Shaheen Sardar Ali is a British Pakistani law professor and an author who formerly served chair of the National Commission on the Status of Women of Pakistan. She is a professor of law at the University of Warwick.
Shaheen, a Pashtun, was born in Swat in 1955 in Pakistan and obtained her BA, LLB and an MA in Political Science from the University of Peshawar. A Foreign and Commonwealth Scholarship allowed her to come to the UK in 1990 to take an LLM in international law at Hull University. She returned to Pakistan and gained a professorship at Peshawar University in 1995. Three years later, she returned to the United Kingdom, teaching as a law lecturer at the University of Warwick.[1] Her research and teaching interests include international law of human rights, women's and children's rights and Islamic law and jurisprudence.[2]
Ali is fluent in Urdu, Pashtu and Punjabi, can read and write Arabic and has a working knowledge of Persian. Furthermore, she serves as a consultant for the British Council, the World Bank, UNIFEM, ILO, NORAD and Radda Barnen and is a member of the British Council Task Force on Gender and Development. Ali often contributes to radio and television programmes and appears as commentator on current affairs and debates.[3]
She was previously a member and vice-chair of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) working group on arbitrary detention.[4]
She is married to Ali and the mother of two daughters, Gulsanga and Zara, and one son, Isfandyar.[5]