Victoria Ochanda, Louis B. Sohn Fellow, 2008

Victoria received an LL.B. from the University of Nairobi and a diploma from Kenya School of Law. At the Kenya Human Rights Commission, she researched and implemented advocacy strategies in addition to conducting fact-finding missions in areas where human rights violations had been reported. She worked with Odhiambo and Odhiambo Advocates, a prominent law firm in Nakuru, Kenya providing pro bono services to women and as a program coordinator at an organization advocating for women's and children's human rights.

Victoria received her LL.M. at the Georgetown University Law Center (Washington, D.C.) where she was a Leadership and Advocacy for Women in Africa Fellow. While there, she interned at the O'Neil Institute of Global and National Health Law where she was part of a team contracted by UNAIDS to draft a legal and regulatory self-assessment tool for Sub-Saharan Africa on scaling up male circumcision. The tool was piloted in Swaziland and is currently being used for that purpose.

At CIEL, Victoria participated in drafting a "Submission of The Maldives to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights". She also participated in researching and drafting two memoranda on "The Right of Access to Information in the European Human Rights Court" and "Access to Information Article 19 of the ICCPR Jurisprudence".

She is a member of the International Federation of Women Lawyers-Kenya chapter. In Kenya, Victoria continues to research and work on women's rights and environment issues. For example, she was recently part of a three member team that drafted the "National Policy on the Abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya". The draft was approved by the Kenya Cabinet in August 2009 and is currently in operation.