2018 HRDF Biographies...Accord. The national UCC Synod passed that resolution with a 97% supermajority. In July 2013, Antal wrote and championed the UCC’s resolution to divest from

TheCarterCenterHumanRightsDefendersForum|July21–24,2018|Atlanta,Georgia

Biographies

Restoring Faith in Freedom

July 21 – 24, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia


Biographies Obse Ababiya, Sr. Program Manager, Emory Institute for Developing Nations (IDN), USA Organization Twitter Handle: @idn_emory Obse Ababiya is a senior program manager at Emory University’s Institute for Developing Nations (IDN) where she oversees IDN‘s programming, communications, outreach, and provides research for ongoing initiatives. Prior to joining IDN, Ababiya was the southeast

regional development officer at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Before that, she served as director of outreach and development at Alliance Française d’Atlanta. She holds a Master of Arts in Ethics and Peace from American University’s School of International Service where she focused on nation state building in Africa, human rights, and the role of religion in peacebuilding. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Emory University in International Studies and French Literature with a minor in African Studies. Ababiya grew up in Ethiopia, where she experienced firsthand the difficulties of reconciling multiple ethnic identities in the process of building nation-states. Her programmatic interests include gender, identity, and literature in the global south.

Onike Morufu Abdul-Azeez, Chief Imam of NASFAT (World Headquarters), Nigeria Personal Twitter: @onikeazeez Imam Abdul-Azeez is the Chief Imam of Nasurl-Lahi-I-Fatih Society Worldwide (NASFAT is an Islamic organization with presence in over 300 cities across the globe with about one million members globally). For nearly two decades, he has been using religious/scriptural texts to positively change social norms for women and girls, and to counter

violent extremism. He has been in the vanguard of condemning the use of misinterpretations of religious textual provisions to deny women and girls their rights. He does this by teaching women and Islamic religious leaders the nexus between the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Islam. A lot of women in his society have become emboldened by the exposure. He is a certified trainer/facilitator in Islam, dialogue, human rights, interfaith relations, and peaceful co-existence. He was a panelist at the U.N. 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women, where he spoke on misinterpretations of textual provisions used by some to justify oppression of women and girls, and he cleared some of the misconceptions about women in Islam. Onike holds a first-class degree in Islamic Studies, Full Technological Cert(Lond.), PGD in Technical Education, and MSc in Engineering management.


Gaby Oré Aguilar, Deputy Executive Director, Center for Economic and Social Rights, Peru Organization Twitter Handle: @social_rights Gaby Ore-Aguilar is a Peruvian human rights lawyer and an intellectual activist working at the intersections of human rights, gender equality and socio-economic rights. She has led the work of innovative NGOs and philanthropic organizations in Latin America and globally. Her work as an attorney and human rights educator begun during the period of an

internal armed conflict in Peru which disproportionally victimized the poorest and most socially excluded Quechua-speaking communities living in rural areas, particularly women. This experience shaped Gaby’s commitment to assert the indivisibility of civil, political, social and economic human rights through her research and practice. She initiated the work of the Center for Reproductive Rights in Latin America; as a grant maker with the Ford Foundation she focused on supporting the women’s rights movement in the Andean Region to realize the ambitious agenda embodied in the Vienna, Beijing and Cairo programs of action. For the past seven years, she has led the Center for Economic and Social Rights’ program strategy, which has a cutting-edge agenda addressing key issues in the contexts of economic policy and sustainable development, integrating gender equality across the organization policy proposals, research methods and partnerships. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture. She has invited lecturer at a number of universities and has published extensively on these issues.

Mary Akrami, Executive Director of Afghan Women Skills Development Center (AWSDC), Afghanistan Mary Akrami is a civil and women’s rights activist who leads the fight for the rights of women faced with violence from society. Her organization established the first shelter for women at risk in 2003. She is a strong advocate for promotion and protection of women’s human rights, and approval and implementation of EVAW Law is one the results of her untiring efforts. Akrami’s organization is engaged in peace building and

conflict resolution programs and has provided trainings and mentoring on mechanisms of women’s engagement in political and community-based peace building. Akrami for the first time established a women’s restaurant in Kabul (BOST Restaurant) for the economic empowerment of women. In 2007, she was awarded the first International Women of Courage Award from the U.S. Department of State. She has participated in numerous international conferences and regional platforms for women in peace in the Af-Pak region. Akrami is an alum of New York University’s Human Rights Advocacy Fellowship.


Reverend Dr. Jim Antal, National United Church of Christ Spokesperson on Climate Change and retired leader of UCC in Massachusetts, USA Personal Twitter Handle: @JimAntal Reverend Dr. Jim Antal is a denominational leader, climate activist, author, and public theologian. He serves as Special Advisor on Climate Change to the General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ (UCC). Antal’s new book, CLIMATE CHURCH, CLIMATE WORLD, was featured on Earth Day 2018 in the Chicago Tribune. An

environmental activist from the first Earth Day in 1970, in July 2017, Antal authored a resolution declaring a new moral era in opposition to President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. The national UCC Synod passed that resolution with a 97% supermajority. In July 2013, Antal wrote and championed the UCC’s resolution to divest from fossil fuel companies, the first of its kind in the country. From 2006-2018, Antal led the 350 UCC churches in Massachusetts as their Conference Minister and President. Throughout his career, he has practiced the spiritual discipline of nonviolent civil disobedience, most recently focused on resisting the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. Before leading the UCC in Massachusetts, Antal was a local UCC pastor in Shaker Heights, Ohio and Newton, Massachusetts for 20 years. In the mid-80’s he served as Executive Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (USA), an interfaith pacifist organization. Antal is a graduate of Princeton University, Andover Newton Theological School, and Yale Divinity School, where he was Henri Nouwen‘s teaching assistant. In 2017, Yale Divinity School honored him with the William Sloane Coffin Award for Peace and Justice.

Radhika Balakrishnan, Faculty director, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @CWGL_Rutgers Personal Twitter: @rbalakra Dr. Radhika Balakrishnan is faculty director at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and professor in Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from

Rutgers University. She is Commissioner for the Commission for Gender Equity for the City of New York and the Co-Chair of the Civil Society Advisory Committee for the United Nations Development Program. Balakrishnan is the co-author of Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The radical potential of human rights with James Heintz and Diane Elson (Routledge, 2016). She is the co-editor with Diane Elson of Economic Policy and Human Rights: Holding Governments to Account (Zed Books, 2011). She edited The Hidden Assembly Line: Gender Dynamics of Subcontracted Work in a Global Economy (Kumarian Press, 2001) and co-edited Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions, with Patricia Jung and Mary Hunt (Rutgers University Press, 2000). Her research and advocacy work has sought to change the lens through which macroeconomic policy is interpreted and critiqued by applying international human rights norms to assess macroeconomic policy.


Marguerite Barankitse, Founder and President of Maison Shalom, Rwanda Organization Twitter Handle: @Maison_Shalom Marguerite Barankitse is an internationally acclaimed humanitarian activist devoted to improving the welfare of children and challenging ethnic discrimination. After rescuing 25 children from a massacre she was forced to witness during the tragic conflicts between Hutu and Tutsi in Burundi in 1993, Marguerite “Maggy” Barankitse founded Maison Shalom, an NGO to provide access to healthcare, education, and culture

to over 20,000 children. However, she has been forced into exile from her country since 2015. Far from surrendering, Marguerite Barankitse decided to dedicate all her energy to help more than 90,000 Burundian refugees in Rwanda. In 2016, she opened the Community Center Oasis of Peace in order to school children and to implement activities of sustainable development. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity (2016), the Opus Prize (2008), UNESCO (2008), the Nansen Refugee Award (2006). Her vision is to instill dignity in the refugees and to allow them to keep their dreams alive: “Evil never has the last word – love always wins out.”

Lulú Barrera, Founder, Luchadoras, México Lulú Barrera is a feminist activist from Mexico. She has collaborated with organizations such Amnesty International, Article 19, U.N. Women and the National Institute of Public Health, among others on developing gender related policies and frameworks. In 2012 she founded “Luchadoras,” a cyberfeminist collective that uses ICT to fight violence against women in digital spaces, through content creation and raising

awareness about online violence. She is a member of the National Network of Women Human Right Defenders in Mexico.

Senator Hafida Benchehida, People's Democratic Republic of Algeria Senator Hafida Benchehida has been Senator of the Republic of Algeria since 2013, and was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee until 2015. She is a founding member of the Algerian Women’s Parliamentarian Network, and as of January 2016, the Deputy Chairperson for Legal & Administrative Affairs and the Human Rights Committee in the Senate. She holds a Propaedeutic diploma in medicine from Neuchâtel and a second Propaedeutic in medicine from Lausanne.

She is the founding member of the Arab Women Parliamentarian Network. A spouse of a diplomat, Benchehida has lived in Geneva, Madrid, Havana, and New York. She co-chaired a session at the Alliance of Civilizations on “Women’s role in peace (prevention, mediation, negotiation).” Benchehida had mediation training with the Toledo International Peace Center for Peace in 2015, is a member of Mediterranean Women Mediators, and the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). In 2018, she has participated in the Stockholm Forum on Gender Equality, and a workshop on women in conflict zones. She was a speaker at the NATO Foundation where she addressed “Tailoring measures for Africa’s threats and challenges.”


Benchehida graduated cum laude in parliamentary translation for four languages from the University of Geneva, with two additional translator and interpreter diplomas.

Golda S. Benjamin, Southeast Asia Researcher & Representative, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Philippines Organization Twitter handle: @BHRRC Golda S. Benjamin is a Philippine lawyer and activist who has spent more than a decade working on policy and campaign initiatives involving land rights, tax justice, and responsible trade. Her work with the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre allows her to engage with states, businesses, and civil society on initiatives such as the development of a

regional strategy and national action plans on business and human rights, creation of regional alliances to address issues on access to remedy, and to document incidents of abuse in communities in Southeast Asia. Benjamin is actively representing marginalized communities in strategic litigations involving socio-economic rights. She also engages with policymakers in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of governments to ensure that human rights are protected and advanced through statutes and government guidelines.

Father Sohail Bhatti, Rector of the Cathedral, St. Joseph's Cathedral, Rawalpindi, Pakistan Father Sohail Bhatti is an expert trainer on peace, interfaith, human rights, and cultural heritage. He is fundamentally a writer, a poet, and a musician who introduced arts-based peace-building projects among local communities. For the past 20 years, after completing his priesthood education and training, he worked as peace trainer and peace promoter at grassroots level through policy making forums organized by leading

civil society organizations, religious groups, youth conferences, multi-faith and multi-ethnic groups across Pakistan. He served on the board of various organizations and is currently rector of St. Joseph's Cathedral, Rawalpindi, Director, National Commission for Interfaith Dialogue and Ecumenism (NCIDE), and Director, Diocesan Youth Commission – Islamabad-Rawalpindi Diocese. He has presented his peace work at various international forums. He earned his Master’s Degree in Peace & Conflict Studies from EPU (European Union) – Austria. He developed a training manual on “Peace and Regional Cooperation.” "Gunghat Takay”and “Zarrre vich Khudi” are his Punjabi poetic works, while "Being Nothing" is his English poetry. He developed a book on "Sufi Teachings and Human Rights Education" for school children. He released his five music albums – “O Hona,” “Sona Aap Janab,” “Aao Zindgi Manain” (Let’s Celebrate Life), Main Safar Maien Hoon – Colors of religious diversity, and Songs of Being – Joy of existence.


Reverend Traci D. Blackmon, Executive Minister Justice & Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @justice_ucc Personal Twitter Handle: @pastortraci Reverend Traci D. Blackmon's life’s work focuses on faith-filled communal resistance to systemic injustice. Her response in Ferguson to the killing of Michael Brown resulted in national and international recognition, gaining her many audiences spanning the breadth of the

White House to the Carter Center to the Vatican. Under Rev. Blackmon’s direction the United Church of Christ actively engages in social and political racial, economic, environmental, LGBTQ, immigration, disability and gender injustice. Appointed to the Ferguson Commission by Governor Jay Nixon and to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships for the White House by President Barack Obama, Rev. Blackmon is a recipient of the NAACP Rosa Parks Award; The Urban League of St. Louis Woman in Leadership Award; and the National Planned Parenthood Faith Leader Award, to name a few. In 2017, she was named Citizen of the Year by The St. Louis American and as one of St. Louis' 100 most influential voices. This year Rev. Blackmon was inducted into the Morehouse College MLK Board of Preachers, an honor of great significance to her in this year that marks the 50th Anniversary of Dr. King’s death. In addition, Rev. Blackmon is a featured voice in the National Geographic documentary: America InsideOut with Katie Couric. "I speak for the lions. And we are many!".

Jennifer Bradshaw, Women, Peace, and Security Program Officer, Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @womenpeacemakers Personal Twitter Handle: @jmbradshaw Jennifer Bradshaw, is currently the Program Officer at the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ) at the University of San Diego. Her portfolio of work focuses on global women, peace, and security issues and oversees the Women PeaceMakers Program and the Women Waging Peace

Network. Together these programs consist of over 1,000 women peacemakers from 55 different countries, covering over 30 areas of peacebuilding expertise. Before joining the Kroc IPJ, Bradshaw spent the past decade building positive peace in various regions of the world, including: Ukraine (worked on an access to justice & rule of law project with USAID), Ivory Coast, Mali, Uganda, and Afghanistan (delivered humanitarian aid & built female Afghan led small business enterprises with Supreme Foundation) and South Africa (provided basic needs support to female refugees with UNHCR). She is a Rotary Peace Fellow and has a MSSc in Peace & Conflict Research from Uppsala University.


Valerie Bridgeman, Founding President and CEO, WomanPreach! Inc. and Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Methodist Theological School in Ohio, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @Womanpreach, @MTSOedu Personal Twitter Handle: @DrValerieB Valerie Bridgeman is an educator, advocate, and peace activist whose primary work has been in helping religious speakers and activists strengthen their prophetic voice and message through the non-profit she

founded in 2009. WomanPreach! is a non-profit organization that is building a network of people who use their voice to speak on behalf of equity and justice, both in the pulpit and in the public arena. The organization has trained the voices of hundreds of preachers and activists throughout the U.S. who work on issues that include public policy, disrupting child abuse in religious spaces, crying out against human trafficking, and more. In addition, Bridgeman teaches and leads at Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO), a theological institution committed to training leaders to help build a "just, sustainable, and generative world." In 2010, she was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Collegium of Scholars. She also is a member of the College of Affirming Bishops & Faith Leaders, The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries since 2017.

Alfred Brownell, Founder and lead campaigner of Green Advocates International, Liberia Alfred Brownell serves as lead counsel to Green Advocates’ community partners. He campaigns for the recognition of the customary land rights and has filed international complaints against major transnational corporations. He has established networks of civil society and community organizations across Liberia and West Africa challenging companies taking customary land from communities. Brownell serves on

the Steering Committees of ESCR-Net’s Corporate Accountability Working Group, the OECD Watch, ETO Consortium representing civil society in Africa, and the Kimberley Process Civil Society Coalition, and he is a former international board member of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). He currently serves as Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Northeastern University School of Law Program on Human rights and the Global Economy. At Northeastern, Brownell teaches a course that explores the inter-linkages between human rights, the environment, development, and the resilience of communities who, with the aid of activist lawyers, are utilizing the tools of innovative lawyering, enabling emerging national and international jurisprudence in comparative law development, while engaging judicial, quasi-judicial, and non-judicial grievance mechanisms. His research focuses on the design of a Land Tenure Security Index, a future composite land tenure data tool that will measure, score, and rank how governments protect the land rights of their citizens. This index could serve as a tool indicating land related conflicts, deforestation, displacement, legacy issues for businesses, and mass migration. Brownell is pursuing a co-creation strategy that includes indigenous peoples and land rights defenders.


Reverend Leah D. Daughtry, President and CEO, On These Things, LLC, USA Reverend Daughtry is an internationally recognized teacher, preacher, speaker, organizer, leader, and political strategist. Standing at the intersection of Faith and politics, Leah works with community activists and organizations, political organizations, faith leaders and communities to assist them in building coalitions and partnerships that advance the common good. For her work with and within communities of Faith,

Religion News Service named her one of the 12 most influential Democrats in the nation on faith and values politics. In 2018, Daughtry launched Power Rising, a convening of, by, and for Black women, designed to support Black women in leveraging their political, economic, and social power to ensure equity, opportunity, and representation for themselves and their communities. This highly successful gathering created an agenda that is turning power into action and using their influence for the betterment of themselves, their communities and their country. She is President of On These Things, LLC., which assists a broad array of businesses and organizations with strategic planning, project management, and community engagement activities. Daughtry previously served as Chief of Staff of the Democratic Party, as well as Chief Executive Officer of the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Conventions, making her the first person in Democratic Party history to hold the position twice. The daughter of a long line of community organizers and activists, Daughtry represents the fifth consecutive generation of pastors in the Daughtry family. She is an ordained Elder in The House of the Lord Churches.

Bani Dugal, Principal Representative of the Bahá’í International Community to the United Nations, New York, USA Personal Twitter Handle: @BaniDugal Bani Dugal is currently the Vice Chair of the Steering Committee of the NGO Working Group on the Security Council. She previously served as President of the NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Chair of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Chair of the Global Forum of the NGO Committee on UNICEF, amongst several positions

she has held at the U.N. in New York. Dugal holds a Master's degree (LL.M.) in Environmental Law from Pace University School of Law, New York and a law degree (LL.B.) from the University of Delhi, India. Prior to relocating to the U.S. in 1988, she practiced law before the Supreme Court of India. She has authored published articles, statements and papers. She has participated in many high-level events, significant among which are: U.N. 2017 High Level Panel: Launching a Platform on Gender Equality and Religion for the Gender Responsive Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 2016 U.N. General Assembly High Level Panel: Role of Religious Leaders in Preventing Atrocity Crimes, U.N. Women Intergenerational Dialogue Day at the 59th CSW/Beijing+20 (2015), the World Economic Forum (2005, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018), the International Inter-religious Conference on Faith in Human Rights in The Hague (2008), and the Conference commemorating the U.N. Declaration on Religious Tolerance and Non-Discrimination (2006).


Lydia Alpizar Duran, Founding Member and Co-Executive Director, Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras), Costa Rica-Mexico Organization Twitter Handle: @IM_Defensoras Personal Twitter Handle: @LydiaAlpizar Lydia Alpizar Duran is a Costa Rican-Mexican feminist activist and the Co-Executive Director of IM-Defensoras, a unique local-to-regional alliance of women human rights defenders (WHRDs), organizations,

multiple social movements and national WHRD networks from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. IM-Defensoras works collaboratively to advance strategies of feminist holistic protection for WHRDs in order to sustain their struggles in favor of human rights in Mesoamerica and towards their security, wellbeing, leadership and autonomy. IM-Defensoras contributes effective responses to the deepening trends of closing democratic-civic spaces, inequality, violence and repression in the Mesoamerican region through its strategies of national WHRDs networks supporting frontline activists; safe-houses; accompaniment of WHRDs at risk; self-care, wellness and healing from stress and trauma; advocacy from local, regional to international levels; strategic communications and systematic registry of attacks against WHRDs. Lydia served as Executive Director of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) for a decade and she is currently a Board Member of the Urgent Action Fund Latin America (FAU-LA). She is also a graduate of the Human Rights Advocacy Training Program at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Human Rights. Lydia has extensive experience in advocacy and training on women's human rights, particularly in sexual and reproductive rights, financing for development, violence against women and integrated protection for WHRDs at risk.

Dabney P. Evans, Interim Director, Emory Institute for Developing Nations; Associate Professor of Global Health, Hubert Department of Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @idn_emory Dr. Dabney P. Evans is an Associate Professor of Global Health at the Hubert Department of Health in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She is a mixed-methods researcher of issues affecting vulnerable populations at the intersection of public health and human

rights. Evans received her Master of Public Health degree in 1998 from Emory University and her doctoral degree in law from the University of Aberdeen (UK) in 2011. She is architect and Director of the Center for Humanitarian Emergencies in the Rollins School of Public Health and the Emory University Institute of Human Rights - both focus on capacity building. In July 2017, she assumed the position of Interim Director for the Emory University Institute of Developing Nations. As one of the first faculty to include health and human rights in the public health curriculum, Evans is an established teacher and trainer. Since 2010, her teaching and training activities have touched over 19,000 learners from 171 countries. Through her scholarly research, Evans has charted new interdisciplinary paths uniting public health, human rights, and humanitarian response. Evans’ current research projects focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender-based violence. She has published over 75 book chapters, journal articles, and pieces of public scholarship.


Birima Fall, Training Center Manager, Tostan International, Senegal Birima started in Tostan in 2006 as a bilingual trainer to mainly help expand the Tostan Community Empowerment Program (CEP) in West and East Africa. He afterwards became program officer at Tostan international and Tostan National Coordinator in Somalia. He started working for the Tostan Training Center (TTC) in early 2014 as Deputy Project Manager to prepare the TTC to be ready logistically and pedagogically. He was the Manager of Training and Pedagogy during the

TTC first pilot trainings mostly working on designing content and facilitating training sessions. He is now running the Tostan Training Center that has hosted so far 18 training seminars for almost 400 participants of 40 nationalities since 2015. The participants are mostly religious leaders, human rights activists, NGO workers, and individuals who come to seek more experience on women and girls’ empowerment, on community led development, and promotion of peace and wellbeing in their communities.

Marti Flacks, Deputy Director & Head of North America Office, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @BHRRC Personal Twitter Handle: @martilane Marti Flacks is part of the senior management team of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, an organization that strives to put human rights at the center of business operations by increasing transparency, promoting accountability, and empowering advocates

inside civil society and business. She comes serving for more than 10 years as a policymaker in the U.S. Government at the Department of State and National Security Council, where she focused on U.S.-Africa relations and on promoting good governance and transparency in the extractive industries and energy sector. Since leaving her civil service position after the 2017 presidential transition, she has focused on overseeing the Resource Centre’s work on the Middle East and Africa, and on responsible natural resource use, and managing its North America office. Flacks is a lawyer by training and studied conflict resolution and international security in her undergraduate and graduate work.

Graça Fonseca, Secretary of State for Administrative Modernization, Portuguese Government, Portugal Personal Twitter Handle: @gracafonseca Dr. Graça Fonseca was born in Lisbon in 1971. She has a Law degree from the University of Lisbon and a PhD in Sociology from Lisbon’s ISCTE, with a thesis on discrimination of immigrants within the judicial system. She began her career in the academia, working as a researcher at the Social Studies Centre of Coimbra University, in the field of justice and

migrations. Prior to her current position in Portuguese Government, Fonseca was Deputy Mayor of Lisbon with the responsibilities in the areas of education, economy, and innovation. For a period of six


years (2009-2015), she led several initiatives, like the “Junior Code Academy”, the first Lisbon Incubator “Startup Lisboa,” and several initiatives for civic engagement like “Lisbon Participatory Budget.” In her current position, Fonseca is in charge of the policies for better public services and initiatives for improving the quality of democracy through citizen participation. She leads three important programs transversal to government: “Simplex,” which is the Portuguese national program for the modernization and reform of public services and E.Gov initiatives; “Portugal Participatory Budget”, the first national participatory budget to be implemented in the world; and “GovTech for SDG”, an initiative for awarding and promoting entrepreneurial projects committed with the 2030 agenda of UN. Fonseca is a strong believer on the importance of working with citizens to promote and guarantee the quality of democracy and social cohesion.

Jennifer Freeman, Associate Director, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, University of San Diego, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @krocipj Personal Twitter Handle: @jenfreeman_s Jennifer Freeman is the Associate Director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ), in charge of PeaceMakers Programs. To date, her work has involved supporting human rights and peacebuilding programs in nearly a dozen countries, and learning with PeaceMakers

from over 55 countries how to more effectively end cycles of violence. From 2010-2017, Freeman led the institute's Women, Peace and Security programming, including directing the award-winning Women PeaceMakers Program. She is a recognized expert in gender and peacebuilding, and has developed programs on gendered approaches to violent extremism, and leadership development that facilitates co-learning between peace leaders and private sector leaders. She designed and teaches a graduate course on War, Gender and Peacebuilding, together with the Women PeaceMakers in residence each fall. Freeman holds a BA in political science from the University of Victoria, and an MA (summa cum laude) in peace and conflict studies from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, where she studied on a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship. She is currently pursuing her doctorate, on the gendered dimensions of challenges to more effective insider-outsider collaboration in peacebuilding.

Dr. Samy Gerges, Program Manager, Freedom House, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @freedomhouse Dr. Samy Gerges is Program Manager for the Religious Freedom Program at Freedom House. A specialist in religious freedom, he previously led the International Coptic Union in the UK. He earned his Ph.D in International Conflict Management from Kennesaw State University, LLM in International Law from the University of Edinburgh, his MA in International Peace and

Conflict Resolution from American University (as a Fulbright scholar), and his BA in Economics and Political Science from Cairo University. Gerges has served as project consultant for many organizations, including the European Union-United Nations Joint Migration and Development Initiative, and Middle East Development, Dialogue and Solidarity in Cyprus. He was also senior program coordinator for the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, research assistant with the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt, coordinator and consultant with the


Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services, trainer for Danmission in Denmark, and research assistant for the Middle East Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In his career, Gerges’ work contributes to opening channels of communication, and highlighting common understandings and misunderstandings among religious leaders from different faiths in areas witnessing religious crises. Gerges and his team at Freedom House work to enhance the capacity of local CSOs to address ongoing challenges to religious freedom during religious crises in a more sustainable fashion.

Andrew Gilmour, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, United Nations, USAOrganization Twitter Handle: @GilmourUN Andrew Gilmour assumed his functions as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights on 1 October 2016, heading OHCHR’s Office in New York. In his previous position as Director for Political, Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Human Rights affairs in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, Gilmour was responsible for spearheading the

implementation of the Human Rights Up Front initiative. Since joining the United Nations in 1989, he has held a variety of positions both at the United Nations Headquarters and in the field, including in Afghanistan-Pakistan, Kosovo, State of Palestine and West Africa. In recent years, he has served as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Iraq, and in South Sudan and was the Representative of the Secretary-General in Belgrade. Before joining the United Nations, Gilmour was an adjunct fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and worked in the fields of politics and journalism.

Gretchen Gordon, General Coordinator, Coalition for Human Rights in Development, USA Organization Twitter Handle: @RightsinDevt Gretchen Gordon is the Coordinator of the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, a global coalition of over 80 social movements, civil society organizations and community groups working to ensure that development is community-led and that it respects, protects, and fulfills human rights. The Coalition spearheads the Defenders in Development

Campaign bringing together human rights defenders and advocates around the world to ensure that communities and defenders have the information, resources, and power to shape development processes, to safely defend their human rights and environments, and to hold development financiers, companies, and governments accountable. Prior to joining the Coalition, Gordon worked as an attorney at the Indian Law Resource Center, focusing on indigenous rights and international development and climate policy. She previously served as director of the Citizens Trade Campaign, advocating for social justice in U.S. trade policy, and has an extensive background writing and working on international human rights, environmental, and economic justice issues. Gretchen has a J.D. and a Masters in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.


Reverend Dr. Cassandra Gould, Senior Pastor, Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church, USA Reverend Dr. Cassandra Gould is a native of Demopolis, Ala. She is an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. For the last seven years, she has served as the senior pastor of Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church, the oldest entity to be started by African Americans in Jefferson City, Missouri. Gould has been engaged in speaking truth to power since her youth. She was an active clergy leader in the Movement that rose out

of Ferguson. She can still be found on the front lines fighting for justice from the School Board of Jefferson City, to the Streets of St. Louis and is a sought-after voice across the Nation. Her leadership has led to many opportunities including serving as the Executive Director of Missouri Faith Voices for the last two years. Faith Voices is a statewide, multi faith, grassroots, social justice organization with chapters in St. Louis, Columbia, Jefferson City, and Springfield. Under her leadership, Faith Voices has expanded and continues to fight for racial and economic justice. She believes that faith demands prophetic action. If “GOD is always on the side of the oppressed,” faith leaders must be as well. Gould is a mother, grandmother, sought after preacher, lecturer, keynote speaker, columnist, and workshop leader. Gould is a dual resident of Jefferson City and St. Louis, Missouri. She serves on several boards and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Frances R. Deigh Greaves, Founder and CEO Voice of Voiceless (VoV), Liberia Frances R. Deigh Greaves is a mentor, consultant, trainer and women/human rights activists. She holds a BA degree in Political Science/Sociology, and several certificates in Transformational skills, Women Empowerment, Psychosocial Counseling, Project Writing & Implementation, Women Leadership and Development and Monitoring and Evaluation. She has worked with various organizations in civil

society which include serving as National Chairperson, National Civil Society Council (the apex body of civil society in Liberia), Chairperson, Women NGO Secretariat of Liberia, Board of Directors, 2nd Vice Chair Person, and Women NGO Secretariat of Liberia, among others. Her organization focuses on the plight and concerns of women and children; these concerns include issues of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) where VoV renders psychosocial counseling and paralegal advice to victims and survivors. Her organization is presently implementing a community outreach program, working with parents to ensure that their children are safe in their absence. This project was initiated to help curb the high rate of rape of children in various communities. Having been involved in the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Process working with women on the following projects Women Dialogue (encouraging Women to testify), Women Medical Referral and Reuniting Women and their children, she initiated a platform for conflict resolution and reconciliation in communities where VoV worked.


Patricia Melva Gualinga, Leader of International Relations of the Native People of Sarayaku, Ecuador Patricia Melva Gualinga serves as the Historical Leader of the Original Kichwa Village of Sarayuka in the Amazon of Ecuador. She is also the current president of the new Foundation of Human Rights TIAM. In 2012, she served as the principal agent of the Sarayaku Case and the triumph against international enterprises of exploitative petroleum before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, whose decision favored the

villageofSarayakuoverthestateofEcuador, which is now in the phase of fulfillment. She is currently part of the movement of Amazonian women, which has grown rapidly, to save the jungle. A fervent defender of the rights of the Collective of Indigenous Villages, she provides a powerful voice that has garnered a lot of international attention. When she was threatened with death in January of this year, Amnesty International, Amazon Watch, and other human rights organizations began an international campaign to guarantee her safety.

Dame Gueye, Head of the Development Support Department and Empowered Communities Network, Tostan, Senegal Dame Guèye began working with Tostan in 1994 as a facilitator. He later worked as a supervisor from 2000-2004, an assistant to the regional coordinator in Kaolack, Senegal from 2004-2006, the coordinator of the Empowered Communities Network from 2006-2018, and is currently in charge of the Development Support Department and the Empowered Communities Network. Guèye has pioneered projects and partnerships,

including extensive distribution of Community Grants and a partnership with organizations to provide solar energy to communities.

Alia Hindawi, Programme Manager and Country Rep., Resource Centre, Jordan Alia Hindawi has been working in the field of migration for nearly a decade, with experience in emergency, transit, and development contexts. Hindawi started her career through working with Iraqi refugees in the U.S. Resettlement Programme at IOM in Jordan. She then moved to the technical cooperation department to work on another thematic area: Migration and Border Management. After that, she moved to the Iraqi

programme of the Danish Refugee Council where she supported the management of 12 field offices spread throughout Iraq. This paved for her following tenure at the ILO as the migration project manager, working with migrant workers and later on with Syrian refugees and host communities under the livelihood sector of the U.N. Refugee Response Plan for Jordan. A Chevening laureate, Hindawi has a BA in Economics from the Applied Science University, an MA in Economics from the University of Jordan, and a MSc in International Migration and Public Policy with Merit from London School of Economics and Political Science.


Senator Mobina Jaffer, Senate of Canada, British Columbia, Canada Personal Twitter Handle: @SenJaffer Senator Mobina Jaffer represents the province of British Columbia in the Senate of Canada. Appointed to the Senate on June 13, 2001, by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, she is the first Muslim senator, the first African-born senator, and the first senator of South Asian descent. Jaffer served as Canada’s Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan from 2002 to 2006. An accomplished lawyer, Jaffer has practiced law at the firm Dohm, Jaffer

and Jeraj since 1978. Appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1998, Jaffer was the first South Asian woman to practice law in Canada and she has a distinguished record of service to the legal profession. The Women’s Executive Network named her among Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in 2003 and 2004. In 2003, she received an Honorary Doctorate from Open Learning University. Jaffer earned a Bachelor of Laws from London University in London, England in 1972. She has also completed the Executive Development program at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Multiculturalism and communities are at the heart of any successful policy initiative and progress; she works to engage communities in protecting human rights, celebrating Canada’s diversity, and promoting progress. As a grandmother, women’s rights and children’s rights are central to Senator Jaffer’s advocacy.

Jamal Al-Jawahiri, co-founder and executive director, Iraqi al-Amal Association, Iraq Jamal Al-Jawahiri is one of the founders of Iraqi al-Amal Association (IAA) since 1993; he was initially elected as a member of the Board of Trustees (1995-2014), then in January 2015, he was appointed as the Executive Director. He has thirty years of experience in civil society movements, which started with his initiatives with Student Unions of Iraq until 1992. He had also served as a member of the Coordination

Bureau of the Arab network NGOs for Development from 1995-2012. He also served as the finance manager of IAA (2002-2014), where he supervised some of IAA’s important projects. He also contributed actively in the drafting of the NGO’s law both in Iraq and Kurdistan Regions. In addition, he served as a representative of local civil society in two ministerial committees, the first Iraqi universities consortium for peace education with deans of 15 colleges, and the child protection law drafting committee; he is a member of drafting the Compact of Cooperation between the Government and LNGOs. Since 2014, has been managing five offices of IAA in Iraq, and 74 employees, and directs IAA work in three main fields: human rights, peacebuilding, and gender equality, through more than 25 projects yearly. He is a graduate of Institute of Administration - Accounting Department of Baghdad University, and holds Higher Diploma in Foreign Trade from the Higher School of Economics in Prague. He is a senior trainer in the fields of advocacy, campaigning, networking, and conflict resolution.


Joseph Kibugu, Senior Researcher & Representative for Eastern Africa, Resource Centre, Kenya

Joseph Kibugu is a Kenyan lawyer and activist who empowers community advocates in the eastern Africa region to understand the range of tools necessary to hold business accountable and to put human rights at the center of business. Primarily through his work as the Senior Eastern Africa Representative for Business and Human Rights Resource Centre,

he is especially keen on ensuring that community voices, often ignored by business, are heard in companies’ boardrooms and management teams through proper documentation of their grievances. In this regard, he has conducted missions with grassroots organizations working on corporate accountability in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Thanh Tung Le (Anthony), Social Activist, Brotherhood for Democracy, Vietnam Organization Facebook Handle: @hoianhemdanchu Thanh Tung Le has participated in the struggle for the basic civil rights of the Vietnamese workers, farmers and fishermen under the Communist regime. Assigned by the leadership of the Brotherhood for Democracy, he conducted the search for potential members and organized basic training courses on civil society knowledge for concerned Vietnamese

citizens about issues in Vietnam. He and other assigned members have organized regular workshops for workers about their rights and advocacy skills for their rights and interests in addition to equipping them with knowledge about organizing independent labor unions that currently do not exist in Vietnam. These also include educating landless farmers about their legal rights, and utilizing social media to broadcast their struggles. He and his colleagues facilitated the meetings and motivated the fishermen to fight for their economic rights during the environmental disaster caused by Formosa Steel Company. This environmental disaster caused tons of dead fish and affected thousands of lives of the fishermen in the six coastal provinces in central Vietnam. Thanh Tung Le hopes to receive the support from international friends for the struggle of the concerned Vietnamese citizens and activists for a better Vietnam.

Taryn Lesser, Human Rights Officer, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, New York, USA Taryn Lesser has worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2007 in various capacities. Her current assignment is in New York in the Office of the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, supporting OHCHR’s work to address acts of intimidation and reprisals against individuals and groups for cooperating with the U.N. in the field of human rights. She

is dedicated to monitoring trends and reporting on cases of intimidation and reprisals globally, which take different forms, including: travel bans, threats and harassment, smear campaigns, surveillance, restrictive legislation, physical attacks, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, and denial of access to medical attention.


Rogelio Lopez, Security Incident Shift Lead, Access Now, Costa Rica Organization Twitter Handle: @accessnow Personal Twitter Handle: @rrogeliolopez Rogelio Lopez studied CS at Universidad de Costa Rica. He was a software developer for the corporate world for over five years and decided it was time for a change. He wanted to join civil society so he can help other people and give something back to the community. Now Lopez is working as a Security Incident Shift Lead for Access Now's Costa

Rica team where he deals with digital security cases from all over the world, helping users at risk to improve their security practices and learn how to defend themselves from digital attacks.

Sister Christine Mansiantima Lutete, Director of the Diocesan Justice and Matadi Commission, Democratic Republic of Congo Sister Christine Manisiantima Lutete serves as the director of the Diocesan Justice and Matadi Commission, which is one of the structures of the diocesan pastoral of the Catholic Church. She worked successively, in the archives of the diocese and as head of Antenna at Caritas Development of 1990-2008, located in the capital of Kongo Central Province, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As a human rights

activist, she works in environments where extractive industries are located, collecting data in order to publish a study on people, who have been victims of human rights abuses, and the environment. She also ensures that contractual obligations in the exploitation of natural resources are enforced and advocates for communities and rights holders to demand respect for human rights from local, provincial, national, and international authorities. She also conducts investigations and analyzes public policies on accountability and transparency on the level of revenue mobilization in the three communes and Marie de la Ville de Matadi.

Wai Wai Lwin, Researcher cum Project Manager, Business and Human Rights Resource Center, Myanmar Wai Wai Lwin, a Myanmar national, joined the Resource Centre in February 2016. She manages the Myanmar Foreign Investment Tracking project, which seeks to encourage public accountability for the human rights impacts of foreign companies investing or operating in Myanmar. Prior to the Resource Centre, she served as Executive Director of local NGO BadeiDha Moe. In that position, she focused on land rights issues,

working alongside farmers in eviction and land confiscation cases, especially in areas with heavy foreign direct investment. She has explored various remedies to assist communities facing land disputes, including mediation and other informal grievance processes. Recently, she has been leading the development of Open Data Myanmar, an effort to create an online database of land disputes in Myanmar with the goal of eventually helping communities solve them. She has also facilitated several stakeholder consultations, and has carried out a number of community-led


social impact assessments. Prior to the Resource Centre and BadeiDha Moe, she worked with INGOs and the U.N. on development, relief, and child rights programmes. Her work contributed to community-led data collection about land grabbing in foreign direct investment areas, post-civil war traumatic areas, and environment impacted areas which contributed to creating and opening up space for peace, federalism, and natural resources equal shared.

Usama Malik, Human Rights Lawyer, Senior Associate, Asma Jahangir Law Associates, Pakistan Usama Malik is a lawyer and human rights activist from Pakistan who holds a Masters in Human Rights Law from the University of Warwick (UK). He has worked extensively on the rights of religious minorities, women, and children in Pakistan and for the preservation of freedom of expression in the country. He was an associate of renowned human rights

lawyer Asma Jahangir until her sudden demise. He has also worked and voiced his concerns against the shrinking spaces for NGOs and civil society in Pakistan. Malik has co-authored legislative amendments to provincial and federal laws, which marginalize religious minorities in his country. Furthermore, he has also challenged the non-implementation of 5% job quota for minorities reserved by the government of Pakistan before the superior courts. He has also proved to be instrumental in reinstating the operations of NGOs in Pakistan, which the government previously banned. Malik has also assisted in appeals before the Supreme Court of Pakistan against death sentences awarded by the Military Courts in Pakistan, most of which were given without following due process and principles of fair trial. In addition, Malik is a published author and his research papers have been published in leading international/national law journals including the human rights review of the American Bar Association. He is also the Chairperson of the International Legal Affairs and Human Rights committees of the Lahore High Court Bar Association.

Penda Mbaye, Program Manager, Tostan, Senegal Organization Twitter Handle: @Tostan Penda Mbaye, with a total of twenty-four years of experience empowering communities for sustainable development in the field of human rights, has spent the entirety of her professional career with Tostan, where she has learned to build and manage relations and to adapt to diverse environments, from difficult suburbs to rural areas. She has simultaneously played an active role in running training sessions on

development with a human rights approach at both national and international levels. Working in diverse roles within Tostan has allowed Mbaye to acquire substantial and broad experience in the field of the promotion of human rights, particularly in relation to the most vulnerable groups: women and children. Mbaye has worked extensively with both adults and youth with a view to maximizing the involvement of communities in the villages where Tostan has implemented its programs. Since 2012, she has managed the Reinforcement of Parental Practices program. Through her work, she has contributed to awareness-raising activities in thousands of African communities and the building of a large-scale movement for the abandonment of harmful practices such as female genital cutting, child marriage, and gender-based violence. She is a


trainer at the Tostan Training Center, which offers training for community members, NGOs, associations, administrative bodies, traditional and religious leaders, and parliamentarians on a human rights-based approach for the wellbeing in African communities.

Sheryl A. Mendez, Senior Program Manager, Global Human Rights Defenders Fund, Freedom House, USA Sheryl A. Mendez has worked for nearly a decade providing emergency assistance or logistical support to human rights defenders worldwide. She currently runs Freedom House’s Emergency Assistance Program’s Global Human Rights Defenders Emergency Fund. The fund provides rapid response grants to human rights defenders who are at-risk due to their work. Before joining Freedom House, Mendez led the Committee to

Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Journalist Assistance Program, engineering and implementing a program of direct emergency assistance to journalists at risk worldwide. She is a founding member of The Crimes of War Project and an editor of the critically acclaimed book, Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know (WW Norton). She is also a founding member of the ACOS (A Culture of Safety) Alliance, an unprecedented collaboration between news organizations, press freedom NGOs and journalists to promote journalist safety. Mendez is a widely published photojournalist who has trained journalists and photographers in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, and covered wars and their aftermath in Libya, Lebanon, and Iraq. In 2017, she was named as an Internet Freedom Fellow. In 2011, she was awarded the Sidney Hillman Award for “extraordinary contributions to the protection of journalists around the world.” In December 2008, in commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she was awarded the Every Human Has Rights Media Award by The Elders.

Pat Mitchell, Media Executive, Producer & Curator, USA Personal Twitter: @patmitchell Pat Mitchell’s life and work is a story of passion and purpose. In every step of her career, Mitchell has broken new ground for women, overcoming challenges to become a journalist, an Emmy award-winning producer and president of CNN Productions, the first woman president of PBS, and the CEO of the Paley Center for Media. Today, she continues to connect and strengthen a global community of women

leaders as a conference curator, advisor, and mentor. In partnership with TED, Mitchell launched TEDWomen in 2010 and continues as its editorial director, curator and host, adding more than 150 TED Talks by women. In 2016, she served on a congressional committee to establish a national women’s museum in DC. As chair of the Women’s Media Center and Sundance Institute Boards, she advocates for greater representation of women in all decision-making positions throughout media and more women’s stories on all platforms. Mitchell also serves on the boards of Participant Media, Acumen Fund, the Skoll Fund, and VDay, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia, Mitchell holds a master's degree in English literature. She is working on a book about women, power, and mentoring. Portrait by - Timothy Greenfield-Sanders


Ahmed Mohamed, Senior Program Associate, Freedom House, USA Ahmed Mohamed has worked with human rights defenders for about a year now. His focus is on assisting the provision of emergency assistance to human rights defenders who face threats because of their work—a worrying trend in recent history. In an increasingly autocratic era, defenders are on the front line facing these challenges to liberties. Ahmed’s focus is on assisting their work. He comes into the field previously working on governance and transparency in Somalia.

Soledad García Muñoz, Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, Argentina Soledad García Muñoz is a lawyer with extensive experience in national and international litigation. She has a Diploma in Advanced Studies in Human Rights from the University Carlos III of Madrid with a Research Proficiency obtained in the Doctorate Program of the same house of studies. She has worked as a professor of Public International Law at

National University of La Plata (UNLP); as well as numerous courses on the topics related to her specialty. She founded the course "Gender, Women's Rights and Sexual Diversity" in the Human Rights Masters Programs of the UNLP (Argentina), Rafael Landívar University (Guatemala), and of the Diploma of Gender and Public Policies of FLACSO-Uruguay. She taught the Course on International Protection of the ESCR in the I External Session of Teaching of the Institute Renée Cassin (UBA, Buenos Aires, 2017). She was part of the Expert Commission on Youth and Human Rights of the Ibero-American Youth Organization (OIJ). She has also worked as a consultant for prestigious national and international agencies and academic centers, including several U.N. agencies. She was Chair of Amnesty International (AI) Argentina, Vice-Chair of the International Executive Committee of AI and Chair of its Working Group on Gender and Diversity. From 2009 until her incorporation to the IACHR, she served as the Representative for South America of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, based in Montevideo, Uruguay. In 2017, she assumed her current role and is the first person to carry out this mandate.

Izatta Nagbe, Gender and Land Specialist, USAID/Tetra Tech Land Governance Support Activity Program (LGSA), Liberia Izatta Nagbe is a women’s rights advocate who has overseen gender mainstreaming and capacity development for many government bodies and international NGOs, as well as civil-society organizations in Liberia. Her work has resulted in enhanced gender responsive program implementation within government and civil society sector in Liberia. In her current role, Nagbe supports LGSA project staff and national,

community, and NGO partners to ensure the integration of gender in the implementation of the policies and structures of the proposed Liberia Land Rights Act and Land Authority. She also recommends program interventions for women and other marginalized groups and conducts training and mentoring for LGSA partners and community land stakeholders. Nagbe also


coordinates the Women’s Land Rights Taskforce, a group of civil society organizations and government ministries with the mission of advocating for and highlighting women’s land rights on national developmental agenda. Nagbe has previously worked for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, overseeing gender-sensitive programming and International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Liberia and a certificate in social work from the Mother Pattern College of Health and Social Sciences.

Ahlem Nasraoui, Founder and President, Young Leaders Entrepreneurs NGO, Tunisia Organization Twitter Handle: @youngleadersentrepreneu Personal Twitter handle: @NasraouiAhlem Ahlem Nasraoui is an awarded Tunisian social entrepreneur and activist. Nasraoui is the founder of Young Leaders Entrepreneurs, an association that has managed hackathons, boot-camps, and startups to support the Tunisian democratic transition. A member of the Women’s Alliance for

Security Leadership (WASL) and awarded as one of the U.S. State Department’s top ten youth leaders in 2016, Nasraoui is advancing social enterprise and entrepreneurship as a strategy for addressing gender inequality and building resilience to violent extremism. She launched the Peace Lab in vulnerable communities to address terrorism and extremism through an academic and professional program that coaches youth on leadership, arts, and peace mediation. Nasraoui also designed the Unleash Tunisia Venture Bus that tours the mountains of Tunisia and delivers entrepreneurship training in remote communities. In 2017, the project was shortlisted by BMW group and United Nations for the Intercultural Innovations Award.

Daoud Nassar, Founder and Executive Director, Tent of Nations, Bethlehem, Palestine Daoud Nassar manages the Tent of Nations’ farm known as Daher’s Vineyard and directs the work, programs, and projects of the Tent of Nations. Tent of Nations, an educational and environmental farm, seeks to bring people of various cultures and countries together to build a bridge between people and between people and the land, in order to develop understanding and promote respect for each other and our shared

environment. The vision of Tent of Nations is to prepare people to make a positive contribution to their future and society through the values of understanding and respect. This is to be achieved through education-awareness campaigns, youth empowerment, and farming camps. The Tent of Nations farm remains under threat of confiscation after 27 years in a legal battle, without giving up. The organization believes in justice and its response to the unjust situation is in a nonviolent and creative way under the slogan "We refuse to be enemies." Nassar has a Degree in Biblical Studies from a Schloss Klaus Bible School in Austria, a BA Degree in Business from Bethlehem University, and a Degree in Tourism Management from the University of Bielefeld in Germany. He is married to Jihan Nassar, and they have three children.


Jihan Nassar, Director, Tent of Nations’ Bent Alreef Women Empowerment Project, Bethlehem, Palestine Jihan Nassar is the director of Tents of Nations’ Bent Alreef Women Empowerment Project, which helps women who do have not had the opportunity for education to believe in themselves, realize their potential, and play a role in shaping their societies. Through English, computer, agricultural, art, and other activities and workshops, Bent Alreef aims to empower women to discover their talents, to focus on their positive

abilities, and to believe that they are capable of creating a better future for themselves and for their families. Nassar has a BA degree in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. She is married to Daoud Nassar, and they have three children.

Masana Ndinga-Kanga, Advocacy Officer and Relief Fund Coordinator, Civicus World Alliance for Citizen Participation, South Africa Masana Ndinga-Kanga is Relief Fund Coordinator at Civicus. She currently serves on the Steering Committee of the Integrated Social Crime Prevention Strategy of the Department of Social Development, and she is part of the first cohort of Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equality at the London School of Economics. In 2018, she was identified as one of the London School of Economics’ Leading Women in their

#LSEWomen campaign. With a multi-disciplinary background in African Studies, politics, economics, international development and law, Ndinga-Kanga has an MSc in Political Economy of Late Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she was a Chevening Fellow, and a B.Com. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Cape Town. She has worked at the Robert F Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights in Washington D.C., the Poverty and Inequality Initiative (UCT), and as the first Machel-Mandela Fellow at The Brenthurst Foundation in Johannesburg. She manages a multidisciplinary team involved in-depth investigation into the drivers of conflict in the African continent and supporting the mediation of global south voices in national, regional, and international policy and practice spaces. Critical components of the work she does include ensuring citizen-driven transitional justice and violence prevention frameworks account for the lived realities of those most affected by social and structural crime and exclusion.

Julia Mello Neiva, Senior Brazil, Portugal & Portuguese-speaking Africa Researcher & Representative, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Brazil Organization Twitter Handle: @BHRRC Personal Twitter Handle: @julianeiva Julia Mello Neiva is a Brazilian human rights lawyer and defender who has joined the Resource Centre in 2013. Her commitment to human rights has led her to fight against social inequalities and oppression since a very

early age. Her work at the Centre has helped bring national and international awareness about serious human rights violations perpetrated by companies in Brazil, Mozambique, and Angola,


helping communities strategize to seek accountability. But also pressuring and influencing companies to review and change their policies and operations in order to better protect and respect human rights. Over the years, she supported human rights defenders and affected communities, has taught several human rights courses, has also assisted São Tomé & Principe Government with transparency laws, among other actions. She is one of the founding members of Conectas Human Rights, where she was Justice Program Coordinator. She has also worked with African American Policy Forum; Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic; and Center for Reproductive Rights. She co-taught the first academic course in Brazil on business & human rights, at Law School of Fundação Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo, and is a member of the Human Rights and Business Group of the school. She has an LLM from Columbia University School of Law; University of São Paulo Law School (human rights); Pontifical Catholic Univ. of São Paulo (LLB).

Father Angelos Nyembwe, Comité de Suivi pour la Contribution des Communautés et Eglises à la Transformation Humaine (COSCET), Democratic Republic of Congo Father Angelos Nyembwe is an Orthodox priest and Defender of Human Rights with the Committee for the Contribution of Communities and Churches to Human Transformation (COSCCET). This committee was created in Lubumbashi with a mission to provide civic education to citizens and leaders on all the human rights and responsibilities in

democratic governance. From 2014 to 2017, he served as Vice President of the Board of Directors for POM, a platform of civil society organizations in the mining sector, and he worked for many years to obtain fair wages along with other worker rights for the miners in Lubumbashi and other districts. He has played an integral part in establishing programs to develop political culture by promoting the responsibility of leaders to respect both human rights and the democratic process. He, along with the COSCCET, specifically encourages the political commitment of all citizens through civic education programs and the development of grassroots training modules. This initiative provides information about peace and justice and builds a network of leaders at all levels.

Father Jacques Nzumbu, Director of Research and Training, Arrupe Center, Democratic Republic of Congo Father Jacques Nzumbu is a Jesuit researcher specializing in natural resource governance and the director of research at the Arrupe Center in Lubumbashi (Katanga-DRC). His work focuses on natural resource issues, mining governance, minerals of conflicts and violence, socially responsible mining investment, extractive industry transparency and human rights, income redistribution, the issue of artisanal mining and

sustainable development, economic, social and cultural rights of local communities in mining zones.


Sadiat Onike-Azeez, Dawah Coordinator for Women, NASFAT, Nigeria Sadiat Onike-Azeez is the Dawah Coordinator for Women at Nasurl-Lahi-I-Fatih Society Worldwide (NASFAT). She is a facilitator with the Dawah Institute of Nigeria (DIN), Islamic Education Trust, Minna, Niger State. She advocates and clears common misconceptions about women in Islam. She has a passion for teaching women their rights and has been involved in the empowerment of widows within NASFAT. She is a trainer on Islam and human rights and believes that women can turn the

world around if given the necessary resources.

Manuel Quibod, Dean and Faculty member, Ateneo de Davao University, Philippines Manny Quibod is a lawyer from Davao City, Philippines. Aside from teaching, he is actively involved in pro-bono and legal aid work for the Ateneo Legal Aid Office, where he supervises the law school’s legal aid program. His work focuses on cases of political detainees, human rights workers/defenders, farmers, laborers, urban poor, religious, indigenous peoples (IPs), women and children, and other vulnerable sectors. In

collaboration with other law and human rights groups and with law students, he assists and conducts paralegal training, case conferences, advocacy and litigation, and capacity building. Currently, he is involved in peace-building initiatives and conflict transformation/sensitivity projects. As a member of the University Community Engagement and Advocacy Council of Ateneo de Davao, Quibod undertakes outreach and engagement initiatives in line with the University’s vision and mission to promote social justice and the common good by providing support and assistance to UCEAC’s legal advocacy. Together with law students, he is currently doing an access to justice project for the IPs/IP communities in the Davao region. Doing this work with passion and commitment have helped many lives who have less or even have no access to justice by reason of poverty or indifference. It has changed and made him a better person realizing that “those who have less in life should have more in law.” Caring for others through your God-given talent is a lifetime commitment and a life changing experience.

Becky Rafter, Executive Director of Georgia WAND Education Fund, Inc, USAOrganization Twitter Handle: @GeorgiaWAND Becky Rafter leads Georgia WAND Education Fund, a grassroots, women-led, multiracial organization bridging the rural/urban divide and advancing environmental and climate justice. The organization addresses out-sized militarized spending and ending systemic

violence, especially in relation to the nuclear weapons and nuclear energy industries. Georgia WAND is a founding member of ProGeorgia, a statewide table for collaboration around civic engagement. In 2017, Rafter was honored as a local “superhero” by Mark Ruffalo and the Solutions Project for advancing community-driven solutions to nuclear contamination. She is a voting member of Southern Partners Fund. Prior to joining the Georgia WAND squad,


Rafter worked in social justice philanthropy at the Funding Exchange in New York City and the Fund for Southern Communities in Atlanta, where she organized donors and foundations to invest more resources in the U.S. South. Rafter has an MPA in International Policy and Nonprofit Management from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a BA in International Relations and Spanish from Agnes Scott College. She works internally, as well, combating white supremacist structures and habits embedded in nonprofit organizations. She is a member of Rockwood’s 2017-2018 Leading from the Inside Out yearlong cohort.

Dr. Neelam Raina, Associate Professor, Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom Personal Twitter Handle:@neelamraina Dr. Neelam Raina’s research interests include conflict, material cultures, gender, and livelihood generation. She has been working in the region of Kashmir (both Indian and Pakistani) since the early 2000s, and has conducted participatory action research including design and enterprise

training for women in the region. She has worked with NGOs, educational charities, and academic departments in India and Pakistan. Raina is the Principal Investigator on the GCRF Partnership against Conflict Crime and Security Research (PaCCS) project, which looks at the material social practices through which women in Northern Pakistan reproduce themselves on a daily and generational basis. This interdisciplinary project allows connections to be built between, creative home-based workers who are largely seen as peripheral, to development economics, and on the fringes of formal employment and contributors to GDP; to the larger notions of peace building, countering and preventing violent extremism, poverty spirals and conflict theory through culturally significant, socially relevant practices. Raine earned both her Ph.D and Masters (Design and Development/Manufacture) from De Montfort University, BA in History from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University and a post graduate degree in Textile Design from NIFT in New Delhi. She is a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security. She is an editor for the International Journal of Traditional Arts, and her new work ‘Creative Economies of Culture in South Asia – Performers and Craftspeople’ comes out in 2019.

Marilia Ramos, Political Incidence and Coordination Team, Repórter Brasil, Brazil Organization Twitter Handle: @reporterb Marilia Ramos is a Brazilian activist, with History and International Relations degrees. She has worked on human rights issues for the past eight years, including with then U.N. Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik in denouncing violations of the right to housing and right to the city in the context of sports mega events. A

member of Repórter Brasil since 2014, she is part of the political incidence and coordination team. This area seeks to provide information to influence policy makers and public opinion in the fight against contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking in person issues in Brazil. Marilia and the NGO’s director, Leonardo Sakamoto, have represented Repórter Brasil in different instances in


order to debate and defend new ways to eradicate slave labor. Their work has obtained public commitments from elected officials and helped create state and municipal commissions and public plans for the eradications of slave labor. Asmemberofthecoordinationteam,Ramosprovidessupport to the Commodities and Biofuels Watch Center, which has tracked down over 1,000 supply chains, connecting slave labor and other social and environmental problems to the global production networks, offering transparency and pushing for changes in different industries. She also contributes with Slavery, no Way!, Repórter Brasil educational program, which focuses on preventing modern slavery through education and has reached over 700,000 people since its creation.

Nika Saeedi, Policy Specialist, Gender, Political Processes, Peacebuilding United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), USA Personal Twitter: @nikrad19 Organization Twitter: @UNDP Nika Saeedi leads UNDP’s portfolios on women’s political participation, religion and development, and gender mainstreaming in prevention of violent extremism. Saeedi has over 18 years of experience in policy

development, program design and management, and partnership building on women, peace and security across the areas of crisis prevention and recovery, and governance. She has been instrumental in the development of the UNSCR 1325 Strategic Results Framework and guided the institutionalization of UNSCR 1325 indicators at UNDP to systematize the agency’s delivery of results, monitoring, and reporting. Saeedi plays a pivotal role steering UNDP partnership with women’s organizations at every stage of its work, in particular by ensuring women’s voices are at the center of research to inform programming solutions which has resulted in greater recognition of the connection between extremism, gender inequality, and macroeconomic policy; and development of an evidence based research initiative on the gendered dimensions of disengagement, rehabilitation, and reintegration. She has worked in a variety of country contexts on the promotions of women’s rights and gender equality, including at UNDP Afghanistan where her support to government on increasing women’s political participation contributed to a 25% increase in Afghan women’s leadership in local governance. Saeedi holds a Master in Religion and Culture.

Ignacio Saiz, Executive Director, Center for Economic and Social Rights, United States Personal Twitter handle: @ignacioCESR Ignacio Saiz is Executive Director of the Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), an international NGO based in New York that works to advance human rights in socio-economic and development policy worldwide. CESR has played a leading role in challenging austerity policies, which have widened the gap between rich and poor in countries

across the globe. It also successfully led efforts to secure human rights commitments on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Prior to joining CESR in 2006, Saiz was Director of Policy at Amnesty International, where he led Amnesty's thematic programs including its emerging work on economic, social, and cultural rights. As deputy director of Amnesty’s Americas


Program, Saiz oversaw the organization’s research and campaigning in Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, and the Caribbean. He has also worked as a freelance human rights consultant for several other organizations in areas relating to sexuality and human rights, the prevention of torture and post-conflict accountability. He holds an LLM in international human rights law with distinction from the University of Essex.

Gimena Sanchez, Director for the Andes and Leading Colombia Human Rights Advocate at WOLA, USA Gimena Sanchez is an expert on Colombia’s peace process and illegal armed groups, internally displaced persons, human rights and ethnic minority rights. She has worked with Peace Brigades International for the protection of human rights organizations and peace communities in Colombia. Her work has shed light on the situation of Colombia’s more than seven million internally displaced persons, and has helped expose

the links between Colombia’s government and drug-funded paramilitaries. In 2012, the Colombian Senate presented WOLA with a human rights award for making a significant contribution towards advancing labor rights in recognition of Sánchez’s work. She’s received numerous awards for her work on behalf of ethnic minorities. Prior to joining WOLA in 2006, Sánchez worked for the protection of human rights organizations and peace communities in Colombia with Peace Brigades International. From 1999-2004, she was Senior Research Analyst at the Brookings Institution-Johns Hopkins/SAIS Project on Internal Displacement, supporting the work of the Representative of the U.N. Secretary General on Internally Displaced Persons, Francis M. Deng (South Sudan). Originally from Argentina, Sánchez’ family was displaced during that country’s civil war, fled to Europe, and subsequently moved to the United States. Sánchez holds a Masters’ Degree in International Law and International Economics from Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a BA in Environmental Science and Dance from Columbia University’s Barnard College.

Jorge Alberto Santos Contreras, General Coordinator, Unit for the Protection of Defenders of Human Rights (UDEFEGUA), Guatemala Jorge Alberto Santos Contreras is an economist with specialized studies in human rights. Throughout his professional career he has worked in development organizations, supporting peasants and human rights advocates, such as the Coordinator of NGOs and Cooperatives (CONGCOOP), where he accompanied the process to the National Coordinator of Campesino Organizations (CNOC) to elaborate a

proposal of Public Policy for Integral Rural Development. He also worked in the Human Rights Ombudsman Institution (Ombusdman), as Coordinator of the Socioeconomic Analysis Area, within the Study and Analysis Unit, where high impact research reports were produced, which contributed to the resolution of complaints presented before the Ombudsman. For seven years, he coordinated the International Center for Human Rights Research, an NGO dedicated to research various human rights issues, particularly issues related to children disappeared during the Internal Armed Conflict; comprehensive reparations to victims of serious human rights violations; public budgets and human rights, among other issues. From 2015 to date, he has worked in the Unit for the Protection of Defenders of Human Rights-Guatemala (UDEFEGUA),


where he currently serves as General Coordinator. He is also an opinion columnist in the newspaper La Hora and in the digital newspaper El Salmón.

Hassen Selmi, Security Incident Handler, Access Now, Tunisia Organization Twitter Handle: @accessnow Personal Twitter Handle: @hassenselmi Hassen Selmi is a Security Incident Handler at Access Now Digital Security Helpline. His day-to-day work consists of responding to the digital security incidents that happen to civil society members and human rights defenders. Part of his job is to help NGOs built their digital security capacities by auditing their assets and train their staff.

Mariyam Shakeela, Minister of Environment and Energy, Maldives Dr. Mariyam Shakeela has over 30 years of experience nationally and internationally in serving both private and public sector. Her journey took her through diverse fields ranging from teaching, entrepreneurship, hospitality, medical ventures real estate and also as a Cabinet Minister in the Maldivian Government. During her tenure she led Ministry(s) of Health, Environment and Energy, Gender Family and Human Rights and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also headed several national public authorities, including National Drug Agency, Environment Protection

Agency, Maldives Energy Authority, national social security, disability and aged care. She also served as Chair of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization. She worked in a politically multifaceted environment facilitating dialogue on sensitive issues and enabling the formulation of procedures to accomplish conflict resolution, economic rehabilitation, political stabilization, climate change and sustainability issues, and to stimulate effective engagement with international partners towards international corporation and assistance. Currently apart from being a successful entrepreneur and CEO of SIMDI Group of companies in Maldives, she also heads institutions working on mental health and tertiary level education. She is also the Honorary Consul for Belgium in Maldives, a board member of School of Management, and a member of the Advisory Panel for Executive Education and Global MBA program of Curtin University. She also holds Vice Chairmanship of Women’s Chamber of commerce, and also heads a number of public interest organizations and NGO’s that advocate for women’s rights, women and youth empowerment for political participation, peace building and educational opportunities. She is also the Honorary Consul for the Kingdom of Belgium in Maldives.

Ramesh Sharma, National Coordinator of Ekta Parishad, India Ramesh Sharma’s organization, Ekta Parishad, is a mass based peoples' movement for land rights with an active membership of 250,000 landless poor and is regarded as one of the biggest people’s movements in India with an iconic status globally. In 2012, Ekta Parishad was responsible for organizing and leading a foot march of more than 100,000 landless people for over 300 km (from Gwalior to Delhi) to demand land rights. As the


Campaigner, Sharma is one of the chief architects and leaders of such large-scale mass struggles. In the last 20 years, he has played an instrumental role in strengthening and expanding Ekta Parishad as one of the most significant peoples' struggle for land rights. Sharma has been part of several land reforms committees of the Government of India and state governments. In 2008, he was appointed as a member of National Committee on Agrarian Crisis and Land Reforms further in 2012, as a member of the National Task Force on Land Reforms by Government of India. He has traveled and worked in solidarity with land rights movements in countries across globe and is an active member of various global and national alliances working on the issues of peace and justice. Currently, he is engaged in mobilizing one million people in India during October 2018 for their land rights. He is also coordinating a global march from New Delhi to Geneva (2019-2020) on the issues of “Global Peace, Ethics, and Justice.”

Gam Shimray, Secretary-General, Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, Thailand Gam A. Shimray is a Naga from India who has been a dedicated activist for the rights of indigenous peoples and human rights in general. He has been critical on the situation of indigenous peoples facing discrimination, violations of their rights and development aggression. As the current Secretary-General of AIPP, he envisions to contribute in continuing and advancing the pursuit of indigenous peoples’ rights to be recognized, protected and promoted. He is very particular in achieving a

transformational change through adoption of democratic processes, especially by the duty-bearers, exercise of self-determination by indigenous peoples and policy changes by the state. He was also involved in the peace-building process in India, and was an expert member of Technical and Policy Core Group (TPCG) of the NBSAP of the Ministry of Environment and Forest and co-authored some publications related to ethnic issues.

Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, Co-Director, Kairos for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice and Co-Chair, Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, USA Personal Twitter Handle: @liztheo Dr. Theoharis is Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revial with the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II. She is the Co-Director of the Kairos Center for Relgions, Rights, and Social Justice and a Founder and the Coordinator of the Poverty Initiative.

Theoharis has spent the past 25 years organizing amongst the poor in the United States. She received her BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania her M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in 2004 where she was the first William Sloane Coffin Scholar; and her PhD from Union in New Testament and Christian Origins. She is the author of Always with US?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor (Eerdmans, 2017). Theoharis is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).


Carter Center Staff

Ana Caridad, Program Associate, Latin America and Caribbean Program, The Carter Center, USA Personal Twitter: @anacaridads Organizational Twitter: @CarterCenterLAC Ana Caridad is the program associate for the Latin America and Caribbean Program at The Carter Center, managing the Program’s human rights projects in Colombia, Mexico, and its multilateral efforts with the Organization of American States. Originally from Mexico City, she

graduated with a bachelor's in international relations and international law from Loyola University in Chicago and holds a dual M.S./M.A. in international service and international peace and conflict resolution from American University in Washington, D.C. Previously, she worked as a researcher at the Center for the Human Rights of the Children and at the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights at the Organization of American States, focusing on indigenous populations. She has supported litigation efforts before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and contributed to several Amicus Curiae briefs for the Inter-American Court.

President Jimmy Carter, Former President of the United States and Founder of The Carter Center, USA Organization Twitter: @CarterCenter Jimmy Carter served as President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Significant foreign policy accomplishments of his administration included the Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David Accords, the treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel, the SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union, and the establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with the

People's Republic of China. In 1982, President Carter became University Distinguished Professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and co-founded The Carter Center. Actively guided by President Carter, the nonpartisan and nonprofit Center addresses national and international issues of public policy. Carter Center fellows, associates, and staff join with President Carter in efforts to resolve conflict, promote democracy, protect human rights, and prevent disease and other afflictions. President Carter has received numerous awards, including a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He has authored 32 books encompassing his life, works, and principles. His book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power (2014), addresses the suffering inflicted upon women by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare.


Rosalynn Carter, Former First Lady of the United States and Co-Founder of The Carter Center, USA Organization Twitter: @CarterCenter Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady of the United States, has worked for more than four decades to improve the quality of life for people around the world. Today, she is a leading advocate for mental health, caregiving, early childhood immunization, human rights, and conflict resolution through her work at The Carter Center and elsewhere. A full partner with

the President in the Center's activities, the former First Lady is a member of The Carter Center Board of Trustees and co-founder. She created and chairs the Center's Mental Health Task Force, an advisory body of experts, consumers, and advocates promoting positive change in the mental health field. In 1999 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and, in 2001, inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Telisha Harrison, Program Assistant, Human Rights Program, The Carter Center, USA Organization Twitter: @forumonwomen Telisha Harrison believes in using her skills and talents to contribute to the betterment of mankind. Prior to joining the Center in December 2015, Harrison designed and facilitated group and individual programs on a wide-range of issues including offender re-entry, sexual trauma, and a “safe and caring schools” initiative. Harrison earned her bachelor's degree in English and master's degree in Social Work from the

University of Michigan and spent several years working in Public Health and Social Science research. Additionally, she has served as a member of the Open Circle Network’s coordinating committee for 15 years. This faith-based organization aims to assist people in finding spiritual solutions, with practical implementation, to address life’s most complex issues including, but not limited to, sexual trauma, racism, domestic violence, and addictions.

Laura M. Olson, Director, Human Rights Program, The Carter Center, USA Organization Twitter: @forumonwomen Laura Olson assumed her duties as director of the Human Rights Program at The Carter Center in July 2017. Olson joined The Carter Center from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), where she had been immigration section chief since 2010, focusing on immigration and human rights matters. During her federal service, Olson also served as acting director

of the CRCL Programs Branch, as well as senior policy advisor to the U.S. Department of State Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure. Earlier in her career, Olson worked for over a decade as legal adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross, serving in Geneva, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. Olson holds an LL.M. in international legal studies from New York University School of Law and a J.D. and M.A. in philosophy from the University of Iowa.


Jason Parker, Web Communications Specialist, Human Rights Program, The Carter Center, USA Organization Twitter: @forumonwomen Jason Parker specializes in creating and fostering online communities dedicated to real-world action. He has spent his career in journalism and higher education, most recently as the Digital Strategist for Public Broadcasting Atlanta. His work and leadership have won awards from the Newspaper Association of America, Associated Press, Atlanta Press

Club, and the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists, among others. Parker is a native of Richmond Hill, Georgia. He holds an MFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an M.Ed. in Instructional Technology from Georgia Southern University.

Ambassador Mary Ann Peters, Chief Executive Officer, The Carter Center, USA Organization Twitter: @CarterCenter Ambassador Mary Ann Peters joined The Carter Center on Sept. 1, 2014. As CEO, Ambassador Peters provides vision and leadership for The Carter Center and oversees program implementation and operations. Before coming to The Carter Center, Ambassador Peters was Provost of the U.S. Naval War College from September 2008 to July 2014. Previously,

she served as Dean of Academics at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Ambassador Peters spent more than 30 years as a career diplomat. From 2000 to 2003, she served as U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh, leading the Embassy response to the September 11 attack and earning a Presidential Meritorious Service Award for that work. Prior to her posting in Dhaka, Ambassador Peters was the Deputy Chief of Mission in Ottawa, Canada, responsible for managing the embassy and supervising six U.S. consulates general. From 1995 to 1997, Ambassador Peters served as Director for European and Canadian affairs on the National Security Council staff, where she worked on Northern Ireland peace process. Ambassador Peters’ earlier postings include Sofia, Bulgaria, Moscow during the Soviet era, Rangoon and Mandalay in Burma and Frankfurt, Germany. Ambassador Peters is a graduate of Santa Clara University and holds an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Women in International Security and serves on the Boards of the Task Force for Global Health and the Emory Global Health Institute.

Dhanis Rukan, Human Rights and Local Impact Coordinator for the Carter Center's Extractive Industries Governance Program (EIG), Democratic Republic of Congo Organization Twitter Handle: @CarterCenter Dhanis Rukan studied Social, Political and Administrative Sciences at the University of Lubumbashi. Rukan is the Human Rights and Local Impact Coordinator for The Carter Center's Extractive Industries Governance


Program (PGIE) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He coordinates extractive industries impact assessment projects on community rights and engagement with communities. His work contributes to the development of local community capacity building modules and tools on human rights and natural resource exploitation issues and supports Congolese partners, based on participatory trainings, and implements advocacy actions on human rights issues in the extractive sector (mines and hydrocarbons). Through its work, The Carter Center contributes to greater transparency, accountability and respect for the rights of communities affected by extractive industries in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rukan is also a teaching assistant at the University of Lubumbashi and, as a researcher, he works on issues related to political governance, natural resources and sustainable development.

Jordan Ryan, Vice President, Peace Programs, The Carter Center, USA Personal Twitter: @jordanryan Organizational Twitter: @CarterCenter Jordan Ryan recently joined The Carter Center team as vice president for peace programs. He was named an assistant secretary-general for the United Nations in 2009, serving as the assistant administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the director of the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. Ryan had a long and

distinguished career with the United Nations, where he brought a wealth of development experience, including in post-crisis settings. He served as the deputy special representative of the secretary-general (Recovery and Governance) and the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Liberia. Earlier in his career he served with UNDP in Vietnam, China, and New York. Before joining the United Nations, Ryan worked as an international legal consultant in China and Saudi Arabia and an attorney in the United States. Ryan has a master's in international affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, a J.D. from the National Law Center at The George Washington University, and a B.A. in anthropology from Yale University. He was a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2001.

Karin Ryan, Senior Policy Advisor on Human Rights and Special Representative on Women and Girls, Human Rights Program, The Carter Center, USA Personal Twitter: @KarinDianeRyan Organization Twitter: @forumonwomen Karin Ryan is the Senior Advisor for Human Rights and Special Representative on Women and Girls at The Carter Center. She has served in various capacities at the Center since 1988, advising President and Mrs.

Carter on human rights issues and assisting them with efforts on behalf of victims of human rights violations. Ryan has represented the Center in negotiations at the United Nations addressing the human rights of women, human rights defenders, and establishment of the International Criminal Court and Human Rights Council. Ryan convened the Annual Human Rights Defenders Forum from 2003 - 2017, which gathers courageous and effective activists and leaders from around the world to examine pressing challenges for the human rights movement. Ryan


holds Bachelor's degrees in Political Science from Emory University and in Contemporary Writing and Production from Berklee College of Music. Additional Staff Faizat Badmus-Busari, Human Rights Defenders Forum Assistant (temp.), Human Rights Program, The Carter Center, USA Caroline Downey, Intern, Human Rights Program, The Carter Center, USA Alexa Yanar, Intern, Human Rights Program, The Carter Center, USA

Documents

2018 HRDF Biographies...Accord. The national UCC Synod passed that resolution with a 97% supermajority. In July 2013, Antal wrote and championed the UCC’s resolution to divest from