Rothna Begum

Rothna Begum is the women’s rights researcher for the Middle East and North Africa region at Human Rights Watch. While at HRW, she has led the research on the abuse and exploitation of migrant domestic workers in the Gulf such as the United Arab Emirates and Oman; and conducted research into sexual violence and slavery of Yezidi women by ISIS in Iraq, as well as the lack of adequate response to domestic violence in Morocco and Lebanon. She has also advocated for the abolition of child marriage in Yemen; justice for victims of sexual violence during the 2011 Libya conflict; an end to discrimination against women in Saudi Arabia by dismantling the guardianship system; a systematic response to end sexual harassment and female genital mutilation in Egypt; and reforms of discriminatory family laws in Lebanon. Rothna previously worked for Amnesty International for five and a half years’ researching human rights violations in the Gulf region. Rothna holds a LLB in Law and a LLM in Legal Theory from the London School Economics and Political Science.