Saraphin Dhanani

Stanford Law

1L Scholar

Intel Scholar sponsored by WilmerHale

Saraphin Dhanani is a 1L ChangeLawyer at Stanford Law School. Moved by her parents’ story of displacement, Saraphin’s call to public service found its root in refugee resettlement work. As a paralegal on the frontlines of the refugee crisis in Turkey, anti-refugee policies and limited resettlement programming inspired Saraphin to found her own website, My Mustaqbal, to expand career and educational resources for refugees and displaced persons across the globe by virtually connecting them with volunteers offering university preparation mentorship, guidance on writing job applications, and English language tutoring. As rewarding as this resettlement work has been for Saraphin, however, it’s also taught her the degree to which resettlement often address the symptoms, not the causes, that precipitate crises. With a legal education, Saraphin hopes to ameliorate these core causes of displacement and mass-migration in the greater Muslim world by guiding stratified, war-stricken communities toward a transitional-justice process.