mopawap.blogg.se

She co-founded the Advice Desk for the Abused and ran a shelter for victims of domestic violence.

In 1973, she won the right for political prisoners on Robben Island, including Nelson Mandela, to have access to lawyers. When her husband was detained under the Apartheid laws, she successfully sued to prevent the police from using unlawful methods of interrogation against him. ĭuring her 28 years as a lawyer in South Africa, she defended anti-Apartheid activists and helped expose the use of torture and poor conditions of political detainees. As a non-white lawyer under the Apartheid regime, she was not allowed to enter a judge's chambers. She says she had no other alternative: "No law firm would employ me because they said they could not have white employees taking instructions from a coloured person". In 1967, Pillay became the first non-white woman to open her own law practice in Natal Province. Pillay is the first South African to obtain a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. She later attended Harvard Law School, obtaining an LLM in 1982 and a Doctor of Juridical Science degree in 1988. Supported by her local Indian community with donations, she graduated from the University of Natal with a BA in 1963 and an LLB in 1965. She married Gaby Pillay, a lawyer, in January 1965. She is of Indian Tamil descent and her father was a bus driver. Pillay was born in 1941 in a poor neighborhood of Durban, Natal Province, Union of South Africa. She is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders. In April 2015 Pillay became the 16th Commissioner of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty. She was succeeded in September 2014 by Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad. Her four-year term as High Commissioner for Human Rights began on 1 September 2008 and was extended an additional two years in 2012. A South African of Indian Tamil origin, she was the first non-white woman judge of the High Court of South Africa, and she has also served as a judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Navanethem " Navi" Pillay (born 23 September 1941) is a South African jurist who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.