Defender of the Week #4: Kimberley Motley
(Photo: Helle Moos/made in Copenhagen)
“The laws are ours, and no matter what your ethnicity, nationality, gender, race, they belong to us.”
– Kimberley Motley
‘Defender of the Week’ places the spotlight on individuals who have been tireless in their advocacy for human rights and the environment. This week international litigator, Kimberley Motley, is Defender of the Week.
Despite being American, Motley has been Afghanistan’s first international lawyer to litigate since 2008. Referred to as Afghanistan’s most effective defence lawyers, Motley is also licensed to practice in the U.S., Dubai International Financial Courts, and the International Criminal Court.
Motley first went to Afghanistan as part of a program run by the U.S. to train Afghan lawyers. In her 2014 TED talk, Motley stated that, during this time:
“I went around the country and I talked to hundreds of people that were locked up, and I talked to many businesses that were also operating in Afghanistan. And within these conversations, I started hearing the connections between the businesses and the people, and how laws that were meant to protect them were being underused, while gross and illegal punitive measures were overused. And so this put me on a quest for justness, and what justness means to me is using laws for their intended purpose, which is to protect. The role of laws is to protect. So as a result, I decided to open up a private practice, and I became the first foreigner to litigate in Afghan courts.”
Motley’s first client was an African woman who had been stranded in an Afghan prison for 2 years with her 3-year-old daughter. She had been handed down a 14 year sentence after a European pimp had sent her to Afghanistan as a drug mule. Motley eventually arranged her release by presidential decree.
As well as spending six months of the year in a fortified house in Kabul, Motley is a registered lawyer with the Australian, Canadian, German, Norwegian, British, Dutch, Italian, American, U.A.E., and French embassies in Afghanistan. This allows her the opportunity to represent expatriates involved in legal issues with Afghan authorities.
