Tamika Thumbran | South Africa
Tamika Thumbiran is the In-House Counsel within the Litigation and Implementation Unit at the Centre for Human Rights. In this role, she represents the Centre in strategic impact litigation before domestic, regional, and international forums, advancing a broad spectrum of human rights. Her work also includes legal advocacy initiatives that seek to promote systemic change and strengthen human rights protections across the African continent.
Tamika also serves as the Project Co-ordinator for the Centre’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights in Africa (SRHR) Programme. In this capacity, she oversees the implementation of projects aimed at promoting sexual and reproductive justice, with a focus on legal reform, gender equality, and access to health services.
Tamika is also a practising member of the Johannesburg Society of Advocates and an alumnus of the Mandela Washington Fellowship and the Young African Leaders Initiative Network. She first joined the Centre as a Legal Fellow through the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Waging Justice for Women programme. Her legal expertise lies in gender rights, and she has worked extensively on issues affecting women and marginalised communities, combining litigation, research, and advocacy to achieve transformative outcomes.
Tamika has played a leading role in several notable cases. These include the Embrace Project NPC and Others v Minister of Justice and Correctional Services and Others (04856/22) in the High Court, and its pending confirmation proceedings before the Constitutional Court of South Africa (CCT314/24 and CCT315/24), where the Centre—acting as amicus curiae alongside the Psychological Society of South Africa—advanced arguments on how peritraumatic responses to rape can impair a survivor’s ability to communicate, refuse, or withdraw consent, challenging the constitutional adequacy of South Africa’s current definition of rape.
She also contributed to the Centre’s interventions in Werner van Wyk and Others v Minister of Employment and Labour(CCT308/23) and Commission for Gender Equality and Another v Minister of Employment and Labour and Others(CCT309/23), which challenge the exclusionary and gendered nature of maternity and parental benefits under the Labour Relations Act.
At the regional level, Tamika has been involved in the case of Amhara Association of America and the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria v. The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (Communication No. 814/23), currently before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, addressing grave human rights violations committed during conflict in the Amhara region. She is also part of the legal team in Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network, Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, and Centre for Human Rights (on behalf of children affected by witchcraft accusations in Nigeria) v. The Federal Republic of Nigeria (Communication No. 0017/COM/001/2021), a case currently before the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which seeks to secure justice and protection for children subjected to abuse and discrimination linked to witchcraft accusations.
