International Relations
and
International Law

Having lived in the United States for an academic year and acted in a de facto representative of my country and culture, it was only natural that I would gravitate toward the field of political science and international relations. Apparently, there are only so many times someone can insinuate that you are an ambassador before you decide to go for the title.

International Relations

I studied political science and specialized in international relations at the American University in Cairo (AUC), where not only did I get to learn the subject matter but also to engage in intense, deep, and invigorating discussions with my professors and colleagues. Afterall, I was only halfway through my undergraduate career when what came to be known as the Arab Spring swept through the region.

By the time I graduated with my Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, I had long abandoned any thought of being and/or becoming a diplomat. I had understood enough about politics, international relations, and history to realize that I would not be able to make the changes in the world that I wanted to see. It also does not help when you come from a small country that rarely gets a participating "seat at the table."

Instead of fulfilling the vision of being a diplomat, I found my fulfillment in other endeavors. Mainly, the field of development and the field of international law.

International Law

As part of my undergraduate studies, I learned about international law. Despite how vast and diverse the field is, what I found most fascinating was the use of language. International law is one of the few fields that I know of where practitioners use the same words even when they cannot agree on their meaning. More exciting still, they use the same words to mean one thing and its opposite.

As someone who grew up in a culture with a rich history of riddles and tongue-twisters, I could not resist, and so I enrolled in the International and Comparative Law Master of Laws program at AUC. I met, learned from, and worked with someone of the most brilliant and critical minds in the discipline.

As a member of the AUC Jessup moot court competition team, I had the amazing opportunity of arguing a case in front of some of the most esteemed practitioners and scholars and of meeting ICJ judges and people who wrote the literal book on international law. It also does not hurt that our team came away with some high honors.

My engagement to international law came to an end in 2022 and culminated in my graduate thesis in which I examine the relationship between humanitarian principles and action and their effect on the notion of state sovereignty. I use the cases of Kosovo, Afghanistan, and even Ukraine to demonstrate the crux of my argument.

Read it here: The Violence in Our Humanity: Principles, Action, and the Erosion of State Sovereignty.