Nazhat Shameem Khan was born and brought up in Fiji. She studied law in the United Kingdom, at the universities of Sussex and Cambridge.

She was called to the Bar of England and Wales at the Inner Temple and at the High Court of Fiji. She practised law as a prosecutor from 1984 to 1999. She was appointed Fiji’s Director of Public Prosecutions in 1994.

In 1999, she was appointed Fiji’s first woman High Court judge. She was responsible for the criminal jurisdiction of the High Court and also sat in the Court of Appeal of Fiji on an ad hoc basis.

She left the judiciary in 2009, and opened her own practice, focussing largely on human rights, work place governance and litigation skills training.

In 2014, she was appointed Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna, and to Switzerland.

In 2021, she was elected President of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

In December 2021, she was elected a Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.