Bonita Meyersfeld

Bonita Meyersfeld is a human rights lawyer, academic and advocate. She is an associate professor at Wits School of Law School and an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar and the Pan African Bar Association of Southern Africa. From 2012 to 2017, she was the director of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies. She is the founder of Lawyers against Abuse, an NGO which provides legal and psycho-social services and representations to clients experiencing gender-based violence. She has appeared before the International Criminal Court, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Appeals and the High Court of South Africa. She has worked in various international NGOs and was a parliamentary legal advisor in the House of Lords in the United Kingdom. She was an editor of the South African Journal on Human Rights.

Bonita obtained her LLB (cum laude) from Wits and her masters and doctorate in law from Yale Law School. Bonita teaches and publishes in the areas of gender-based violence, business and human rights, and international law. She is the author of the book, Domestic Violence and International Law.

Bonita has consulted for, and presented expert statements to, various United Nations fora.

In 2018, Bonita was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite (Knight of the National Order of Merit) by the President of France in honour of her academic and practical work in human rights and gender-based violence.