The Impact of Women Judges Associations in Africa – IAWJ Africa
This is a collaborative project to monitor and measure the impact of IAWJ chapters’ human rights and equality programmes in Africa, towards social transformation – currently funded by the British Academy. The project is spearheaded by a Steering Committee made up of:
- Lady Justice Roli Harriman, Director for West and Southern Africa
- Lady Justice Henrietta Wolayo, Director for East and Central Africa
- Dr. Martha Gayoye, Keele University School of Law as Principal Investigator
- Dr. Josephine Ndagire, Makerere University as Co-Investigator for East and Central Africa
- Dr. Adegbile Titilola Olubunmi, Redeemers University, Nigeria as Co-investigator for West and Southern Africa.
Research aims and objectives
The overall aim of this project is to uncover the impact that the fifteen IAWJ national associations of women judges in Africa have made in ensuring access to justice for women and children. This will be achieved by collaboration and co-production with the fifteen associations of women judges, existing similar organisations, and academic networks.
The project’s research objectives are:
Research objective 1: To identify the progress each association has made in terms of influencing their peers to apply international women’s rights and other human rights instruments to promote access to justice for women and children through the JEP and various subsequent Equality and Access to Justice programmes.
Research objective 2: To identify the specific cases in which the JEP/other equality programmes have made an impact, and to document the judicial outcomes of these cases.
Research objective 3: To maximise the impact of the project through dedicated communication activities in collaboration with the associations, which have added benefit of supporting the infrastructural and logistical capacity of the fifteen associations of women judge and enhance the impact of their work.
The long term vision of the project is to
- to contribute to and add African perspectives to existing scholarship on why women judges really matter;
- to contribute an alternative lens to theorising on women judges that moves focus away from methodological individualism to methodologies focused on collectivism;
Project Outcomes
- Knowledge exchange and knowledge sharing
- Academic outputs/publications – co-authoring of edited collections, journal articles, blogposts
- Logistical and digital infrastructural support to IAWJ Africa, to be mutually agreed upon with the Steering Committee.
- Capacity building/training of judiciaries
- Research peer mentoring – publication of peer reviewed journal articles for members and Africa based researchers interested.
Researcher Profiles
Principal Investigator – Dr. Martha Gayoye is a lecturer at Keele University School of Law, United Kingdom. Dr. Gayoye has a strong commitment to empirically grounded research that advances social justice. She is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya.
Co-Investigator: Dr Josephine Ndagire is a Lecturer in the Department of Public and Comparative Law at the School of Law, Makerere University. Dr Ndagire has published widely on criminal justice, gender and human rights. She holds a doctorate in international legal studies from Emory University (Georgia, United States).
Dr. Titilola Adegbile holds a PhD with interests in Telehealth Law from Babcock University. She has varied interest in Medical law, Family law, Estate planning and Governance for faith-based not-for-profit and she is a law lecturer at Redeemer’s University. Ede.