Mohamed Keshavjee

In December, 2021, Dr Keshavjee was appointed to the Steering Committee to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Ugandan Expulsion of 1972.

In 2016, Dr Keshavjee was awarded the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Peace Award by the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, for his work on mediation, peace and human rights education. Keshavjee was the first Canadian and also the first Asian from Africa to be awarded this prize. At his acceptance of this prize, Keshavjee gave the speech, "Cosmopolitan Ethics: How we treat each other in today’s globalized world". He lectures on mediation methods needed in the face of major upheavals due to rapid globalization, accelerated technological growth, and massive climate change. His book, Islam, Sharia and Alternative Dispute Resolution, deals with how Muslims engage with sharia customary practices and the laws of the United Kingdom. He has spoken on ADR at conferences in Europe, North America and Asia, and has trained family mediators in the EU countries and imams and pastors in mosque and church conflicts in the UK and the US, respectively.

In 1977, Keshavjee married Dr Amina Jindani in Toronto, Canada. Dr Jindani's life's work has been conducting clinical trials aimed at decreasing the length of time required to treat tuberculosis.

1969 Honourable Society of Gray's Inn London: Barrister at Law; 1970 Admitted as Advocate of the High Court of Kenya in Nairobi; 1976 LLB from Queen's University, Kingston, Canada; 1977 Admitted as Barrister and Solicitor and Member of The Law Society of Upper Canada at Osgoode Hall, Toronto; 1998 LLM (honours) School of Oriental and African Studies, London University; 2000 Masters in Law at the University of London, England; 2009 PhD School of Oriental and African Studies, London University Faculty of Law: Thesis "Alternative Dispute Resolution in a Diasporic Muslim Community in the United Kingdom".

Keshavjee was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1945, to Indian parents, father Najrali Manjee Keshavjee, and mother Koolsam Kanji Kana. Due to increasing political unrest and segregation in South Africa, his family felt pressured to leave Pretoria for Kenya in 1962, searching for a better life. At first, conditions were better in Kenya, but that eventually changed with Idi Amin and, after returning to Kenya from England where he had obtained his law degree in 1969, Keshavjee found himself restricted from employment, even without pay. In 1972 his family then relocated to Canada. In his book, "Into That Heaven of Freedom" (with a foreword by Ahmed Kathrada, the second longest-serving political prisoner in the world after Nelson Mandela, Keshavjee describes the history of Indian migration to Africa in the 19th century and their struggles under Apartheid, using his own family's story as a backdrop, highlighting the early racial struggle of Mohandas Gandhi years before he gained the honorific of Mahatma