“Dreams often appear distant when viewed from the beginning of the journey, but every goal becomes more attainable when broken down into steps and pursued with discipline.” – Suad Abdel Aziz
Suad Abdel Aziz is a Sudanese-American human rights lawyer and the Founding Executive Director of Decolonize Sudan. Born and raised in Hasahisa, Sudan and based in the United States of America (U.S.A.) South, her work centres on confronting genocide, foreign intervention, and corporate complicity. Through Decolonize Sudan, she leads legal advocacy, documents and challenges abuses before international and U.S.A. accountability mechanisms, develops political education curricula, and facilitates organising and advocacy trainings across the U.S.A. Her work bridges law, diaspora organising, and anti-imperialist policy advocacy to advance community-led strategies for liberation.
1. Driving Force for the Legal Profession and What Continues to Make Law Fulfilling.
Suad came from a poor farming village in Sudan where she had never met a lawyer and had no lawyers in her family. Before coming to the U.S.A. as a refugee, the first lawyer she ever encountered was a human rights lawyer at the American embassy in Egypt, conducting her family’s interview. During that meeting, the lawyer asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, and Suad answered, “I want to be like you.”
Even as a child, she understood something profound: law was power. Sitting in that office, she watched someone hold the ability to alter the course of her family’s future. She saw how one person, through law, could reshape circumstances that once felt impossible to escape. In that moment, she began to imagine what it would mean to hold that same power – not simply to transform her own life, but to transform the lives of others, her community, her country, and perhaps even the world.
As a first-generation immigrant, she fought her way through school carrying that vision with her. Years later, she became exactly what she had imagined as a young girl sitting in that embassy office: a human rights lawyer using law as a tool to fight for justice.
What continues to make the practice of law deeply fulfilling is its ability to create change at multiple levels at once. It has the power to change an individual’s life while also challenging the systems that shape millions of others. Law is only one tool, but in the right hands, it can become a force capable of moving history.
2. Qualities that define a truly exceptional lawyer in today’s world.
For Suad, one of the defining qualities of an exceptional lawyer is the refusal to compromise in advocacy. Whether standing in a courtroom on behalf of a single client or speaking at the UN, on behalf of an entire country, lawyers have a duty to make bold demands and be unflinching in those demands.
Additionally, good lawyers, especially those committed to justice, must become like a “Swiss Army knife”. Communities experience many forms of oppression, which constantly evolve. Lawyers must be prepared to evolve with them.
One day, a lawyer may receive a call from someone who survived genocide only to face detention and deportation. The next day may bring a jail call from a protester criminalised for exercising their right to speak. The day after that may involve helping a mother fight to keep her child from being taken away by the state. The circumstances shift, but the mission remains the same: using legal knowledge as a shield for people and communities under attack.
For young legal professionals, that means learning broadly and learning deeply. It means treating every class, every internship, and every opportunity as something that may one day become essential. But beyond legal skills, it also means building trust. Communities are not simply clients. They are people whose lives and futures are placed in your hands.
3. Next Groundbreaking Project or Initiative that you are or would be working on and the impact you hope it will make.
Suad founded Decolonize Sudan, a Sudanese women-led human rights organisation created from a belief that communities should not have to wait for institutions to save them. The organisation works across legal advocacy, political education, and grassroots organising to confront injustice at both domestic and international levels.
One of its current priorities is advancing efforts around an arms embargo to disrupt the flow of weapons fueling genocide in Sudan. But the vision extends far beyond a single campaign or legislative effort. The work seeks to prove something larger: that ordinary people, organised around a shared purpose, can challenge systems that appear untouchable. Throughout history, injustice has often depended on convincing people that they are powerless. Decolonize Sudan exists to challenge that idea and to show that people power remains one of the strongest forces in the world.
4. Legal Minds Who Influenced your Journey and Books that Shaped or are Shaping your Thoughts and Perspectives.
Some of Suad’s earliest lessons about power and resistance did not come from a classroom but from her grandmother in Sudan. One day, her grandmother handed her a globe and pointed to Cuba, saying, “Suad, do you see that tiny island there? It took on this whole powerful country called the United States, and it won.”
As a child, that moment stayed with her. It planted questions that would follow her throughout her life: How could something so small challenge something so powerful? How do people confront systems that appear impossible to defeat?
She later became interested in figures such as Fidel Castro. He was a lawyer who had a vision and used that vision to transform his country and inspire the world. He took on a system that looked unshakable and unbeatable, and he triumphed through mobilising and organising his people.
During her undergraduate studies, Suad read the book “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by Walter Rodney. The text fundamentally changed how she understood the world. It connected history to the realities unfolding around her and revealed how colonialism was not simply something confined to the past but a structure that continued to shape the present. It transformed not only her understanding of justice but also the way she chose to pursue it.
5. Advice or Guiding Principles to Young Legal Professionals and Advocates Trying to Find their Place and Purpose in the Legal Terrain.
Suad would encourage young people to find their life’s purpose – that is the place where their deepest joy meets the world’s greatest needs. The needs of the world are endless and what is more rare is finding the work that gives someone purpose and keeps them moving forward even during difficult moments.
Once that purpose becomes clear, the next step is to pursue it relentlessly. Dreams often appear distant when viewed from the beginning of the journey, but every goal becomes more attainable when broken down into steps and pursued with discipline.
She would also encourage young advocates to seek mentors wherever possible. No one reaches their destination alone. Mentors can provide guidance, open doors, and sometimes see possibilities that young people have not yet learned to see in themselves.
For Suad, the path was never simple or guaranteed. A young refugee girl sitting in an embassy office could not have predicted exactly where life would take her. But she understood something that remains true today: when purpose is clear, impossible things begin to feel possible.
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