Leslie Haskell advises on the campaign to bring former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré to justice for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and torture. This case involves several African countries, the African Union, Belgium, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice.
 
Haskell joined Human Rights Watch in September 2007 as a researcher in the Africa division. She spent nearly four years working on Rwanda, focusing primarily on justice and reconciliation after the 1994 genocide. Haskell conducted extensive field research on Rwanda’s community-based gacaca courts – responsible for trying more than one million genocide suspects – and the conventional court system. She researched a wide range of restrictions on civil and political rights in Rwanda and investigated political killings in the run-up to presidential elections in 2010. In 2011, Haskell researched election-related violence in Nigeria and sexual violence against women fleeing the Ivory Coast for Liberia in 2011.
 
Before joining Human Rights Watch, Haskell worked as a lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. Haskell also served as a criminal defense and litigation attorney in the United States. She graduated from Georgetown University Law Center and has degrees in international relations and French from Northwestern University.