Isabella Mukankusi

In 2021, Isabella Mukankusi, a Co-Founding Director of Wak Mental Health Defenders, was one of the twelve participants selected to participate in the Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University in the City of New York, USA selected from hundreds of applicants from around the world.

Isabella Mukankusi is a human rights lawyer with a decade’s experience passionate about social justice and human rights mainly working directly with grassroots communities in Uganda. Her focus is on through research and practice, the disability rights, women and children’s rights, property rights, the elderly, indigenous communities amongst others.

She has had speaking engagements to students at Leitner Center for International Law, Justice at Fordham University Law School, New York, Centre for African Education, Teachers College and SIPA Columbia University about psychosocial disability. She has had networking engagements with Amnesty International USA, UNICEF Disability, Robert F.Kennedy Human Rights, US Department of State and World Bank Inspection Panel. She volunteers as a Board Member at MY story Initiative and is responsible for providing strategic direction and advice to the Board. Prior to that worked as a Law Tutor rising to the position of Legal Services Manager at Justice Defenders, where she taught and also led programs aimed at promoting  access to justice in Uganda prisons through legal education, training and practice , helped set up the first legal aid clinic inside a maximum security prison in Uganda and trained incarcerated persons as paralegals.