Unity Dow

Unity Dow is a lawyer, human rights activist, and writer from Botswana who was the first female high court judge in that country’s history. She is the author of four novels and of Saturday is for Funerals, a non-fiction book about the Botswana AIDS crisis co-authored with Harvard researcher Max Essex. As a lawyer, Dow earned acclaim for her stances on women’s rights and made a name for herself in the landmark Attorney General of Botswana vs. Dow case that effectively overturned a law banning women from passing their nationality on to their children. She worked as a partner in Botswana’s first all-female law firm and is currently serving her second term as Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists, helping to implement the new Kenyan constitution.