Our Team
Keaton “Kidist” Allen-Gessesse is a human rights lawyer, currently serving as the Global Legal Advisor at Equality Now after joining in 2024. She supports legal advocacy to promote legal gender equality, combat sexual violence and exploitation, and ensure access to justice for survivors of gender-based harms.
She also has an expertise in advancing the rights of LGBTQI+ communities across Africa. Keaton spearheaded the Strategic Litigation Program for the “Defending Fundamental Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons in Ghana” project with the American Bar Association – Rule of Law Initiative from 2023-2024. Her work includes strategic litigation, coalition-building, and advocacy at human rights forums to challenge homophobic legislation and state practices throughout Africa. Keaton collaborated closely with LGBTQI+ led civil society organizations to support victims of discrimination on the basis of SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity & expression). Notably, she developed a policy and legal analysis with Outright International to combat LGBTQI+ conversion therapies in South Africa, proposing legislative and litigation strategies.
She joined the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA) in 2018 as a legal researcher in the Sexual Rights Program, where she contributed to research on comparative and international sexual rights jurisprudence and developed ISLA’s two curriculums on SOGIE-based movement lawyering. Keaton was promoted to Senior Lawyer in 2020, where she developed strategic litigation and provided technical expertise for cases in various jurisdictions.
Her extensive professional background includes engagements with regional human rights mechanisms, including the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials in Cambodia, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. From 2017-2018, she served as a law clerk to Justice Madlanga at the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Keaton earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School where she was a student-attorney in the Immigration and Refugee Clinic and the International Human Rights Clinic. As a student, she was a prominent member of the Royall Must Fall and Reclaim Harvard Law movements, advocating for free education and the decolonization of Harvard’s curriculum and symbols. Keaton received her B.A. from University of Michigan in Political Science and African & African American Studies. She is most proud of working with and learning from marginalized social movements.
She is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and enjoys traveling, exploring, and meeting new people.