Biography
Nida Usman Chaudhary is an international award winning gender rights advocate, and the driving force behind the Women in Law Initiative Pakistan. She has over 15 years of experience in the field and her transformative work on visualizing gender disparity in justice sector has laid down the foundations for future work and discourse in this area. With a passion for equity and inclusion, she works to break barriers in the legal profession through law and policy reform, research, and mentorship. A dynamic speaker and thought leader, Nida champions diversity, shaping a more just and representative legal profession with each endeavour.
Before bad barriers to legal access can be shattered, it is important to identify and define what these barriers are and what they can be. In many cases, the barrier may be financial however, in order to truly ensure legal access, several other factors need to be taken into consideration, particularly, when we speak of developing solutions for these barriers. In my experience, vulnerability that comes with visibility, backlash in shape of trolling, media trial, family and social pressure, stigma, delays in the system and counterblast suits are all part of the myriad of barriers that may hinder legal access. The barriers may also be structural, whereby accessibility for the differently abled or those who lack mobility may also find it challenging to reach the corridors of justice. A concerted effort to overcome all of these social, financial, structural and other invisible barriers will need to be factored into any solutions that are rolled out for breaking bad barriers to legal access.