Asha-Kin F. Duale

Asha-Kin F. Duale is one of Somalia’s most senior lawyers, at the bar since 1984 and with more than forty years of practice. She advises the firm on constitutional and regulatory questions and on the legislative work that gives the country’s modern statutes their effect.

She began her career as founder and senior partner of the Shabelle Law and Consultancy Firm in Mogadishu. Through the late 1980s she appeared for clients in some of the gravest matters of the period, including charges of treason, espionage and military mutiny, and acted in the 1988 proceedings concerning the then Vice-President of Somalia. Her firm’s work in those years was recorded in Amnesty International’s country reporting between 1986 and 1991.

From 2011 she served as a legal expert to the Transitional Federal Government, contributing to the drafting and review of the Provisional Constitution of the Federal Republic of Somalia. She has since helped shape the Petroleum Law, the regulation of private security companies and the 2020 subsidiary regulations under the Companies Act 2019.

She holds a Master of Laws from SOAS University of London, a Certificate in the Public Administration of Justice from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Law and Jurisprudence from Somali National University. She has published extensively on legal policy in the Horn of Africa.