Lyma was appointed List Counsel at the International Criminal Court in 2018 and in 2022, was appointed a member of the International Criminal Court Bar Association Legal Advisory Committee.
Lyma is one of 45 nominated Australian women lawyers whose oral history is recorded in the national archives in the “Trailblazing Women Lawyers Project”, particularly for her work as International Civil Party Counsel at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (‘ECCC’ or Khmer Rouge Tribunal). Since 2009, Lyma has provided pro bono legal services for over 100 victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, including foreign nationals, members of the Cambodian diaspora world-wide, as well as ethnic minority victims in the Tribunal’s historical genocide case.
In 2010, she took an assignment as International Criminal Law Advisor with Lawyers Beyond Borders under AVI where she provided advice to national lawyers from Legal Aid of Cambodia on its work with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and its labour and human trafficking project. In the ECCC jurisdiction, Lyma successfully appealed Civil Party admissibility decisions before the Pre-Trial Chamber and appeared as Counsel in pre-trial and trial proceedings, including at the examination of Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch, convicted in Case 001), the Closing Statements in Case 002 and evidence proceedings in the trial segment involving the genocide of the ethnic Vietnamese minority victims she represents.
In 2013, she received the Prime Minister’s Executive Endeavour Award in recognition of her work in at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. One year later, Lyma was awarded the prestigious Churchill Fellowship with the aim to build expertise in the practice of international criminal justice by examining the operation of international courts and preparing victim representation in the genocide trial before the ECCC. At a specialised training course in ‘Advocacy and Litigation before International Courts and Tribunals’ organized by the Universiteit Leiden, The Hague, she was awarded the Best Advocate Award.
Since 2012, Lyma has been enlisted as a Law and Justice Civilian Expert on the register of the Australian Civilian Corps under the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, for rapid deployment to fragile or post-conflict situations. In this capacity, she has provided advice as a subject matter civilian expert in detention, disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration.
Lyma has worked in Cambodia, Singapore, Nigeria and East Timor, and has French and Vietnamese language skills.
She has guest-lectured at universities globally and presented extensively on genocide and victims representation in international courts, including at the Legal Eagles Criminal Law Conference (Luang Prabang, Laos, 2016 and Hoi An, Vietnam, 2015), the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL) Conference, Canberra (2014); and CLANT Conference (Bali, 2013). Lyma has also served as part of the legal team led by William Lye OAM KC, advising the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) on strategies relevant to the gathering of evidence from Ukrainians in Australia about serious crimes committed in the course of the armed conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. She has also presented on transnational crimes globally, including about the Prosecution and Defence of Foreign Fishermen in Australian Waters, at Bergen University Faculty of Law, and as part of the TransOcean project funded by the European Research Council, and led by Senior Researcher, Edyta Roszko.
For more information about Lyma’s domestic and international practice, see: www.lymanguyen.com
For CPD presentations, reports and speeches, see: https://lymanguyen.com/publications/
