Cherith Sanger was one of the two inaugural UCLA Law-Sonke Health & Human Rights Fellows during the 2011-2012 academic year. She completed her LL.B at the University of the Western Cape in 2004 and was admitted as an attorney in 2007. Sanger then litigated and conducted advocacy on women’s human rights at the the Women’s Legal Centre. In 2009 and 2010 she was featured as one of the Mail and Guardian’s Top Young South Africans because of her work.
During her year as a Sonke Fellow at UCLA Law, Sanger specialised in Public Interest Law & Policy. In fact, Sanger applied for the UCLA-Sonke Fellowship program for the specific purposes of “further developing her skills as a public interest lawyer,” with the intention of “taking her advanced skills back to South Africa to reduce gender based violence and HIV and the impact of AIDS.”
After earning her LL.M. degree from UCLA Law top of her class, Sanger worked at Sonke as a fellow in the Policy Development and Advocacy Unit. Sanger stayed on at Sonke after her fellowship year ended and was promoted to a management position in the Policy Development and Advocacy Unit. She says that “the fellowship sharpened my skills and enabled me to work on a broader range of human rights topics once I completed the LL.M. The experience of studying abroad was invaluable in that I was able to learn from human rights lawyers from across the globe about how they address human rights issues in their respective contexts. I gained several tools for advocacy and litigation.”
Since then, Sanger has been employed as the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce as its Human Rights Defence and Advocacy Manager and later practiced with Keith A Le Grange Attorneys providing human rights and general legal services to NGO’s and local government. She was also featured in Dorothy Black’s 2017 Shine Project for her work on women’s rights and sexuality. Presently, she is a lecturer in Criminal Justice and Procedure Department in the University of the Western Cape’s Law Faculty.
