Nazhat Shameem is a Fiji Indian judge. She was
appointed to the bench in 1999 as Fiji's first, and 2007 so far
only, Indo-Fijian female High Court judge. Justice Shameem is
in the criminal jurisdiction of the High Court of Fiji.
Justice Nazhat
Shameem, the first and only NRI woman judge of Fiji's High Court
Auckland, Sep. 01, 2008
Justice Nazhat Shameem is a judge of the High Court of Fiji.
She was appointed on the bench in 1999. From 1984 to 1999 she
was Director of Public Prosecutions in Fiji, after having been
a prosecutor for ten years. She is a graduate of Sussex University,
Cambridge University, and is a Barrister of the Inner Temple in
London.
Justice Shameem sits in the criminal jurisdiction of the High
Court. She is a former chair of Fiji's Children's Coordinating
Committee for Children and is particularly interested in the way
the justice system affects children.
Shameem, who is of Indian origin, is an attractive, friendly
young woman, elegantly dressed. Behind the appealing exterior,
however, are rock solid credentials. Shameem always wanted to
be a judge, and so she planned her career path with great care.
Though, at first, it didn't look that way. "I went to the
University of Sussex to do my first law degree, simply because
it's on the south coast, and my mother thought it would be the
warmest place in England," she recalls with a smile. After
that it was on to Cambridge, where she did a master of laws and
a master of philosophy (criminology). In between she studied for
the bar at the Inns of Court in London and became a barrister
of England and Wales. Despite all this, she returned to Fiji and
joined the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)
at the bottom of the ladder as a legal officer.
"I even had to make the office tea." She can laugh
about it now, but at the time it didn't seem funny. But her intellectual
brilliance, legal acumen and affable nature soon saw her going
right to the top of the DPP's office. Less than 10 years after
she joined, she became Fiji's first woman and probably its youngest
DPP. The DPP's post, in the context of Fiji's political and racial
ethos, is an extremely sensitive one, generally held by senior
expatriate lawyers. He or she is responsible for all criminal
prosecutions in the country and is thus the focus of strong political
and other pressures.
For a young local woman to be the DPP was practically unheard
of. But those who know Nazhat Shameem say that she never put a
foot wrong. It was as though she was born for the job.
But being the DPP was not really part of her career path. "I
always wanted to be a judge," she says. And in May of 1999,
at 39, she was appointed as a puisne judge of the High Court of
Fiji. Her tea-making days were well and truly over. "It's
demanding work," says Shameem. "You have to study not
only the facts of the case but also people's attitudes - why they
do what they do." And judges often have to show that what
is culturally acceptable can be morally and legally wrong. For
a year she dealt only with civil cases in which she did not have
much experience. "I had to learn on the job," she remembers.
Now she is a criminal judge and hears cases of murder, manslaughter,
rape and serious fraud.
And how do big burly criminals react to this slim woman who holds
their fate in her hand? And what about fellow judges some of who
were on the wrong side of 60? "Everyone has been very supportive.
Most people are proud of me."
None more so than her mother who "keeps all my press clippings,"
she chuckles. "My father was a poet who was quite a revolutionary
in his day." He wanted to empower women and did so well with
his own family that Shameem and her three sisters are all at the
top of their professions.
