Rez Gardi MNZM is an international human rights lawyer, global refugee advocate, and the Special Assistant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Born in a refugee camp in Pakistan after her Kurdish family fled genocide, Rez’s journey from statelessness to global changemaker is a powerful story of resilience, justice, and survivor-led leadership.
Arriving in New Zealand with nothing, Rez transformed early adversity into purpose, becoming New Zealand’s first Kurdish female lawyer. She went on to graduate with a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School as a Fulbright Scholar, becoming the first Kurd in history to graduate from Harvard Law.
Rez was a co‑founder of R‑SEAT (Refugees Seeking Equal Access at the Table), the world’s first global refugee‑led initiative focused on ensuring meaningful refugee participation in international decision‑making. Her leadership helped shape refugee representation at major global forums including the UN General Assembly, Global Refugee Forum, and the Human Rights Council. Rez stepped away from the organisation upon taking up her role at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) — the body responsible for ensuring people forced to flee violence, persecution, or war have the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge.
She is also the Co‑Director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies (CAPRS) at the University of Auckland, a research hub dedicated to addressing the complex challenges created by conflict, displacement, and climate‑related migration across the Asia‑Pacific.
Rez’s career spans frontline human rights work, international litigation, and humanitarian field operations. She has documented ISIS war crimes against the Yezidi people on the Iraq–Syria border; led accountability processes for grave violations against children across South Sudan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka; and contributed to landmark international cases, including the ruling holding multinational company Chiquita liable for financing a Colombian paramilitary group responsible for killings and abuses.
A former lawyer at the New Zealand Human Rights Commission and lecturer in international law, Rez’s work bridges rigorous legal expertise with lived experience, bringing a grounded, survivor‑centred voice to global conversations on displacement, justice, and human rights.
In 2017, she founded the Empower Youth Trust, a refugee‑youth‑led organisation that has grown from a grassroots New Zealand initiative into an international programme supporting over 10,000 refugee youth through mentorship, leadership development, and education equity — including in refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Rez has received numerous national and international honours. She was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in 2025 for her services to human rights and refugees. She was named Young New Zealander of the Year (2017), one of New Zealand’s Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers (2021), and a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Goalkeeper (2022). Her accolades also include the UN Youth Assembly Outstanding Youth Delegate Award, the Global Impact Award, being named a Peace Ambassador by the European Commission, and selection as both a Vital Voices Global Fellow and an Eisenhower Youth Fellow.
A sought‑after and deeply authentic storyteller, Rez has spoken around the world — from the United Nations in Geneva and New York to youth workshops in refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda, and Iraq. Her story challenges audiences to rethink inclusion, leadership, and the power of lived experience, inspiring people to believe in a more just and humane world.
Rez was an outstanding speaker whose journey in law was so relevant to our inaugural New Lawyer Conference delegates. She was inspiring as well as engaging. ... keep reading New Zealand Law Society | Canterbury Westland Branch
Rez is a truly remarkable young woman, who has managed to overcome very difficult beginnings as a Kurdish refugee, through a total rejection of her own culture to try to "fit in in New Zealand as her country of settlement, to a recent reconciliation with her past as a platform of strength upon which to build a scaffolding of support for other refugees. As Young New Zealander of the Year 2017 and the first ever Kurdish lawyer Rez has been rightly recognized for her courage and her activism in New Zealand and has been invited to represent us internationally on a number of occasions. Her maturity and strength of character are evident not only through her ability to acquit herself on the global stage, but also through her actions - in founding a successful charity, for example - and in her demeanor of quiet confidence and compassion face to face.
