Clare Brown

“When I started doing the human rights subjects in the law part of my degree, I knew that was the path I wanted to follow.”

Human rights lawyer Clare Brown has spent her legal career creating and implementing legal frameworks to secure justice for survivors of sexual violence within conflicts contexts across Africa and the parts of the Middle East.

Brown has conducted most of her work through Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), a not-for-profit organisation of lawyers providing legal aid for survivors of human rights violations in conflict-affected areas. She began at LAW as an intern in 2013 in Kenya and Somalia, and by 2018, was acting Head of Africa Programmes. Brown collected testimonies and co-wrote the first case against the South Sudanese government for sexual violence, which was filed with the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women at the UN in 2018.

Following a relocation to Beirut, Lebanon, Brown commenced her current role of programme manager at Legal Action (LA), a Lebanese non-government organisation funded by LAW. Her current work provides legal aid to survivors of sexual violence in Lebanon, with a focus on particularly vulnerable demographics including domestic workers and Syrian refugees, and increasing their access to justice through innovative legal solutions.

Some of Brown’s most notable achievements include her work helping draft Somalia’s first Sexual Offences Bill, which addresses the Somali legal system’s serious deficiencies in prosecuting rape and sexual violence and has escalated the issue as a political priority. The Bill is currently awaiting Federal Parliament approval and has the potential to be used as a template for other conflict-affected countries.

Brown was also the 2018 winner of the Human Rights Essay Award at the Washington College of Law and a 2013 Echenberg Young Leaders Fellow, where she was chosen to be one of 25 leaders from around the world chosen to participate in the Global Conference on Democracy, Human Rights and the Fragility of Freedom.