Shabina Begum

Shabina is a partner in the International Child Care department. She handles all matters of child law disputes both domestic matters as well as matters which contain international elements. She is an expert in child abduction matters from both Hague and Non-Hague signatory contracting States.  She also specialises in domestic violence, honour based violence, forced marriage, transnational abandonment and female genital mutilation cases.

She is Resolution accredited in Child Abduction and Forced Marriage and Honour based abuse. She was one of the 2023 Law Society Legal Heroes. She was featured in Management Today’s “35 Women Under 35, 2020 ” List of Britain’s Brightest Young Business Leaders  and described as an “exceptional lawyer” and a “pioneer in her field“. She was also the winner of the Women of the Future Award 2020  in the  “Business Category.

Shabina is a UN recognized authority on child, early and forced marriage, she was invited to Geneva as the UK representative to participate in the global workshop on forced and child marriage. She was also  invited to speak at the 16th session of the Commission on the Status of Women held by United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in New York.

Some of her notable cases include representing parents from the North America, Greater Gulf Countries  and Asia Pacific.

Some of her  leading research includes tackling acid violence, child marriage and gender based violence  on a global level. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 2017 to undertake research on child marriage in the USA at Cornell University (Ivy League). Upon return to England in 2018 she  was invited to join  the pro bono legal team of the “Safeguard Futures Ban Child Marriage” campaign and She was actively engaged in drafting and shaping the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022. In 2021 she  was invited by the Senate of Mexico to share the findings of her  research on child and forced marriage.

Shabina speaks fluent Bengali, Hindi and Urdu. She is also a certified user of Level 1 British Sign Language.

SIGNIFICANT REPORTED CASES

• Re N (Adoption – Surrogacy), [2024] EWFC 41 (instructed by the legal father when formerly working at Dawson Cornwell)
• M (A Child) [2020] EWCA Civ 922
• A (A Child) (Inherent Jurisdiction: Parens Patriae, FMPO And Passport Orders) (Rev 2) [2020] EWHC 451 (Fam) 2019
• C (Female Genital Mutilation and Forced Marriage: Fact Finding) [2019] EWHC 3449 (Fam)
• Re X (Female Genital Mutilation Protection Order No. 2) [2019] EWHC 1990 (Fam)
  2017
• Re X (A Child) (Female Genital Mutilation Protection Order : Restrictions on Travel) [2017] EWHC 2898 (Fam) 2016
• Re H (Child) [2016] EWCA Civ 988