Fatima Hassan is a South African human rights lawyer and social justice activist. She’s the founder of and heads the newly established Health Justice Initiative in South Africa and is the former executive director of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa. She has dedicated her professional life to defending and promoting human rights in South Africa, especially in the field of HIV and AIDS, where she worked for the AIDS Law Project and also acted for the Treatment Action Campaign in many of its legal cases. She has a BA and LLB from the University of the Witwatersrand and an LLM from Duke University. She clerked at the Constitutional Court of South Africa for justice Kate O’Regan and has served as a special advisor to the former minister Barbara Hogan. She’s the former co-director and founding Trustee of Ndifuna Ukwazi and previously served on the Boards of the Raith Foundation, SA Medecins Sans Frontieres Without Boarders (MSF-SA),the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition and the South African Council for Medical Schemes.
She’s currently serving on the board of Global Witness. The recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the Franklin Thomas SA Constitutional Court fellowship, and the Tom Andi Bernstein Distinguished Human Rights Fellowship at Yale University School of Law, she has published and written on issues related to social justice, and HIV and AIDS access to medicines. She’s also the host of a special COVID-19 and IP related podcast called Access.
