Unity Dow
| Dr Unity Dow | |
|---|---|
.jpg) |
|
| Minister of Education and Skill Development |
|
|
Assumed office 31 October 2014 |
|
| President | Ian Khama |
| Specially Elected Member of Parliament | |
|
Assumed office 31 October 2014 |
|
| Appointed by | Ian Khama |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
23 April 1959 Bechuanaland |
| Nationality | Motswana |
| Political party | BDP |
| Children | 3 |
| Residence | Mochudi,South East Botswana |
| Alma mater | UBS (LL.B) |
| Profession | Judge |
| Religion | Christianity |
Unity Dow (born 23 April 1959) is a judge, human rights activist, and writer from Botswana. She came from a rural background that tended toward traditional values of the African kind. Her mother could not read English and in most cases decision-making was done by men.
Dow studied law at the University of Botswana and Swaziland (LLB 1983), which included two years spent studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Her Western education caused a mixture of respect and suspicion.
In 1991, Unity Dow co-founded the private Baobab Primary School in Gaborone which remains one of the best primary schools in Botswana. She also co-founded the first AIDS-specific NGO in the country "AIDS ACTION TRUST."
Dow earned her acclaim as a lawyer particularly through her stances on women's rights. She was the plaintiff in a case that allowed the children of women by foreign nationals to be considered Batswana (Attorney General of Botswana v Unity Dow (1992). Before this case, according to tradition and prior precedent, nationality only descended from the father. She later became Botswana's first female High Court judge.
As a novelist, Dow has published five books. These books often deal with issues concerning the struggle between Western and traditional values. They also involve her interest in gender issues and her nation's poverty. Unity Dow contributed to the book "Schicksal Afrika" (Destiny Africa) by the former German President Horst Koehler in 2009. In May 2010, Harvard Press published her latest book, "Saturday is for Funerals," which describes the AIDS problem in Africa.
Since 2005, Unity Dow has been a member of a UN mission to Sierra Leone to review domestic application of international women's human rights norms. On 13 December 2006, she was one of three judges who ruled on the now internationally acclaimed Kgalagadi (San, Bushmen or Basarwa) court decision, concerning the rights of the San to return to their ancestral lands.
...
Wikipedia