The Litigating Women’s Rights Globally workshop which was held at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer yesterday led by Joss Saunders, proved to be an invaluable opportunity for lawyers and NGOs to examine some of the practical challenges for strategic litigation on women’s rights. The workshop heard about Oxfam’s Raising her Voice campaign and some of the challenges on legal empowerment in Burundi with a focus on violence against women from ASF’s human rights expert Shira Stanton. Gaye Sowe from IHRDA gave a fascinating presentation on litigating women’s rights before the ECOWAS Court and spoke about the IHRDA Case Analyser tool which is the first multilingual free-to-access collection of human rights decisions of African supra-national mechanisms of its kind. Dr Chris Mbazira from Makarere University addressed some of the challenges of public interest litigation in Uganda and Emily Brown from Oxfam spoke about projects in the Middle East which aimed to provide access to justice. In the afternoon, there were opportunities for discussion led by the panellists and Clarissa O Callaghan, Freshfield’s Global Head of the Pro Bono unit. We were also introduced to one of Oxfam’s latest initiatives, “Lawyers Against Poverty” further details of which can be found here. The workshop environment provided an invaluable opportunity for the meeting of minds and sharing of experiences in the challenging field of litigating women’s rights.
