Unity Dow

Unity Dow is the author of four novels - Far and Beyon', The Screaming of the Innocent, Juggling Truths and The Heavens May Fall. She was Botswana’s first female High Court judge.

Unity has a long record as a human rights attorney. She was a founding member of International advocacy organisation Women's Rights Watch and she co-founded the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project. Judge Dow was the plaintiff in a ground breaking legal case in which Botswana's nationality law was overturned and that led to passage of legislation through which women were enabled to pass on their nationality to their children. Unity was one of three judges who decided the now internationally acclaimed Kgalagadi (San, Bushmaen or Basarwa) court decision. The case was about the Bushmens Right to return to their ancestral lands. Unity Dow has also written about the link between the Convention on the Rights of the Child and children's legal status in Botswana. 

After holding several ministry positions in the Botswana government, since 2019 Unity Dow has served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

She lives with her family in Lobatse, Botswana.

[Man Booker shortlisted, The Purple Hibiscus author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's] urgent humaneness reminds me of Unity Dow, Botswana's brilliant High Court judge, whose novels keep bringing one back to the basics even as they show insoluble puzzles based on the hardness of people's hearts.

—Juliette Hughes, The Age, 2006

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