Sabrina Maonde

Sabrina is a human rights lawyer with experience of working for the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab in Paris and for UNHCR and Lawyers for Human Rights in Pretoria. Her primary research interests include the political, legal, and ethical issues that arise from statelessness, refugee status, citizenship, and migration.  

While working for UNHCR and Lawyers for Human Rights, Sabrina worked with asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in South Africa. Through innovative interventions such as translating the legal jargon of South African citizenship law into accessible language for social workers, she ensured that 96% of children in an orphanage in Limpopo were documented. A process that usually took 6 months was now done within 2 weeks. 

During her course at Oxford, Sabrina intends to undertake a feminist critical discourse study of the depiction of Muslim women in the United Kingdom. Her study will focus on the justifications given for the   deprivation of their citizenship. With a focus on gendered terrorism, Sabrina’s research will highlight the link between the media’s depiction of Muslim women within political discursive frames of national values and western feminism. 

Sabrina’s goal is to become a litigating attorney specialising in refugee, statelessness, and citizenship law in Southern Africa. She also hopes to establish a non-profit human rights organisation in Zimbabwe to provide legal advice and representation to asylum seekers and refugees.