Building Solidarity Across Borders: Women Lawyers Connect Through Media Defence’s Peer Mentorship Programme

Media Defence’s Peer-to-Peer Mentorship Programme brings together lawyers from around the world to strengthen their skills, confidence, and professional networks. Its most recent cohort marked a significant milestone: the programme’s first women-focused edition. Over fourteen months, 22 women lawyers working on freedom of expression issues met across languages, regions, and career stages, forming a supportive community grounded in shared experience and collective learning.

The sense of isolation that accompanies human rights work can be profound. Issues of confidentiality and security often make it difficult for lawyers to share openly within their networks, compounding the pressure of working on cases where the stakes are extraordinarily high, and attacks on the lawyers defending journalists are on the rise globally. You can read about these threats in this report we published along with the American Bar Association and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

When this is combined with gender-based threats and violence and inserted in a context of global erosion of press freedom, the impact on mental health and well-being can be severe and lasting.

Media Defence recognises these challenges, as well as the essential role human rights lawyers play in protecting press freedom. To support them, in 2023, we launched our Peer-to-Peer Mentorship Programme, designed to connect lawyers across regions and strengthen their professional development, confidence, and long-term growth.

The initiative aims to create a collaborative space for legal professionals to exchange expertise and learn from one another, responding to the increasingly complex challenges surrounding global press freedom. Its most recent cohort marked the programme’s first women-focused edition, which ran from July 2024 to September 2025 and brought together 22 women lawyers from a wide range of regions and career stages. Participants joined from Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe, with sessions taking place in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. This edition focused on empowering women working on freedom of expression issues and fostering meaningful peer learning.

“This exchange of ideas and perspectives was eye-opening and deeply enriching,” said Manushika Cooray, a Sri Lankan human rights lawyer and partner at the Human Rights Law Chamber. “What stood out to me most was the spirit of solidarity that this program builds.”

How it worked

Participants were paired for monthly one-to-one sessions, creating opportunities for honest dialogue, reflection, and collaboration. Each month included structured prompts and exercises to guide discussions on topics such as goal-setting, skills mapping, freedom of expression challenges, and comparative legal strategies across jurisdictions.

Participants also exchanged litigation experience by reviewing each other’s case studies and identifying potential areas for collaboration. This edition further explored gender-specific challenges, supporting participants to develop practical strategies to address them.

Other areas of focus included advocacy and intersectionality—covering campaigning approaches and the integration of human rights perspectives—alongside conversations on safeguarding mental health and well-being, encouraging participants to build resilience and self-care practices suited to high-pressure legal work. Another objective was to strengthen participants’ familiarity with international mechanisms, helping them to strategise around the use of global and regional human rights systems.

Participants met independently with no supervision from Media Defence. However, all participants were invited to quarterly know-how events offered by our in-house legal team to get additional information and to make the programme more interactive.

Its impact

The programme aimed to help build a more connected, confident, and resilient international community of women lawyers advocating for freedom of expression.

75% of respondents to a feedback survey sent after the end of the programme said they now feel more confident litigating freedom of expression issues than they did before taking part in the scheme.

“As lawyers working on sensitive human rights cases, we sometimes feel isolated in our struggles,” said Cooray, reflecting on the scheme.

“But through this mentorship, I realised that I am not alone. There are colleagues across the world facing similar issues, ready to share their knowledge, support, and encouragement. The program has not only gifted me with practical strategies, but I’ve also created a lasting bond of trust and friendship. I would strongly recommend this program to anyone who wishes to grow both personally and professionally, while contributing to the global effort to protect human rights.”