Yehudit Karp is widely acknowledged for her determined pursuit of truth and justice. Throughout her career as a lawyer she has acted with grit in the Israeli and international spheres, to preserve moral standards and to ensure human rights in general and women’s, children’s, and victim’s rights in particular. She has received awards from the Israeli Bar Association for her special contribution to the advancement of the status of women in Israel and from the National Council for the Child for her contribution to the status and welfare of children in Israel.

Karp was born in Jerusalem on October 28, 1937, to Hungarian-born civil engineer Moshe Pelley (1893–1960), who immigrated to Palestine in 1921, and his wife Hannah (1904–1975), who was born in Yugoslavia and immigrated to Palestine in 1929. Yehudit’s brother Itamar (PhD in chemistry, a professor in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Ben Gurion University of the Negev) was born in 1936. Yehudit is married to graphic artist Nathan Karp (b. 1934), who emigrated from Russia to Israel in 1950 and is the designer, among other items, of many of Israel’s official coins and medals. They have two children: a daughter, Lee (b. 1964), who is a marine biologist (PhD), and a son, Haggai (b. 1966), a member of A voluntary collective community, mainly agricultural, in which there is no private wealth and which is responsible for all the needs of its members and their families.Kibbutz Rosh ha-Nikrah and an industrial designer.

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Karp is the author of a report on the “Policy of Investigation and Prosecution in Domestic Violence Cases,” based on the recommendations of a committee on this subject which she headed (1989). The report, which was a turning point for reform in the work of the police, the prosecution, the courts, and the welfare system in this field, also constituted the basis for a change of public attitudes in Israel regarding the seriousness of this phenomenon and the need to combat it.

Karp’s involvement in her fields of responsibility led to extensive reforms of legislation and policies in various fields of criminal law and the criminal justice system, police work, law enforcement, the juvenile justice system, prisons, modes of punishment, criminal records, domestic violence, sex offences, trafficking in persons, commercial sexual exploitation of children, money laundering, and drug and alcohol abuse. She was also active in the process of establishing the Public Defender Institution in Israel. The common denominator of all these fields was that, so far as she was concerned, all of them were indicative of social and legal structures and policies that were concerned with issues of human rights and with the need to find the right balance between public interests and the interests of the individual, so as to create the appropriate infrastructure for a just and better society.

Throughout her career in the Ministry of Justice Karp was involved in the development of Israel’s constitution and charter of rights. She was an active partner in the drafting of most of the basic laws of Israel that form Israel’s “constitution” and advocated as a representative of the ministry during the Lit. "assembly." The 120-member parliament of the State of Israel.Knesset debates on these laws. Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, which is considered to be the charter of rights in Israel, was essentially formed according to a draft personally initiated by Karp along the lines of the Canadian Charter of Rights. Karp was also the catalyst in the Ministry of Justice for Israel to adhere to some of the UN human rights conventions.

Her commitment to the strengthening of human rights in Israel led her to be a pioneer in diligently pursuing the recognition and enhancement of the rights of victims of crime via legislation, treatment, and rehabilitation services, as well as state compensation.

Karp was a member of the Israeli negotiation team on the normalization of relations with Egypt after the peace accord of 1978.

In 1990 Karp headed the Israeli delegation to the UN Congress on Crime Prevention and the Treatment of Offenders held in Havana, Cuba. Her activity in the spheres of the UN has led to Karp’s participation in numerous international conferences and expert committees designed to advance children’s rights, and also in UN and other international expert committees to further the rights of victims of crime and abuse of power including participation in the UN expert drafting committees of the Handbook on Justice for Victims, the UN Guide for Policy Makers on the Implementation of the UN Declaration on Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, the UN handbook on Domestic Violence and in the IBCR drafting committee on Justice for Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime.

From 1995 to 2003 Karp was a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, serving for two years as its vice chairperson and for an additional two years as the committee’s rapporteur. From 1998 to 2003 she was also a member of the UN’s International Panel for Coordination of Technical Advice and Assistance in Juvenile Justice. She was also an active participant in the global movement to eliminate corporal punishment against children. Asked whether these unending efforts will ultimately lead to the desired goal, she replied, “If someone were to come and tell me that it was like scratching the barrier walls, I wouldn’t argue with them. But if we scratch long enough, and strong enough, perhaps the wall will fall at last.”

Karp is the author of many publications in various fields, both in Hebrew and English, and of an educational program for school children titled “Legal and Social Literacy.”