Nigeria's Hauwa Ibrahim: Senior and Founding Partner of ARIES Law Firm in Abuja

Summary

Hauwa Ibrahim is a Senior and Founding Partner in the ARIES Law Firm in Abuja, Nigeria. She is an internationally renowned human rights lawyer, social activist, and advocate for justice. Her advocacy and work in court have resulted in landmark decisions in Nigerian law and in international human rights cases. She is recognized as a pioneering figure in the promotion of women's rights in Nigeria, and is a role model for many other young lawyers and activists both nationally and globally.


At ARIES Law Firm, Hauwa Ibrahim and her colleagues specialize in human rights, labor, women's and children's rights, family, criminal and civil law, and international law. The firm also provides free legal aid to the poor and marginalized communities in Nigeria.

Hauwa Ibrahim has been honored with numerous awards and recognition for her work, including the United Nations Human Rights Prize, the Olof Palme International Prize for Human Rights, and the Gani Fawehinmi Award for Human Rights. She was also inducted into the International Human Rights Hall of Fame in 2010.

Ibrahim has been a member of several high-profile international delegations and works to strengthen the rights of the vulnerable in her home country. She is a founding member of the International Criminal Court Bar Association and the president of Nigerian Women's Link, a network of women's rights organizations in Nigeria.

In 2000, Ibrahim was awarded the United Nations Human Rights Prize for her fearless work to promote human rights in her work and in her personal life. This award recognized her pioneering efforts in women's rights, her commitment to justice, and her activism for the defense of the rights of children and the marginalized.

Recently, Ibrahim was awarded the Olof Palme International Prize for Human Rights for her exceptional commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights in Nigeria. This award acknowledged her tenacity and relentless dedication to the promotion of the fundamental and human rights of vulnerable individuals and groups.

Hauwa Ibrahim is a powerful example of dedication and courage in the face of injustice and inequality, and a role model for other young lawyers and activists. She has dedicated her career to safeguarding the fundamental and human rights of women, children and other marginalized people in Nigeria, and her work has resulted in landmark legal decisions in Nigeria and around the globe.
 

Hauwa Ibrahim- Senior and Founding Partner of ARIES Law Firm in Abuja, Nigeria

Hauwa Ibrahim is a Senior and Founding Partner in the ARIES Law Firm located in Abuja, Nigeria. She is one of the pioneers of criminal law in Nigeria, and has held various important positions in the Nigerian Bar Association. Her professional experience in the legal field makes her a respected voice in criminal andhuman rights law, particularly in the domain of gender-based violence. She is widely respected for her commitment to improving justice for all in Nigeria.
 

Achievements and Professional Experience of Hauwa Ibrahim

The professional career of Hauwa Ibrahim has spanned over 20 years. She is a well-established leader in her field, which include gender-based violence, human rights and criminal law. She is a Senior Advocate of the Nigerian Bar Association and has previously served as a Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association. Additionally, she has held various important roles in the legal industry, including membership of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) and the African Legal Network.
 

The ARIES Law Firm in Abuja, Nigeria

In 2010, Hauwa Ibrahim established the ARIES Law Firm in Abuja, Nigeria. The firm works on a number of legal aspects, including criminal defense, human rights, gender-based violence, and international law. Their mission is to ensure justice is served without prejudice or discrimination. The firm also provides advocacy and representation of rule of law initiatives in Nigeria. In addition, they are involved in policy reform to ensure improved access to justice.
 

Hauwa Ibrahim's Contributions to Gender-Based Violence

Hauwa Ibrahim is a leading advocate for women's rights and gender-based violence in Nigeria. She has worked on numerous cases focusing on the defense of women and girls, and she has been involved in various committees and initiatives related to the prevention of gender-based violence. She has been vocal about the need for improved access to justice for victims of gender-based violence, and she helped create a Human Rights Court in Abuja, Nigeria.
 

Hauwa Ibrahim's Dedication to Justice and Equality

Hauwa Ibrahim is dedicated to the cause of justice and equality in Nigeria. She is a passionate advocate of rule of law initiatives and has made a significant impact in the domain of criminal and human rights law. Her legal experience and commitment makes her a respected voice in the legal community, and her work and dedication to justice makes her a role model for many.

If Hauwa Ibrahim had followed tradition, she would have been married off by 15 and spent her life as a housewife in rural Nigeria.

But Ibrahim was never very traditional. She ran away, got an education, and became the first woman attorney in Northern Nigeria. Now Ibrahim is known worldwide as a courageous defender of women's rights, including successfully saving a woman from being publicly stoned to death for committing adultery.

Growing up in the village of Hinnah in Nigeria's Gombe State, Ibrahim once saw a woman with a graduation mortarboard and gown. She says that woman became her ''living dream'' in a culture that does not encourage women to succeed along with men.

Ibrahim fulfilled her living dream.
Amina Lawal would have been the first woman stoned to death in Nigeria since 12 northern states began adopting Shariah, or strict Islamic law, in 1999. Ibrahim handled Lawal's appeal and the court overturned the ruling in September 2003.

Ibrahim's already busy life became even more hectic after Lawal's ruling was overturned. She lives a complex life, between working at the ARIES law firm, which she founded almost eight years ago in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, and advising various NGOs around the world. She spent the past year as a fellow at the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, DC, and as an intern with the Council on Foreign Relations. She was honored with the Margaret Brent award at the American Bar Association's annual meeting this summer for her pro-bono work for human rights.

She has been honored at home as well. In Ibrahim's village of 200,000 in Northern Nigeria, she is considered a Queen and is the first woman from her community to sit in a traditional council. Ibrahim says she still has many of the traditional values she was raised with, despite her reputation for breaking the rules.

''I was the rebel child; I was the black sheep of the family,'' she told LawCrossing. ''I was rebellious on one hand, but on the other hand, I never left my culture. I never left the values of where I was brought up.''

Ibrahim, who eventually married the man of her choice and has two children, said the secret to her subversion is to work within the culture she wants to change. Because she has the traditional title of Queen, every time she comes back to Nigeria, she must first report to her village before returning to work at her firm. Reporting to her village is easier said than done.

''My village has no water, no light, no road, no utilities,'' she said. ''When I arrived back in my country (last month), I left my bag and my case in the city and hopped back to my village. And when I get there, I feel at home. When I am there, I am just another village girl, and nothing has changed.''

Some people in the village, particularly the elders, feel Ibrahim disrespects her throne because she sits on the floor and talks with the poorest people in town.

''I am trying to change the perspective, to show that we are just humans, that nobody is a slave to another person. We have to try to change,'' she said, adding that people with traditional titles like Queen and Chief are subject to hero worship in Nigeria and that she wants to change that and promote people as equals.

Ibrahim recognizes that she must work within Nigeria's Shariah courts if she wants to exact social change in her country. She says the biggest challenges to running a firm in Nigeria are understanding the Shariah courts and finding clients who can pay. A majority of her work has been pro-bono; so Ibrahim worries about making a living.

She has been studying the impact Nigeria's new Shariah legal system is having throughout Africa as neighbors consider implementing Shariah themselves on the back of Nigeria's experience. Ibrahim says it is her duty as an attorney to assure that people are treated equally under the law and that she is concerned that many people, including lawyers, do not know their countries have signed international treaties respecting human rights.

''Because most of us don't know our country's commitments,'' she said. ''So these are some of the issues we want to look at specifically, insuring that the new legal systems that people are craving, does not transmit into issues of terror or issues of fundamentalism that have no rule of law.''