Veasna Chea Leth

Veasna Chea Leth (born 1944) is a lawyer from Cambodia who was the first female law student at the Royal University of Law and Economics. During her studies in the 1990s she lived in an underground space under the university because there were no female dormitories. In her work as a lawyer she raised awareness of the difficulties Cambodian women face in reaching university education for lack of appropriate accommodation, which led the author Alan Lightman to establish the Harpswell Foundation to support women. She is an Honorary Board Member of the foundation, and in 2018 she was nominated as one of the BBC's 100 Women.