Ashika Singh is a counsel and a member of the International Dispute Resolution Group.
Ms. Singh joined Debevoise in 2017. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Singh was the Forrester Fellow at Tulane University Law School. From 2011 to 2015, she was an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where she advised the Department on various legal issues relating to military operations, counterterrorism, and diplomatic security. She also represented the United States before multilateral bodies and coordinated with the interagency on international legal claims in Guantanamo military commission prosecutions and other federal cases. Ms. Singh received Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards from the State Department for her work on Guantanamo detainee issues and human rights in armed conflict. Before joining the State Department, Ms. Singh worked as an international litigation and arbitration associate at an international law firm in New York.
Ms. Singh regularly speaks and writes on public international law, particularly international human rights law and international humanitarian law. She is the co-author of a Symposium on U.S. Support for the ICC’s Trust Fund for Victims, Just Security (2023). She is also the author of “The United States, the Torture Convention, and Lex Specialis: The Quest for a Coherent Approach to the CAT in Armed Conflict,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review (2016); “The Trump Administration and the ‘Unmaking’ of International Agreements,” Harvard International Law Journal (2018, with Catherine Amirfar); “Good Governance Paper No. 12: Treaty Withdrawals,” Just Security (2020,with Catherine Amirfar).
Ms. Singh is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), where she served on the Program Committee and currently serves on the Executive Council. Currently, she serves as the Co-Chair of the International Humanitarian Law Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association, and served as the Co-Chair for International Law Weekend 2019 as well as on the Program Committee for International Law Weekend 2018.
Ms. Singh clerked for Judge Norman H. Stahl of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 2007 to 2008 and for the ICC Court of Arbitration in 2005. Ms. Singh obtained her J.D. magna cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was a member of the Order of the Coif and an editor for the NYU Law Review. She also received an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge and an A.B. magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard College.