of International Affairs and Cooperation, before becoming a backbencher in 2020. She has served on numerous international commissions and committees, evaluating the application of laws affecting the human rights of people in Kenya, Palestine, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. In 2000, Dow began publishing novels, typically focusing on social and legal issues and their impact on gender and power structures. The works examine social practices and exploitation through abuse, violence, and suppression of human rights. She has received numerous accolades and honours for her humanitarian work, including the Legion of Honour in 2010. Early life and education Unity Diswai was born on 23 April 1959, in Mochudi, Kgatleng District, Botswana (which at the time was the Bechuanaland Protectorate), to parents Phiri and Maefshane Diswai (also known as Moses and Ellen Diswai), descendants of the Mosarwa indigenous people and members of the BaKgatla tribe. The rural village in which she grew up had no paved roads, electricity, or running water. There were no telephones and she did not see a refrigerator until she was a teenager, nor a television until she was twenty. Her mother was a seamstress, who was able to read and write in SeTswana, but not English. Her father, who worked a small farm, spoke and read English. When her father was at school, he won a scholarship to attend the University of Fort Hare, but the scholarship was given to the chief's son instead. For both her parents, education became a priority and six of their seven children completed university studies. Their Western courses were unusual for rural Botswana at the time. Diswai completed her primary and secondary education in Mochudi. After high school, she studied law at the University of Botswana and Swaziland. Because there was no law school in Botswana at the time, under a British aid program she attended university in Swaziland and completed two years of study in Scotland, at the University of Edinburgh, before she earned her Bachelor of Laws in 1983 from the University of Botswana and Swaziland. Law and activism Early career (1983–1991) Diswai qualified as an attorney in 1983 and began working in the chambers of the Attorney General as a criminal prosecutor in Gaborone. She married a United States national, Peter Nathan Dow, on 7 March 1984. The couple made their home in Mochudi, with their three children. In 1986, Dow entered private practice specialising in criminal law, opening