The not-for-profit organisation has been co-founded by two students of Jamia Millia Islamia’s Faculty of Law.

A not-for-profit organisation co-founded by two students of Jamia Millia Islamia’s Faculty of Law has started an open access, peer-reviewed journal called South Asian Journal of Law, Policy, and Social Research (SAJLPSR), in collaboration with the Susan B Anthony Center at the University of Rochester, New York.

The first issue of the first volume of the journal, released on September 7 on SSRN (Social Science Research Network), is on gender-based violence. “Naseer Husain Jafri and Umair Ahmed Andrabi were selected for the University of Rochester’s global exchange program last year to travel to the United States and start the said journal,” Jamia PRO Ahmed Azeem said in a statement.

Their not-for-profit is called the Foundation for Academia, Innovation & Thought (FAITH).The Journal was scheduled for release in March but had to be postponed due to the COVID- 19 pandemic.

“The journal is a peer-reviewed, open-access legal and social science journal that publishes original and previously unpublished research and aims to create an interdisciplinary research platform to foster prospective solutions to legal and social issues in South Asian countries. The journal also attempts to bring research beyond library shelves by inclusion of art,” Jafri and Andrabi said in a statement.

“Volume I of the Journal focuses on the theme of Gender-Based Violence (GBV), which is inclusive of physical, sexual, and psychological harm on the basis of gender in the South Asian region and features research perspectives to GBV in the region along with several exceptional photographs from photographers around South Asia that give an artistic perspective to GBV,” they added.

Volume I Issue II of the journal will be released in November.

They said the journal was “an attempt at making research accessible to everyone around the world free of cost and influencing policymaking through evidence-based research”.

“FAITH aims to harness the power of interdisciplinary and international scholarship to resolve conflict and right injustices and believes in making research accessible which will lead to disabling the spread of disinformation,” the duo said.

“It envisions a world in which collaborative research addresses social problems, where scholarship informs government policies, and in which all individuals are free to live safe and dignified lives,” they added.