Payal Shah is an international human rights lawyer specializing in gender, health, and human rights. She is the Director of the Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones at Physicians for Human Rights. She also serves as a Fellow with the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and as an Advisory Committee member to the Safe Abortion Advocacy Initiative: A Global South Engagement. Previously, Payal was the Acting Regional Director of the Asia Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a Practitioner-in-Residence at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, and an independent legal consultant to various UN agencies, NGOs, and universities. 

In these roles, Payal has developed and implemented successful national, regional, and international litigation and advocacy strategies on sexual and reproductive rights issues. She has led and supported efforts to strengthen networks and movements for gender equality, including playing a key role in the development of the first South Asian regional legal advocacy network on reproductive justice. Payal has published numerous legal and policy briefs, fact-finding reports, and journal articles, including on safe abortion, maternal health, infertility, and gender-based violence. She is the co-author of Securing Reproductive Justice in India: A Casebook.

Payal studied at Columbia Law School, where she was a Jack Kent scholar, and Swarthmore College where she graduated with high honors.