Our Research Spotlight team speak to Dr Sabrina Germain and Professor Emily Allbon about their work.
By Dr Shamim Quadir (Senior Communications Officer), Published
Dr Sabrina Germain and Professor Emily Albon are both academics at The City Law School, City, St George’s, University of London.
Sabrina is a Reader in Healthcare Law and Policy and the Associate Dean for Equality Diversity and Inclusion at the School, and Emily is the Director of Legal Design at the School.
Together, with Dr Mara Malagodi, Reader at the School of Law, University of Warwick, and an expert in constitutional law with specialism in the law of Nepal, they pooled their respective academic expertise to develop and help deliver a novel toolkit designed to help Nepalis enforce their sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR).
The academics recently sat down with our Research Spotlight team to talk about their work. Watch the video:
The academic team have been working closely with iProbono, and the Law and Policy Forum for Social Justice (LAPSOJ) since 2018, and adopted a ‘legal design’ approach to the toolkit to make SRHR understandable by all.
Nepal has some of the world’s most progressive laws on sexual and reproductive health rights. However, implementation remains uneven and often ineffective, particularly for poor, marginalised communities and those in remote areas. With their project these researchers have aimed to not only raise awareness with these communities, but also with the people that implement and interpret these rights (judges, lawyers and activists).
Through visits to, and workshops within Nepal, wider conferences, and working with a variety of stakeholders, the team honed their toolkit materials, and the training materials associated it with it.
The toolkit consist of:
- Two illustrated ‘case explainers’ of the two landmark decisions by the Supreme Court of Nepal on SRHR, to be able to show to everyone in an immediately accessible way what rights they confer.
- Illustrated ‘persona cards’, which represent fictional characters that describe the circumstances and needs of people from different backgrounds, all in need of accessing reproductive and sexual health services, but they are all at least partially unaware of their rights.
- An illustrated legislation explainer for Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Rights Act 2018 provides a bird-eye view of the legal landscape of the key piece of ordinary legislation surrounding sexual and reproductive rights in Nepal.
- A user manual video
In September 2024, the Toolkit was official launched in Kathmandu with senior members of the Nepal judiciary. In his keynote address, the Honourable Kalyan Shrestha, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nepal, who was instrumental in adjudicating landmark cases on reproductive rights, said:
Reflecting on the project, Sabrina said:
Find out more
Visit the Design the Law Nepal website:
https://designthelawnepal.org/
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