Barrister Shahida Jamil was the first woman to be appointed as Federal Minister for Law, Justice and Human Rights and Parliamentary Affairs in 2000, as well as the first woman to be appointed as Provincial Minister of Law in Sindh in November 1999.
She is a Barrister at Law from the Society of Gray’s Inn, London and holds a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Political Science and English Literature from Karachi University through the St. Joseph College, Karachi.
She is the member of the Sindh High Court Bar Association, Lahore High Court Bar Association and the Karachi Bar Association. She is practicing lawyer as a Legal and Policy Consultant, and has also worked as a World Bank Consultant.
She is a senior professor of Law for the Post-Graduate Masters of law programme at the Sindh Muslim Government Law College, Karachi in subjects of “Human Rights” and the “Comparative Study of Constitutions” specifically the British, Swiss, Turkish and Chinese Constitutions. She has also worked with the Asian Development Bank.
She also agitated the issues of India’s interference in Pakistan’s water resources and water rights at the World Summit of Sustainable Development (WSSD) at the Johannesburg, South Africa held in 2002 and successfully campaigned against the World Commission of Dams “Guidelines” which were against the interests of all lower Riparians, resulting in the super-cession of those biased guidelines.
Barrister Shahida also attended several international and domestic conferences. She was Deputy Leader of Micro-credit Summit +5, New York, USA in 2002, While she was member of UN General Assembly Special Session on Women at New York, USA in 2000.
She was among the five speakers on the “Forum of Five Continents” in the International Conference on “Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity”, The Hague, Netherlands in 2001.
Her articles published on important subjects include “The Armed Forces and the Pakistan Movement”, The Dawn in 1997, “In which the name of Allah is commemorated - Al-Quran”, The Nation in 1997, “The Legacy of Negativism”, The Leader in 1995 and “International Humanitarian Law”, The Daily News in 1992.
She is daughter of a businessman Late S.A. Sulaiman and a prominent social worker Begum Akhtar Sulaiman. She is wife of Barrister Chaudhry Mohammad Jamil, Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and former Vice-President of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
