
Adriana Gabriela Rodriguez
Host: Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc.
Sponsor: Texas Access to Justice Foundation
Emily’s Fellowship served to advance gender-based asylum law through direct representation and impact litigation.
Women and girls around the world are victims of various forms of gender-based violence in countries that offer impunity to the perpetrators. Survivors of gender-based persecution—be it female genital mutilation, honor killings, abduction and rape by gangs, or violence at the hands of intimate partners—seek refuge in the United States, but current law does not recognize that the gendered nature of their harm warrants asylum. Because the U.S. government seems bent on eliminating the grounds for gender-based asylum, there is an urgent need to expand representation for these women and girls in their asylum claims and to push asylum law to recognize gender-based persecution.
Emily made a commitment to dedicate her career fighting for the safety of the tens of thousands of women who are victims of domestic abuse in countries that offer them no hope of protection or justice. While working as the COO of Akola Project – a non-profit that empowers women to realize and walk in their own agency as change makers – Emily learned that the most marginalized women are typically migrants. Her passion for serving immigrant and refugee women was cemented as she worked to adapt Akola’s model to best impact this population.
During the two-year Fellowship program, Emily:
Emily will stay on at Human Rights Initiative of North Texas to continue and expand pro bono representation of asylum seekers.
Dallas Immigration Advocates Seek to Protect Women Fleeing Gender Violence
Host: Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc.
Sponsor: Texas Access to Justice Foundation
Host: Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc.
Sponsor: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Current Fellow
Host: Tahirih Justice Center
Sponsor: BP, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Host: International Refugee Assistance Project
Sponsor: ALM