President appoints new law reform chief

THE deputy dean of the University of Namibia’s Faculty of Law, Yvonne Dausab, has been appointed the new chairperson of Namibia’s Law Reform and Development Commission.

The Office of the President announced the appointment yesterday.

Dausab will continue lecturing law at the university for the rest of this month, before taking up her new position on 6 July, she told The Namibian yesterday.

Describing herself as a human rights activist, Windhoek-born Dausab (40) said she would try to address law reform gaps that resonate with the contents, tone and scope of the agenda that President Hage Geingob has set for his term of office. She said she would want to see an improvement in areas like the rights of disabled people, which she said was a field of the law she felt passionate about, and would be listening to the voices of particularly civil society to see where there were needs for improving the country’s laws.

Dausab, who also served as a member of the Law Reform and Development Commission during 2013, said her appointment was for a period of five years.

After graduating with BA (Law) and LLB degrees from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, Dausab was admitted as a legal practitioner in Namibia in 2000. She was awarded a master’s degree in law by the University of Pretoria in 2001, with human rights and democratisation in Africa the field of study in which she had specialised by then.

During her career as a lawyer, Dausab has worked at the Legal Assistance Centre and the Windhoek-based law firm Engling, Stritter Partners. She became a part-time lecturer with the Unam Faculty of Law in 2007, and joined the faculty full-time in 2009.

Dausab is currently studying towards a doctorate degree in law with North-West University at Potchefstroom in South Africa.

She succeeds Namibia’s current attorney general, Sacky Shanghala, and Shanghala’s predecessor, current lands minister Utoni Nujoma, as chairperson of the commission. Shanghala headed the commission from November 2010 until his appointment as the principal legal advisor of the President and government near the end of March this year.

The Law Reform and Development Commission Act of 1991 sets out the commission’s functions as including conducting research on all branches of the law in Namibia and making recommendations on the reform and development of the law.

The act specifies that its recommendations can include advice on the repeal of obsolete or unnecessary laws in force in Namibia, on the amendment of laws to enhance respect for human rights or to ensure that Namibia meets international legal obligations, and on new or more effective procedures for the administration of the law and the dispensing of justice.

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