City Law School Graduate Zahrah Latief Receives Georg Schwarzenberger Prize in International Law

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies is pleased to announce that Ms Zahrah Latief is this year’s recipient of the Georg Schwarzenberger Prize in International Law. The prize was endowed by friends and former students of the late Professor Georg Schwarzenberger, distinguished academic who taught international law at the University of London from 1938 to 1975. It is awarded to a student in one of the law schools of the University of London on the basis of outstanding performance in Public International Law. 

This year’s winner, Zahrah Latief, graduated with an LLB and LLM at The City Law School, City, University of London. She earned a first class honours undergraduate law degree in 2019 and graduated with the award of distinction and highest overall grade in her Masters degree. Her dissertation, entitled ‘Unseen, Unheard, Unpaid: To what Extent does the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Advance the Economic Empowerment of Pakistan’s Rural Women’ was described by her tutor, Dr Jed Odermatt, as taking ‘a complex issue that involves numerous social, cultural, historical and religious issues and delivers a very clear and well-researched legal analysis. Most impressively, Ms Latief’s dissertation moves the debate further from where she found it’. 

Upon receiving the news of the award Ms Latief said, ‘Thank you so much for awarding me with this incredible honour. I am so grateful that the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies considered me for this prize, and I am very proud to have won it’. The Director of the Institute, Professor Carl Stychin, explained: ‘We had an outstanding group of nominations from across the University of London, but Zahrah’s sustained, outstanding performance throughout her studies and her superb dissertation made her the clear winner of this year’s prize. On behalf of all of my colleagues, we congratulate Zahrah on her performance and wish her the very best in her future studies and career’. 

Zahrah describes her career ambitions as follows: ‘moving forward, I am eager to pursue a PhD and contribute to international human rights scholarship, eventually entering a lifelong career in academia and human rights advocacy. I am particularly passionate about developing my research on peasants and rural women, and examining the wider human rights implications of weak climate change governance at the international level’.