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Layli MillerMuro shares with us how she began the Tahirih Justice Center, an organization dedicated to helping women who seek political asylum due to genderbased persecution (). MillerMuro is the coauthor of Do They Hear You When You Cry ().

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FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TAHIRIH JUSTICE CENTER:

Layli Miller-Muro is the Founder and Executive Director of the Tahirih Justice Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting women and girls from human rights abuses through the provision of legal aid and public policy advocacy. Since 2001, she has led the organization in its service to over 11,000 women and girls, growing it from a staff of 6 to over 30, and expanding its offices to Houston and Baltimore in addition to the Washington, DC area. In recognition of its sound management and innovative programs, under Layli's leadership, Tahirih won the Washington Post Award for Management Excellence and its innovative use of pro bono attorneys to quintuple its resources was featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Layli founded the organization in 1997 following her involvement in a high-profile case that set national precedent and revolutionized asylum law in the United States establishing female genital mutilation as a grounds for refugee protection. Using her portion of the proceeds from a book she and her former client co-authored about the case (Do They Hear You When You Cry? Delacorte Press, 1998), Ms. Miller-Muro established Tahirih.

Prior to joining Tahirih as Executive Director, Ms. Miller-Muro was an attorney at the law firm of Arnold & Porter where she practiced international litigation and maintained a substantial pro bono practice. Prior to joining Arnold & Porter, Ms. Miller-Muro was an attorney-advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice, Board of Immigration Appeals.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Layli Miller-Muro: All throughout my life I've had a strong interest in justice issues. I grew up in the South outside of Atlanta and there at very young ages I was exposed to some severe racism and became dedicated to trying to address it. I ended up working for the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. I became very involved in my community and the issue of justice and the fact that so many people don't have access to it was something that I was acutely aware, as well as aware of my own privilege and opportunities perhaps to do some things about it. That inspired me to go to law school and when I went to law school I had the honor of representing a young woman who was from West Africa and she was fleeing a forced marriage where she would have been the fourth wife of a 45 year old man at the age of 17. And she was fleeing female genital mutilation, a very life threatening cultural practice that several of her cousins had died from. And she entered the U.S. Immigration system because she was honest.

Having fled here she passed off her passport to the immigration authorities and said this is not mine but I have fled for my life under these circumstances. And as a result, as a 17 year old whose only crime was to flee violence and to want justice she was placed in our immigration detention center and then also spent many months in maximum security prison with American convicted felons. And during that time as a law student I represented her. I argued her case before the immigration judge. We lost and then I took her case to American University where I was a law student and worked there on her case on appeal and it was appealed to the highest immigration appellate court. And at that level she won and her case set national precedent and established for the first time that what we now call gender based persecution, because of female genital mutilation in her case, can be a grounds for refugee status or asylum in the United States. Prior to that things that happened to women simply because they were women was not considered a basis for protection. So her case had a tremendous influence on the law and the United States recognition of these things.

As a result of the publicity in her case I began getting phone calls from women and girls who were desperate for help. As a law student I was ill equipped to assist them and then there was also commercial interest in her story and my story as helping her as a law student. And so she and I wrote a book together called Do They Hear You When You Cry.

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