We are delighted to announce that Sangeetha Iengar has joined Garden Court Chambers as a new tenant.
Sangeetha is an award-winning and experienced public law practitioner with over 15 years of experience as a specialist in asylum, immigration and international human rights matters. Sangeetha’s prominence at the Bar has grown through her professional practice, her public voice, her judicial experience, her academic posts and her significant pro bono work.
Sangeetha has been consistently ranked a ‘Leading Junior’ in the Legal 500 Directories. Her expertise is well recognised within the profession. She is winner of the International Pro Bono Barrister of the Year Award 2020, and was finalist as the Rising Star for the Women in the Law Awards and Under-35 Barrister of the Year at the Inspirational Women in the Law Awards.
Alongside her practice, Sangeetha sits as a fee paid Judge in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber. She has also been appointed Senior Research Scholar at Yale University and Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Through her scholarship, Sangeetha is examining how the intersections of labour mobility, climate, migration and human rights can work together to create legal pathways for tangible change.
Sangeetha has acted in several landmark cases over the course of her career, having carved her niche at the Bar through her dedication to promoting the rights of the most disadvantaged groups. Sangeetha advises individuals and organisations on issues related to international human rights breaches, deprivation of liberty, arbitrary detention and cross-border ill treatment.
She has a particular interest in sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) matters that intersect with immigration issues. Sangeetha was instructed by the Global Survivors Fund to advise on the feasibility of using international sanctions and terrorist financing legislation to fund reparations for Yazidi victims of sexual violence in conflict through a global fund.
Sangeetha regularly acts in matters involving UK treaty and charter bodies and brings cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Most recently, she has advised on a high-profile case of arbitrary detention in West Africa.
Sangeetha has advised Governments on a broad range of rule of law, human rights and criminal justice issues and has experience working in and navigating pluralistic legal contexts and fragile states. She has spent several years ‘on the ground’ advising governments of fragile states and parties in conflict zones.
This has involved advising Governments on improving access to justice for vulnerable communities, proposing structural improvements to formal criminal justice systems, advising on capital punishment cases, and implementing community-based justice solutions regionally. All of her work has focused on improving access to legal rights for the most vulnerable of communities.
Sangeetha is currently acting for four Long Covid organisations who are Core Participants in four modules of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. This involves representing a unique Core Participant group of patient advocates who stand for the interests of over 2 million surviving victims of the virus.
Prior to her judicial appointment, Sangeetha regularly appeared in the media providing expert legal opinion on international law, immigration and human rights issues on the radio, TV and print media. Sangeetha is a TEDx speaker and regularly gives keynote addresses. Her first TEDx talk entitled ‘Why Stripping Rights from Migrants Strips Rights from Everyone’ has been shortlisted to appear on TED.com. Sangeetha will be giving a second TEDx talk in January 2025 on global migration and climate change.
Sangeetha has published policy papers and reports on a broad range of human rights, rule of law and migration issues. She has led and facilitated several trainings globally for DFID, the UK Foreign Office, the World Bank, UNDP and the European Commission (DEVCO). Sangeetha regularly gives expert opinion to the press on international human rights issues.
Sangeetha is committed to pro bono work and views this as a central pillar of her practice. She sits as President of the Board of Fenix Humanitarian Legal Aid, a legal NGO serving asylum seekers in Greece and sits on the Global Advisory Panel of SAHR, an NGO striving to end impunity for SGBV.
Sangeetha is qualified to accept instructions via the public access scheme. Find out more about Sangeetha’s practice and how to instruct her here.
Get in contact with Sangeetha’s clerks at contactmyclerks@gclaw.co.uk
