Shandana Gulzar Khan

Member of National Assembley
Pakistan

Synopsis: A qualified legal professional with extensive knowledge and experience in international trade and economic law advocacy. In August 2018, Shandana was elected as Member of the Lower House of the Federal Parliament, the National Assembly of Pakistan. She was notified as Parliamentary Secretary for the Federal Ministry of Commerce in September 2018. In September, 2019, Shandana was elected Chairperson of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association for a duration of three years.

Brief profile: Shandana Gulzar Khan is a legal professional specializing in international trade and development laws; she is a gold medalist from the University of Peshawar and read at the University of Cambridge for a master’s degree in international trade and economic law on a Lady Viqar-un-Nisa Noon scholarship. She was the CEO of the National institute of WTO and international trade laws, a non-profit trade and development institute based in Islamabad from 2003-2006. During the years 2006-2013, Shandana served as Pakistan’s negotiator and first legal advisor at the Mission of Pakistan to the World Trade organization based in Geneva. From 2013-2018, Shandana was the legal Advisor to the Ministry of Commerce and trade in Islamabad.

As an activist, Parliamentary Secretary Shandana has worked on economic rehabilitation of abandoned post-incarceration females and providing opportunities for their families, developing training & legislation for female lawyers as well as advising NGO’s to better understand societal problems.
Shandana’s area of specialization includes policy design, policy review, reform and development, legislation and litigation at the multilateral level. Her areas of expertise cover, inter alia, Trade &development, impact of global trade rules on women & the environment, intellectual property, trade in services, industrial and agricultural goods, e-commerce, investment, and development-centric trade reform.

In the Parliament, besides having served as Parliamentary Secretary for Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Shandana serves as part of the first ever Special Committee on Agriculture, focusing on Agricultural modernization with a focus on small-scale and women farmers & rural workers. As a part of the women’s caucus of the federal parliament, she brings her legal background to legislative work being done by the parliament in particular on child marriage restraint legislation. She is also part of the executive committee of the Parliamentary taskforce on Sustainable development goals and is helping develop Pakistan’s first ever Constituency road map per each SDG.

Shandana has authored various articles on matters, including the creation of Pakistan’s first IP strategic framework, the industrial policy vacuum and has conducted many training and seminars on various aspects of international trade policy and development.