A Fighting Chance

Singaporean human rights lawyer Natasha Latiff, the founder of non-profit organisation, Strategic Advocacy for Human Rights, takes on the world’s most hardened perpetrators to seek redress for survivors of sexual violence

- Amelia Yeo

Natasha Latiff has spent more than a decade working in the most dangerous of places and situations, including war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, where bomb attacks and assassinations of activists and aid workers are unfortunately common. In 2008, the Singaporean human rights lawyer founded Strategic Advocacy for Human Rights (SAHR), a non-profit organization to defend and advocate for the rights of survivors of sexual violence by providing legal aid.

Operating in multiple locations across the globe, including Vanuatu and South Sudan, SAHR consists of lawyers like Natasha, who are qualified to practice in multiple jurisdictions, as well as grassroots human rights activists and survivors-turned-defenders who have risen up in the fight against gender-based violence.

The statistics of such atrocities are shocking. For one, global estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate that 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner, or sexual violence by a non-partner in their lifetime. Another WHO study in 2020 also shows that more than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation—a traditional practice often carried out in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East that is a violation of human rights and serves no proven health benefits.