She's A Lawyer ... A Thespian ... And Now A State Department 'Woman Of Courage'

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Marini de Livera's plays are not for the faint of heart.

In her home country of Sri Lanka, the pro bono lawyer has found that crimes against women and children often take place behind closed doors — in homes, orphanages and schools. With her traveling theater group, de Livera seeks to shed light on the human rights abuses in her country by putting the violence on stage, front and center.

"There are beautiful laws in the law books," she says. "But when I went out to the slums, to the rural areas, to conflict-ridden areas, I found what is in the law books is not a practical reality."

A pro bono attorney with a degree in speech and drama from Trinity College London, de Livera has spent her career using theater to ensure that the lofty lessons she learned in law school can be used to assist Sri Lankans who are unlikely to ever see an attorney.

Her dedication to helping women and child victims of crime has made her one of the 10 recipients of the 2019 International Women of Courage award, a prize presented by the U.S. Department of State to women who have risked their lives fighting for peace.

At the award ceremony on Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called De Livera "a crusader against child exploitation." De Livera has served as the chairperson of Sri Lanka's child welfare agency, the National Child Protection Authority, and now runs Sisters at Law, an advocacy group for impoverished women and children.

She spoke with NPR about her creative approach to addressing human rights in her country, and why she's focusing on using her theater training to better the situation of children in Sri Lanka's orphanages. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How does it feel to win this award?

It's absolutely fantastic. For the first time in my life, I feel appreciated.

This experience in the United States convinced me that, as a change-maker, I'm doing what the world and the people of the world are crying out for help for. I'm responding to them.

What are some of the legal issues that women and children in Sri Lanka need help with?

Women and children are denied justice if they're uneducated, and if they live in rural areas. They don't enjoy the same basket of human rights that privileged people have because they don't have access to lawyers.

What needs to happen to accomplish that?

There has to be legal literacy. These women and children have to know what the laws in the country are and what their human rights are. If they are educated about their rights, they can go to court and demand them.

You've often used theater to promote this legal literacy in Sri Lanka. Can you give me an example of how this works?

One of my favorite plays I put on was about corporal punishment. I went to a Catholic school where a priest was hitting boys every day. I explained to the school that there are different forms of violence – cultural violence, psychological violence, physical violence.

Then I asked the boys to make a play about their experiences with violence. And one of the boys reenacted what the priest had done to him. [It helped] these boys find an outlet to say, "We don't want to kneel down when we come late to school. We don't want to be beaten by a cane."

How did you come to see theater as a way to educate the public on their legal rights?

I had been a lecturer in law [in Sri Lanka], and one of the things I had to teach was U.K. law principles. And the students were bored to death. So I said, these are the books, you read, then you tell me what the rule of law and separation of powers are through a performance. I realized if I could use this in the classroom, why not in the village to simplify the law?

What is your theater group working on now?

I'm working on a street theater [program] to create awareness for parents [and encourage them] not to send their children to orphanages. I'm going to show that family is the place for the child. In Sri Lanka, we have a lot of "social orphans" where they have both parents, but the children are suffering in orphanages.

Past reports have found that over 80 percent of the 20,000 children in Sri Lanka's child-care institutions, including orphanages, have at least one parent. These parents are often unable to provide for their children or the child has a disability and requires extra care. And sometimes the children are sent to such an institution because of a criminal offense.

Orphanages should be the last resort. So I'm promoting alternative care.

Some of the mothers are capable of looking after their children, but they've handed over their child to an overcrowded orphanage. I'm thinking of giving parenting skills training to these mothers and economically empowering them, finding them a nice home and settling the children with them.

You mentioned earlier that this prize is the first time in your life you felt appreciated for "walking in the opposite direction" from others in the law profession. Do you have hopes other attorneys will follow in your path?

I'm very unhappy to say each time I go to court people come up to me like a swarm of flies and say, "We don't have a lawyer to appear on behalf of us."

I want to take all the country's young attorneys and train them to be another Marini – to clone myself. Because I have to hand this on to the younger generation.