Fatima Hassan is a South African human rights lawyer who works in the field of health justice. She won the

Calgary Peace Prize The Calgary Peace Prize is an annual Canadian award that is given by Mount Royal University. The purpose of the award is to recognize individuals globally for their work supporting peace, "making the world a more just, safer and less violent place. ...

in 2022 for her work which included exposing inequity in the global

deployment of COVID-19 vaccines , 12.7billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, with 67.9 percent of the global population having received at least one dose. While 4.19million vaccines were then being administered daily, only 22.3 percent of people i ...

Education

Hassan has a bachelor of arts and an LL.B from the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( o ...

and a LL.M from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

Career

Hassan is the founder of the Health Justice Initiative (HJI), and was part of the team that founded the 2008 Western Cape Civil Society Task Team against Xenophobia. In her human rights work, she has litigated against private employers, the South African government, and pharmaceutical companies. From 2013 to 2019, she was the Executive Director of Open Society Foundation for South Africa. She has also worked for the AIDS Law Project, acting for the

Treatment Action Campaign The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background ...

, clerked for Justice

Kate O'Regan Catherine "Kate" O'Regan (born 17 September 1957) is a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Constitutional Court of South Africa. From 2013 to 2014 she was a commissioner of the Khayelitsha Commission and is now the inaugura ...

, and was a Special Advisor to Minister

Barbara Hogan Barbara Hogan (born 28 February 1952) is a former Minister of Health and of Public Enterprises in the Cabinet of South Africa. Early life Hogan attended St Dominic's Catholic School for Girls, Boksburg, and gained a degree at the University o ...

. She has served on the Boards of

Ndifuna Ukwazi The Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU), translated from isiXhosa: Dare to Know, is a South African non-profit advocacy organisation established in 2011 to advocate for affordable housing in well-located urban spaces. The organisation does this by conducting poli ...

, the Raith Foundation, Médecins Sans Frontières South Africa, the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, and

Global Witness Global Witness is an international NGO established in 1993 that works to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption, and human rights abuses worldwide. The organisation has offices in London and Washingt ...

. She is on the Advisory Group of Resolve to Save Lives. She has been awarded several fellowships including the Franklin Thomas South Africa Constitutional Court Fellowship (Duke Law School) and the Tom & Andi Bernstein Distinguished Human Rights Fellowship, at

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by ''U ...

. She has also written for ''Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, Guardian,'' ''

Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...

, Daily Maverick, Mail & Guardian, Bhekisisa'', and hosts ''The Witness'' and Access podcasts. In 2021, she was also writing in the

British Medical Journal ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origi ...

, with Prof Leslie London and Prof

Gregg Gonsalves Gregg Gonsalves (born October 21, 1963) is a global health activist, an epidemiologist, an associate professor at Yale School of Public Health and an associate professor (adjunct) at Yale Law School. As well as being co-director of Yale Law Schoo ...

, and also Kamran Abassi and Prof Gavin Yamey, exposing the inequity of the global COVID-19 vaccine roll-out. She is a member of the Peoples Vaccines Alliance and she won the Calgary Peace Prize in 2022 which included recognition for her previous work on HIV/AIDS and for her work on COVID-19 vaccine equity, including challenging pandemic secrecy, profiteering and IP barriers to access. The award is made by

Mount Royal University Mount Royal University (MRU) is a public university in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. History Mount Royal University was founded by Alberta provincial charter by the Arthur Sifton government on December 16, 1910 and officially opened on September 8 ...

as part of the John de Chastelain Peace Initiative.

References

External links

Health Justice Initiative official website

Hassan's ''Access'' podcast
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hassan, Fatima Living people South African women lawyers South African human rights activists Human rights lawyers Organization founders Duke University School of Law alumni University of the Witwatersrand alumni Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century South African lawyers 21st-century women lawyers