The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) has announced the cohort of its 2025 Waging Justice for Women (WJW) Fellowship, launched in 2023 to empower the next generation of African gender justice advocates.

In partnership with the Fund for Global Human Rights’ Legal Empowerment Fund (LEF), the WJW Fellowship fully funds and mentors 10 early-career African women lawyers to work at women’s rights and gender justice organizations across the region. The fellows each receive one year’s salary—funded by CFJ and administered by LEF—to work on a wide variety of women’s and girls’ rights issues. Each fellow will support at least one strategic litigation case designed to advance women’s rights in courts or human rights institutions at the national or regional level, while receiving mentorship, monthly online training, and access to lawyers, activists, and experts from across Africa and around the world.

This year’s fellows hail from a range of careers, universities, and countries across Africa. In the fellowship’s inaugural year (2023-24), 10 fellows worked on more than 230 cases relating to detention, marriage and divorce rights, child custody, gender-based violence, socio-economic rights, reproductive rights, property rights, freedom of expression, and child marriage. In addition, fellows provided legal information to over 1,000 women and girls through legal clinics and other community events. They also engaged more than 2,600 school children—half of them girls—and provided information on legal rights and career paths.

“I am so inspired by the incredible young women beginning their fellowship with CFJ,” said CFJ co-founder Amal Clooney. “We can’t wait to see what this next generation of justice warriors will achieve.”

For a complete list of 2025 WJW fellows, see the Clooney Foundation for Justice website.

(Photo credit: June Mweteeli/courtesy of Clooney Foundation for Justice)