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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 �鶹APP-Kent College Law. Minwalla initially joined the Midwest Immigrant Human Rights Center, a program of Heartland Alliance and a �鶹APP-based immigration and asylum nonprofit. There, she ran a statewide program representing noncitizen survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault to legalize their status under the Violence Against Women Act.

Heartland began its work in Iraq in 2004, focusing on mental health support for torture survivors. Minwalla relocated to Iraq in 2007 to take a position for Heartland as its country director, where she oversaw the organization’s human rights portfolio in Iraq. She started the Access to Justice program, which trained lawyers on legal skills to
advocate within the Iraqi justice system. The program provided legal representation and social services for survivors of gender-based violence and human trafficking.

Minwalla and her team documented how violence against women was institutionalized within the legal system. The program’s lawyers, many of whom were women, courageously made novel legal arguments in court, challenging the system on issues such as domestic violence. While some judges accepted these arguments, others reacted harshly, sometimes questioning the lawyers’ morals and even imputing the charges against their clients onto them.

She also focused extensively on training lawyers in essential legal skills, such as trauma-informed interviewing, client-centered advocacy, developing case theories, and presenting persuasive cases before judges. Her legal skills trainings are centered on complex issues such as gender-based violence, human trafficking, and access to reparations for survivors of sexual violence. She works with lawyers to take a client- and survivor-centered approach to working with individuals, empowering clients to have meaningful roles in their cases regardless of their level of education.

Minwalla was eventually promoted to Heartland’s Middle East regional director when the organization expanded human rights programming to refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.

After four years abroad, Minwalla returned to the United States in 2011—and remained deeply engaged in human rights and justice work. She worked with the Tahirih Justice Center in the Washington, D.C., area, and taught in the International Human Rights Law Clinic at American University’s Washington College of Law. Back in Iraq, beginning in 2019, she led a $6.2 million program that was funded by the United States Agency for International Development to address gender-based violence in minority communities targeted by the Islamic State group.

Juggling these roles, Minwalla has spent the last 15 years living between Iraq and the U.S., and is currently based in Sulaimaniya in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Much of Minwalla’s work over the past decade has been with survivors of the Islamic State group’s 2014 genocide against the Yazidi people, during which time thousands of women and girls were abducted and trafficked into sexual slavery. The horrific events brought international attention, including local and international journalists from major news outlets across the globe.

Minwalla saw journalists engaging in practices that she believed to be unethical, such as interviewing the same survivors over and over and asking them for details about rape and the other atrocities that they faced in captivity. She was concerned about the safety and well-being of survivors who had experienced unimaginable trauma.

“The Yazidi community realized that there was a strong interest by the media in the sexual violence narrative, and they often pressured survivors to talk because they were desperate for international support,” Minwalla says.

Minwalla contacted her longtime friend Johanna Foster, associate professor and Helen Bennett McMurray Endowed Chair in Social Ethics at Monmouth University, about a research collaboration.

Together, Minwalla and Foster asked the question, “What do the women themselves think about the way their stories were gathered and told?” Their research led to the publication of a paper titled “Voice of Yazidi Women: Perceptions of Journalistic Practices in the Reporting on ISIS Sexual Violence,” which was the first time that the subjects of media reports in a conflict were asked how they felt about the coverage.

“I was really honored to be able to partner with Sherizaan in this way,” Foster says. “She has taught me so much about the intersections of law and global feminist practice. Her level of dedication, her relentless drive for accountability over three decades, and her laser-focused advocacy for survivor-centered approaches to justice and reparations have been a true inspiration to me.”

In 2021 Minwalla launched a consulting firm, Taboo LLC, to focus on access to justice, human rights, and the ethical documentation of sexual violence in conflict. Consulting with the International Organization for Migration, Minwalla endeavored to implement a do-no-harm approach to reparations under the Yazidi (Female) Survivors Law, which was adopted by Iraq in 2021. It also promotes ethical engagement with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence through contributions to newly emerged ethical guidelines such as the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma’s Reporting on Sexual Violence in Conflict and the Murad Code, which is named after survivor and advocate Nadia Murad and developed by the International Institute for Criminal Investigations.

“Taboo reflects the silence and stigma surrounding abuse that often silences victims and survivors,” Minwalla says. “By challenging these taboos and removing the shame placed on victims, my work helps create a path for survivors to pursue justice.

“Globally, we are witnessing a significant and concerning backlash against the rights of women, girls, and the LGBT community, making human rights and justice work more crucial but also increasingly difficult. While decades of progress have been made, that progress is now under threat.”

But Minwalla continues to be motivated by her fundamental belief that everyone should have the right to decide their own future and live free from abuse and control. Along the way, she has witnessed the incredible strength and resilience of those facing adversity and injustice.

“They are the ones doing the hardest work to overcome abuse and achieve freedom in their lives,” she says. “I’m just an advocate and partner in those journeys.”