Esra Alamiri, Clinical Teaching Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Fordham Law School, will discuss institutional violence against women and girls in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Focusing on Kuwait but drawing a comparative analysis of countries in MENA, Ms. Alamiri will reflect on the challenges and opportunities for gender-based violence prevention in the context of the international human rights framework.

Esra Alamiri is a lawyer specializing in gender-based violence prevention and international human rights mechanisms and a certified human rights trainer. Esra has engaged human rights bodies on issues including child marriage in Kuwait and sex workers’ rights in Namibia. During CEDAW’s 2011 review of Kuwait, Esra successfully advocated for the inclusion of women in the Kuwaiti judiciary, which CEDAW incorporated in its recommendations. Kuwait implemented the recommendation and immediately began accepting women into the judicial field. In 2012, she co-founded Human Line Organization (HLO), an NGO that specializes in monitoring social justice issues, publishing reports, and providing information to UN treaty bodies on human rights violations in Kuwait. Esra obtained an LL.B. from Cairo University and an LL.M. from Fordham Law School. In 2016, she was awarded the Arab Woman Award in recognition of her human rights work.

Leitner International Law Lecture Series