Zarizana Abdul Aziz

Zarizana specializes in legal and policy reform on gender equality, family law and gender-based violence, focusing on intersections between international human rights, gender, culture, and national legal regimes.

Zarizana has drafted legislations as well as reviewed and revised laws on gender equality, violence against women and family law in several countries as well as trained legislative drafters, academics and scholars on legislative drafting. Zarizana has undertaken forty-country multi-year research on gender-based violence and based on the findings, developed the Due Diligence Framework on State Accountability for Eliminating Violence against Women. Most recently, she undertook multi-country researches into ICT/online gender-based violence in Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa as well as an 11-country research into Christian Personal Status Laws in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa from a gender and human rights perspective. She co-authored a research paper on COVID-19 and Violence Against Women: Unprecedented Impacts and Suggestions for Mitigation (Routledge, June 2021). She is also the editor of the Court Companion on Gender-Based Violence Cases (ADB, 2021).

From 2017-2020, as principal capacity development consultant for the Asian Development Bank, Zarizana conducted judicial training and capacity-building in Pakistan, training 600 judges and judicial trainers and in Afghanistan, training 200 judges, prosecutors and judicial trainers as well as provided technical assistance in the setting up of Pakistan’s GBV Court.

Zarizana was Human Rights Fellow and visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York, USA. She was also adjunct professor and visiting scholar at Northeastern University School of Law, Boston, USA and is currently adjunct professor at George Washington University, Washington DC, USA.4