Professor Julia Sloth-Nielsen holds a chair at the University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and is the chair of Children’s Rights in the Developing World at the Child Law Department at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. She was a drafter of the South African Children’s Act, and has contributed to child law reform in many southern and eastern African countries (Namibia, Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi, south Sudan etc). She has published widely on child and family law issues, including in the areas of customary family law, juvenile justice, child headed households, and access to justice. She served as a member of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child between 2011 and 2016. Currently she serves as a member of an international expert group on surrogacy, co-convenes an annual summer school on the frontiers of children’s rights in Leiden, and co-convenes an annual conference on child and family law in cape town (now in its 21st edition).