Mary James Gill

Mary James Gill is a Pakistani human rights lawyer, activist, and policy researcher with over fifteen years of professional experience. She currently serves as Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Justice (CLJ), a minority-led policy research and advocacy organization focused on marginalized and religious minority communities in Pakistan.

Born on 28 August 1985, Gill earned a Bachelor of Arts with honors from Lahore College for Women University in 2004, followed by a Bachelor of Laws in 2007. She completed her Master's in Public Policy and served as a U.S. State Department Professional Fellow in 2017. From 2013 to 2018, she represented Punjab in the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab and convened the Punjab Minority Advisory Council from 2015 to 2018.

Gill is best known as the founder of "Sweepers are Superheroes," Pakistan's first digital advocacy campaign launched in 2019. This pioneering initiative brought international attention to the dignity, safety, and working conditions of sanitation workers, documented discriminatory recruitment practices excluding religious minorities from sanitation positions, and successfully advocated for legislative reforms allowing non-Muslims to work in sanitation roles. The campaign received coverage from major outlets including the New York Times, BBC Urdu, Al-Jazeera, and DW, and was endorsed by UN-Water and WaterAid International.

Throughout her career, Gill has contributed to significant legislative reforms including the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act 2016 and reforms to Christian personal laws, which were incorporated into the Punjab Women Empowerment Package 2017. Her research focuses on the intersection of minority rights, gender justice, and economic dignity, with published work including "Shame and Stigma in Sanitation: Competing Faiths and Compromised Dignity, Safety and Employment Security of Sanitation Workers" (2019) and "Stories of Resilience and Resolve: An Intersectional Study on the Plight of Non-Muslim Women and Girls in Pakistan" (2022).

Her work has earned significant international recognition, including the Swedish Anna Lindh Prize (2020), the French Republic's Human Rights Prize "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" (2021), the U.S. State Department Professional Fellows Alumni Impact Award (2022), and Pakistan's Development Leadership Award (2023). Gill's primary focus areas include social inclusion of marginalized minorities, minority women and girls' rights, improving socio-economic conditions for vulnerable working populations, and integrating religious minorities into political and parliamentary processes.