KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — Former Malaysian Bar president Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan is among five women jurists honoured with an international award for their legal work and for breaking the glass ceiling in their careers.
The World Jurist Association announced the five as recipients of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medals of Honour 2023 in conjunction with International Women’s Day yesterday, listing them as “eminent female jurists whose work promotes the Rule of Law and equality, breaking glass ceilings and paving the path for younger women to also become future leaders”.
The late Ginsburg, for which the medal was named after, was associate justice of the US Supreme Court from August 1993 until her death at the age of 87 in September 2020. She was the second woman to be appointed to the highest court in the US.
On Twitter, the World Jurist Association described Ambiga as a “lawyer, free elections, women’s and human rights advocate; and 2009 US State Dept International Women of Courage Award”.
In this second edition of the award, the other four recipients of the award include Baroness of Richmond Brenda Hale, who was UK’s first female chief justice of the Supreme Court from 2017 to 2020; and human rights and gender equality lawyer Imrana Jalal from Fiji, who chaired the World Bank’s inspection panel from 2018 to 2022 and is a commissioner on Fiji’s first Human Rights Commission and co-founder of Fiji Women’s Rights Movement.
The remaining two are Afghanistan Supreme Court judge Asifa Kakar, who was a member of the Afghan Constitution Drafting Commission in 2003; and South Africa’s Navi Pillay, who was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, judge of the International Criminal Court from 2003 to 2008, and is president of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda.
Established in 1963, the World Jurist Association’s members include sitting and retired judges, MPs, government officials, law professors, lawyers and students from over 140 countries, and is focused on pushing for rule of law to ensure peace without the use of force.
This is the latest award for Ambiga, who was previously honoured with the Malaysian Bar Lifetime Achievement Award for the year 2021.
Based on the citation by former Malaysian Bar president Ragunath Kesavan for her 2021 award, Ambiga was a founding member of the Women’s Aid Organisation, and was a former co-chair of electoral reform group Bersih 2.0 (now known as Bersih), former president of the National Human Rights Society (Hakam), and was appointed as a commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists and currently sits in its executive committee.
The citation also listed Ambiga’s past awards as including the US Secretary of State’s International Woman of Courage Award in 2009, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) from France in 2011 for her work among Malaysia’s Orang Asli community, the 2018 United Nations Award, and the 4th Commonwealth Rule of Law Award in 2019 from the Commonwealth Lawyers Association.
