Fellowship : Clooney Foundation for Justice

Beginning August 2026, the Waging Justice for Women Fellowship Programme will be renamed the CFJ Fellowship Programme. Recruitment, eligibility requirements and application processes remain unchanged. To learn more, please contact [email protected].

We are proud to launch the fourth year of the CFJ Fellowship Programme which provides a unique opportunity for early-career African women lawyers to increase their strategic litigation, legal representation and advocacy skills and ultimately become the next generation of justice champions for women and children in Africa. The Programme is administered in partnership with the Legal Empowerment Fund at the Fund for Global Human Rights.

The Fellowship Programme funds and places ten early-career women lawyers in diverse human rights and justice organizations in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and The Gambia. These include legal aid providers, select universities with legal aid clinics, and government prosecution services to provide legal services for women and children at all stages of the justice process. The Programme equips fellows with the tools they need to advocate for the rights of women and children especially against child marriage and violence against women and children. Fellows receive immersive practical work experience and hands-on training and carry out a range of duties including legal research, drafting, client support and legal representation in court. In keeping with CFJ’s focus on using technology to increase access to justice through our partnership with Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab and the Oxford Institute of Technology, CFJ fellows will also be trained in and encouraged to apply innovative technological tools to advance their work.

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How It Works

CFJ provides the fellows with mentoring, training and access to some of Africa’s leading human rights and justice experts, lawyers, judges, activists and academics. Upon completion of their fellowship, the fellows are inducted into the CFJ Fellowship Alumni Network for ongoing support, knowledge sharing and professional growth.

CFJ 2025 Fellows outside the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights in Arusha, Tanzania.

Our Impact

Since the programme launched in 2023, our Fellows have worked on over 500 cases protecting women’s and children’s rights and supported more than 2,000 women and children through legal assistance, advocacy and legal education addressing gender-based violence, reproductive rights and child marriage.

500 + cases related to women's and children's rights