SALC salutes leading rights defender

The Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) has saluted rights defender Rebeca Gyumi for receiving the UN Human Rights Award for 2018 in recognition of her work in advancing the rights of female children. Al Jazeera reports that Gyumi is the founder of the Msichana Initiative in Tanzania, a local NGO that advocates for girls' right to education. A lawyer by profession, Gyumi won a landmark case in 2016 on child marriages after petitioning against the 1971 Tanzania Marriage Act which allowed girls as young as 14 to get married. For her work on girls' rights, the 31-year-old won the Unicef Global Goals Award in 2016 and was named Woman of the Year by New African Women magazine.

Full Al Jazeera report