Human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson (Balliol 2006) has received a Australia PeaceWomen Award from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WIPLF).
Celebrating Australian women leading for peace’, the WIPLF awards recognise women making a difference. The six 2021 awardees are women challenging militarism and racism, and women who are working in climate change activism, human rights and leadership for peace and freedom in their communities.
Called to the Bar in 2006 in the Supreme Court of NSW, Australia, Jennifer Robinson is now a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, where she specialises in international law, public law and media law.
She advises media organisations, journalists, whistle-blowers and high-profile individuals on all aspects of media law and reputation management. She has acted in free speech and freedom of information cases before British and European courts, being best known for her role as a member of the legal team defending Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. She has also been instructed in human-rights-related judicial review cases and given expert evidence in Parliament and at the United Nations. Advising individual and state clients on a wide range of international law issues, she has appeared before the International Court of Justice and regularly engages with UN Special Mechanisms.
For some years she has provided legal assistance as a volunteer for the Institute for Advocacy and Study of Human Rights (Elsham), a human rights organisation in West Papua, Indonesia, and she is a founding member of International Lawyers for West Papua. She also is the founder of the Bertha Foundation, which supports activists, storytellers and lawyers who are working to bring about social and economic justice, and human rights for all.