From women’s rights activist to Supreme Court chief: meet Meaza Ashenafi
Two decades ago, when a young lawyer named Meaza Ashenafi began defending women who had been sexually harassed, she quickly stumbled into a problem.
Not only was sexual harassment not accepted as a crime in Ethiopia. Amharic, the country’s official language, didn’t even have a way to express it.
“We had to improvise. We literally had to create the word,” says Ms. Ashenafi of herself and her colleagues at the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association, which she founded in the mids to provide defense to women who couldn’t afford it.
Why We Wrote This
As a lawyer, Meaza Ashenafi tried to create the Ethiopia she wanted to live in – from creating a term for sexual harassment, so she could prosecute it, to getting women into the banking system. Today, she’s the country’s top justice.
“Wesibawi tinkosa,” she began declaring, testing the new term’s heft. Sexual harassment.
It stuck. And since then, that has been Ms. Ashenafi’s M.O. If the Ethiopia she wanted to live in didn’t exist, she created it – or tried to. As a young lawyer, she wrote human rights protections into the country
PIONEER AFRICAN WOMEN IN LAW
Meaza Ashenafi
First Woman Chief Justice (Ethiopia)
By Biruh Gemeda Gage
Meaza Ashenafi Mengistu is the first woman in Ethiopian history to become the President of the Federal Supreme Court (Chief Justice). However, this milestone is not the only accomplishment that makes her a pioneer woman in law. She is well-known as a women’s rights advocate who has made immense contributions, among other things, as the co-founder of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association (EWLA) and founder of women’s bank (Enat Bank). Both organizations were the first of their kind in Ethiopia.
Meaza was born on the 25th of July in a small town called Assosa, now the capital of Benishangul-Gumuz regional state, one of the smallest and least developed regions in Ethiopia. Her father Ashenafi Mengistu was the mayor of Assosa. Hence, Meaza and her eight siblings attended primary and secondary school there. Her mother, Askalech Tegegne, worked at home managing a household of about a dozen people and raising nine children. Meaza says her mother is the source of her strength and played a big role in her success by instilling important values like honesty and fairness
Meaza Ashenafi Mengistu ( )
Meaza Ashenafi Mengistu, a human rights activist, broke barriers in Ethiopia when, in , she became the first woman to hold the position of President of the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia. Mengistu was born on July 25, , in the Asosa Zone of Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, to Ashenafi Mengistu, former city mayor, and Askalech Tegegne. Meaza has eight siblings.
In , at age 17, Mengistu enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Addis Ababa University. She was the only woman in the class of fifty students and earned a Bachelor of Law degree in From to , she worked for the Ministry of Trade. Afterward, she became a Federal High Court Criminal Bench Judge and remained there until
In , Mengistu co-founded the Ethiopian Women Lawyers&#; Association (EWLA) to provide legal defense to women who couldn&#;t afford it. Her transformative leadership as the Executive Director for eight years was instrumental in propelling the cause of gender equality in Ethiopia.
In , Mengistu served as the attorney in the high-profile case of a year-old girl who was en route home from school when she was abducted by a posse of men seeking to procure a bride for a would-be husba
Meaza Ashenafi, Chief Justice of Ethiopia
The first female federal Chief Justice of Ethiopia and IVLP alumna, Meaza Ashenafi spent her lifetime breaking barriers through her contributions in the legal field.
She strives to promote and advocate for human rights and women's issues. Ashenafi looks forward to restoring public trust in the judiciary and ensuring judicial independence.
Co-founder of Enat Bank, the first bank targeted to women's economic empowerment, Ashenafi is dedicated to vocalizing the needs of marginalized women. She founded the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association to provide pro-bono services to women unable to afford a legal defense, created a word in Amharic to describe sexual harassment, and reformed the way the Ethiopian judicial system treats sexual harassment cases. Ashenafi is changing women's lives and inspiring the next generation of female lawyers.
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