Nani Jansen Reventlow shared the transcript of her keynote address to the Public Law Project’s annual conference. In it, she speaks about the future of strategic litigation and its implications for NGOs engaging in litigation. I think it’s equally important for any organisation, as well as those that work directly with communities. Here’s the full transcript, and the second half of her keynote discusses what should come next for the rest of us. She asks some great reflective questions which I hope will be useful for your work.

To NGOs that litigate, the points I just mentioned for lawyers apply. In addition, they can ask themselves the following three questions: 

First: what are you prioritising – your mission or the interests of the communities you’re working with? Are you able to tell the difference objectively and to defer when a community’s interest does not align with your organisations interest? 

Second: what are you doing to truly build power in communities? Are you able to call it when you end up conflating saviourism with being an actual ally to them? 

Third: what are you doing to change the picture in the legal profession overall, which should be much more representative of all of our society? Is your organisation replicating the white middle-class hegemony of the bar? Here I’d like to emphasise that acceptance – “that is just what the field looks like” – means complicity. You have power to change this: use it. 

Nani Jansen Reventlow, November 2023