Shabnam Mojtahedi is ICNL’s Legal Advisor for Digital Rights, providing technical assistance on how technology impacts civic space, freedom of expression, and privacy online. She works with local, regional, and international coalitions to promote an enabling environment for civil society in the digital realm through legal analysis, trainings, and other capacity building initiatives that seek to improve civil society’s understanding of international legal standards as well as legal and non-legal strategies for addressing existing and emerging digital challenges.

Prior to joining ICNL, Shabnam worked with Benetech’s Human Rights Program, leading efforts to apply artificial intelligence to human rights and war crimes investigations in Syria and beyond. For over four years she was the Legal and Strategy Analyst with the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) where she developed and oversaw methodologies for SJAC’s documentation collection, data analysis, and human rights reporting. At SJAC, she advanced strategies on how to leverage new technologies and social media to assist in the documentation and analysis of human rights violations. She holds a J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law.