Class of 2007-09 Northeastern University School of Law 400 Huntington Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 Email: az.ahmed@neu.edu

Profile:

Aziza graduated from Emory University with a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies.  She then went to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she worked with the Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa (PPASA), organizing sexual and reproductive health education for adolescents and sex workers.  Aziza later attended the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and received a Masters of Science in Population and International Health.  Her master’s thesis focused on children engaging in transactional sex in Jamaica and their increased vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.  After graduation, Aziza worked as a consultant in Barbados with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and Development Alternatives With Women in a New Era (DAWN).  She subsequently began her law degree program at the University of California, Berkeley.  She spent her first summer with Breakthrough, a human rights organization in India, where she co-wrote a curriculum on sexual rights in India.  She spent her second summer working with the International Women’s Health Coalition mainly on issues related to UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS five-year review.

Aziza was primarily responsible for the ICW’s Forced Sterilization in Namibia Project, and in March issued a report entitled “The Forced and Coerced Sterilization of HIV Positive Women in Namibia.”  With the Southern African Litigation Center and the Legal Assistance Center, Aziza and her colleagues completed a domestic, regional and human rights analysis of the situation in Namibia.  They also made a submission to the deputy minister of health stating women have been identified in Namibia who have been sterilized without their consent.  Along with the ATHENA network and the Center for Reproductive Rights, Aziza helped draft a letter to the Special Rapporteur on Health regarding the situation in Namibia.  She also worked on laws criminalizing transmission of HIV/AIDS and their impact on women.  For example, on behalf of ICW, she submitted a letter to LAWA Alumna Jamesina King, who was then serving as the chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights in Sierra Leone.   Her office responded that they were working to redraft the legislation, and Aziza helped ensure that positive women and people living with HIV/AIDS were involved in the drafting process.  Additionally, as a result of ICW’s forwarding the letter to various listservs, Elizabeth Mataka, the UN Special Envoy on AIDS, responded.  She said that thanks to the awareness raised by ICW’s letter, she was going to do a press release from her position as Special Envoy on the topic of criminalization, and Aziza helped draft talking points for her.  Aziza also analyzed the draft criminal legislation for Uganda.  She is quoted in a booklet entitled “Verdict on a Virus” recently published by ICW, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.  Aziza gave presentations on criminalization of HIV transmission and how criminalization laws will affect women this spring at the AIDS, Sex, and the Law Conference held by the International Center for Research on Women in Mexico, as well as last fall at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.  Prior to the fall conference, she was also selected to review abstracts for the International AIDS Strategy.  She has created a fact sheet on women and criminalization to be distributed in the ICW newsletter and wrote a longer article for Reproductive Health Matters.  Along with WLPPFP Alum Aram Schvey and the International Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya (FIDA-Kenya), Aziza helped organized a project in conjunction with the Georgetown International Women Human Rights Clinic, on AIDS criminalization laws in Kenya.  Aziza also paired with WLPPFP Alum Brook Kelly at The Women’s Collective to work on a project addressing the rights of vulnerable women in Washington, DC focusing on sex workers in the DC area.  Additionally, Aziza published a blog on Reproductive Health Reality Check.  Aziza and ICW also partnered with UNAIDS and others in the Washington, DC area to host two World AIDS Day events, one at the National Press Club geared towards getting attention on the issue, and the other as a local–global dialogue at Busboys and Poets as an outreach to the DC community.

Aziza recently presented at the University of Baltimore School of Law Center on Applied Feminism’s 3rd Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference.  After working as a research assistant with the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health, Aziza recently joined the faculty of Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.