Survivors’ Advocate
Founder, Taboo LLC
Sherizaan Minwalla started working in Iraq by helping to defend survivors of abuse who faced uphill legal battles after allegedly being sexually assaulted or trafficked. Since then she’s taken her work across the Middle East—and beyond.
Sherizaan Minwalla (LAW ’02)By Kayla Molander
Shortly after moving to Iraq in 2007, (LAW ’02) collaborated with an Iraqi lawyer, guiding the lawyer as they worked together to identify and represent a woman who was detained and facing charges connected to gender-based violence.
“This woman had been forced to be complicit in a crime by her abusive husband,” says Minwalla. “He had raped a neighbor’s daughter and forced his wife to give the girl medication. He threatened to send the wife back to her family where she would be killed if she didn’t do what he wanted.”
Minwalla worked with the lawyer to build a legal defense, connecting the facts to the law—which was a novel approach in Iraq at the time—and it worked. The wife was released while her husband was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
She found herself teaming up with that Iraqi lawyer because of the course that she charted after graduating from Chicago-Kent College Law. Mi