Athaliah Molokomme

Athaliah Maoka Lesiba Molokomme was born on 4 December 1959 in Francistown, Botswana. She was the second of nine children born to teachers Imelda Mishodzi Molokomme and Rufus Oka Kabiwa.[1]

Molokomme holds degrees from the University of Botswana and Swaziland. In 1983, she obtained a Masters in Law from Yale Law School in the United States. She also obtained a PhD in Law from Leiden University. Her thesis, Children of the Fence: The maintenance of extra-marital children under law and practice in Botswana, was published soon after.[2]

Molokomme has worked as a politician and a professor. She has taught law at the University of Botswana and has researched and published extensively in the fields of family law, women and law, customary law and employment law. Molokomme was the founding head of the Charter of the Gender Unit at Secretariat of the Southern African Development Community until May 2003 when she was appointed a judge of the High Court of Botswana.

Since the 1990s Molokomme has been a regular speaker at national, regional and international conferences, workshops and seminars in her areas of expertise.

She became the first female attorney general of Botswana in 2005.

In April 2014 it was expected that Molokomme would resign from her position as attorney general to contest the presidency of the International Criminal Court Assembly of State Parties, but she did not resign.[3][4]

Molokomme is currently an active member of the Justice Leadership Initiative.

• First women lawyers around the world