, denial of refugee status determination, and coercive policies designed to compel departure, while Bedouin communities in the Negev face home demolitions and denial of services in unrecognized villages. Women from ultra-Orthodox and conservative religious communities face barriers to divorce, custody, and economic independence under religious court jurisdiction, and LGBT individuals from Palestinian, Arab, and ultra-Orthodox communities face family and community persecution that state protections do not adequately address. Ethiopian-Israeli citizens continue to experience discrimination in policing, education, and employment.

Experience

• Provided expert witness reports and oral testimony in over 75 asylum and immigration cases before UK tribunals and US immigration courts, covering political persecution, military occupation, and the treatment of minorities in Palestine and Israel.
• Submitted expert assessments to the Upper Tribunal and Federal Immigration Courts on the viability of internal relocation, the permit and closure regime in the West Bank and Gaza, and the treatment of Palestinian political detainees under Israeli military law.
• Authored detailed country condition reports on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, settler violence in the West Bank, and the legal status of Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem for legal aid practitioners and international organisations.
• Served as Senior Researcher and Lecturer in Human Rights Law and Middle Eastern Politics at Birzeit University, conducting extensive fieldwork on displacement, land confiscation, and access to justice in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
• Collaborated with international human rights bodies and non-governmental organisations to document violations of international humanitarian law, including settlement expansion, administrative detention, and restrictions on freedom of movement. Expert member of The Human Rights Experts.

Full professional experience is available in the CV. Please email us to receive the detailed expert CV.

Publications

Available upon request and detailed in the expert CV.

Languages

• Arabic (Native)
• English (Fluent)
• Hebrew (Professional proficiency)

Religious Groups Expertise

All religious groups

Contact Email

info@thehuman-rights.com