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Asma Jahangir was just 20 when she launched her first legal battle. Her father had been detained by the Pakistani government and nobody dared to represent him. Asma took on the case – and won. 

Now Pakistan’s leading human rights activist and lawyer, she has spent most of her career defending women, children and religious minorities, continuing to fight for justice despite constant death threats.

‘The worst time was when five armed men came to my mother’s house and took my siblings hostage. They said they’d come to kill me and my children. Once, a friend saw a card in a phone box telling people to kill me. But over the years, many of these have given up. If you don’t face fear with courage, you are more vulnerable,’ she says. 

She set up the Women’s Action Forum to defend a young blind girl who had been imprisoned after being raped and went on to start an all-women law firm and a free legal aid centre before becoming a founding member of the Human Rights Commission.

She turned down the opportunity to become Pakistan's first female judge, commenting that ‘It would be hypocrisy to defend laws I don't believe in’. but in 2010 she took on the role of President of the Supreme Court Bar Association in order to defend legal principles.  

‘I work very much in my country as a foot soldier — if I may use that word — and I think that people want respect for human rights, it is very much universal. People know when their rights are infringed. They feel degraded; they feel humiliated; they feel hurt. People know when they have been wronged. They ask for justice. And there is no cultural difference that I have seen in these basic rights. When somebody is tortured, they know they are being tortured; when somebody is discriminated against, they know they are being discriminated against,’ she says.

A great lawyer and a fearless leader, Asma Jahangir continues to fight for justice

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