Unity Dow

Unity Dow
Dow in 2011
Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation
In office 2 November 2019 – 26 August 2020
President	Mokgweetsi Masisi
Preceded by	Vincent T. Seretse
Succeeded by	Lemogang Kwape
Specially Elected Member of Parliament
Incumbent
Assumed office 2 November 2019
Appointed by	Mokgweetsi Masisi
Personal details
Born	Unity Diswai (1959-04-23) 23 April 1959 (age 65) Mochudi, Bechuanaland Protectorate
Political party	Botswana Congress Party
Spouse(s)	Peter Nathan Dow ​ (m. 1984)​ Karl J. Stahl[1]
Children	3
Alma mater	University of Botswana and Swaziland (LLB) University of Edinburgh
Profession	Lawyer, judge, politician, writer, and human rights activist

Unity Dow (née Diswai; born 23 April 1959) is a Motswana^{[Notes 1]} lawyer, human rights activist, specially elected member of parliament, and a writer. She formerly served as a judge on the High Court of Botswana and in various Botswana government ministries. Born in the Bechuanaland Protectorate to a seamstress and a farmer, who insisted on their children obtaining an education, Dow grew up in a traditional rural village before modernisation. She earned a law degree in 1983 from the University of Botswana and Swaziland, though her studies were completed in Swaziland and University of Edinburgh, Scotland, as Botswana had no law school at the time. After her graduation, Dow opened the first all-woman law firm in Botswana and in 1997 became the first woman to be appointed as a judge to the country's High Court.

During her time in law, Dow was involved in three historic cases in Botswana. In 1990, she was the plaintiff in the landmark legal case, Unity Dow v Attorney-General, which ended the gender discrimination in the nation's nationality laws that had previously not allowed children to derive nationality from their married mothers. The case gained Dow international attention and sparked a wave of changes eliminating gender disparity in nationality laws across Africa. In 2006, as the presiding judge in the case of Roy Sesana and Others v. the Government of Botswana, Dow ruled against the government's actions to prohibit the Basarwa indigenous people from living and hunting on their ancestral lands, forcing them to resettle outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. She ruled that the government had to restore basic services, allow the Basarwa to return to the land and obtain hunting permits, and pay damages to those who had been forcibly relocated if they chose not to return. In 2014, Dow served as legal counsel for LEGABIBO (Lesbians, Gays & Bisexuals of Botswana) in their case to register their organisation with the Department of Civil and National Registration and successfully received a ruling for the government to allow the organisation to be registered.

Dow was first elected to the National Assembly in 2014, when she was nominated by President Ian Khama as a special elected member of parliament. She was first appointed as an Assistant Minister of Education and in 2015 became the Minister of Education and Skills Development. Subsequently she served as Minister of Basic Education, Minister of Infrastructure and Housing Development, and Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation, before becoming a backbencher in 2020. She has served on numerous international commissions and committees, evaluating the application of laws affecting the human rights of people in Kenya, Palestine, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. In 2000, Dow began publishing novels, typically focusing on social and legal issues and their impact on gender and power structures. The works examine social practices and exploitation through abuse, violence, and suppression of human rights. She has received numerous accolades and honours for her humanitarian work, including the Legion of Honour in 2010.

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