Khalida Rashid Khan

Who is Khalida Rashid Khan?

Khalida Rashid Khan is a woman judge who became the first female judge in the Superior Judiciary of Pakistan and is currently the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

She was born on 25 September 1949 in Peshawar, Pakistan and inducted in the provincial Judiciary in 1974 of North West Frontier Province as a first lady Civil Judge. She stepped up the ladder very fast by becoming a Senior Civil Judge, District & Sessions Judge and elevated as a judge of High Court Peshawar in June 1994. She had also held many administrative positions, such as Registrar Peshawar High Court and Secretarial positions in the Justice and Law Department, NWFP.

She is a member of the International Association of Women Judges, U.S. and attended many international conferences. She also contributed a paper in the Asia/South Pacific Regional Judicial Colloquium in Hong Kong on May 20, 1996 under the heading of “Women and Human Rights in the Asia/Pacific Region, A perspective from South Asia." She presented a paper on “Judicial Creativity in Action” in Dublin, Ireland in 6th Biennial Conference of International Association of Women Judges in May 2002. She has extensively worked to eradicate child labour in Pakistan and South Asia.