(New York, USA) by Irene Tait
Sneha Shah is one of IANGEL’s newest pro bono attorneys, and we are very excited to have her! Several months ago, Sneha reached out to IANGEL via our website after interning with the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. During her internship with the U.N., Sneha was worked in the international law and advocacy arena, specifically focusing on women’s issues. Due to this experience, she wanted to stay involved in the international women’s rights scene, and contacted IANGEL as a way to remain engaged with these issues.
As a part of her work with IANGEL, Sneha has been very active in our partnership with the Czech Helsinki Committee and our research into forced sterilization across the globe. She has taken a two-pronged approach to the issue of reparations for forced sterilization by looking at both the history of reparations in Germany, as well as researching how such reparations are calculated across the globe. Before volunteering with us, Sneha had not worked on this issue, and she is excited to be learning about a new human rights issue.
Sneha has a strong background in women’s rights work – a background that led her to IANGEL. Sneha recently started work as a Staff Attorney at the Center for Family Representation (CFR), a non-profit organization that provides free legal representation and social work services to families whose children have become involved in the child welfare system. The CFR strives to keep families together by working to keep children out of the foster system so that they may remain with their parents safely. As one of the CFR’s attorneys, Sneha works with the social workers assigned to her clients’ cases in order to resolve their issues and rehabilitate families that have been torn apart. Previously, Sneha had been working with the recently-renamed Exploitation Intervention Project, formerly the Trafficking Victims Advocacy Project – with the EIP, Sneha worked with victims of human trafficking, trying to prevent their criminalization and connecting them with aid services to help their situation.
Her work with IANGEL is personally rewarding not only because of the good she does, but because it allows her to stay up-to-date with what is happening in the international advocacy arena, as well as keep her foot in the door – so to speak – when it comes to women’s rights issues. Her work with the CFR, while powerful, is focused on a domestic sphere, and Sneha enjoys how IANGEL helps her to bridge what she’s doing domestically with a more international perspective. Recently Sneha also connected IANGEL with her friend, Brittney Miller, who has joined us as an active IANGEL volunteer!
In the future, Sneha would like to research how family courts address domestic violence in different countries to deepen the conversation about how countries deal with these issues.
Sneha Shah completed her undergraduate degree at the University of California Berkeley, and received her JD from Duke University. Connect with Sneha on LinkedIn!