Council members
The Council has up to 30 members. Council members are appointed by the Board, on the recommendation of an appointments committee composed of one Board member and two Council members. Council members meet annually to advise the Board on new themes for research. Council members may serve for up to six years. Council members serve in a private capacity, and do not represent their institutions.
Fouad Abdelmoumni (Morocco)
Fouad Abdelmoumni is Executive Director of Al Amana, a Morocco-based microcredit association with a portfolio of 200,000 loans worth US$55 million. He also chairs the SANABEL network of microfinance institutions in Arab countries and serves on the Board of Women’s World Banking and the Africa Governance, Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP) Advisory Committee. His past leadership positions have included membership on the advisory board of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and the Advisors Group for the U.N. Year of Microcredit 2005, vice-presidency of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, and vice-secretary of the Espace Associatif for the promotion of civil society. He holds a degree in economics of development from the University Mohammed V in Rabat and an MBA equivalent from ISCAE (Institut Supérieur de Commerce et d’Administration des Entreprises) in Casablanca. He is a former victim of political repression, having been detained from 1977 to 1980 and disappeared from 1983 to 1984.
Lydia Alpízar Durán (Costa Rica)
Lydia Alpízar Durán is Executive Director of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), where she has also worked as Feminist Movements and Organizations Theme Manager. Lydia has extensive experience in advocacy and training on women’s human rights. She facilitated the participation of young women from Latin America in the UN Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing 95) process, and in 2000 she was the Latin American regional representative to the International NGO Committee for Beijing +5. Also, she participated for several years in the Campaign “Stop Impunity: No more murdered women”, a national Mexican initiative to put an end to the killings of women in the US/Mexico border city of Ciudad Juárez. Lydia is co-founder and advisor of ELIGE - Youth Network for Reproductive and Sexual Rights (Mexico), and she is also co-founder of the Latin American and Caribbean Youth Network for Reproductive and Sexual Rights. Since 1996, she has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Committee for the Peace Council. She is member of the Board of Directors of the Global Fund for Women and of the Central American Women’s Fund. Lydia is Sociologist by training.
Fateh Azzam (Palestine)
Fateh Azzam is currently Regional Representative for OHCHR in the Middle East and Board Chair of the newly-established Arab Human Rights Fund (AHRF) in Beirut. Previously, he was Director of the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Programme at the American University in Cairo, worked as Programme Officer for Human Rights at the Cairo office of the Ford Foundation and was Director of the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in Ramallah. Fateh received LLM in International Human Rights Law from Essex University, Colchester, United Kingdom in 1992.
Maggie Beirne (United Kingdom)
Maggie Beirne was Director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) until 2008. CAJ is an independent cross community NGO working to promote and protect civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights in Northern Ireland. CAJ worked hard to ensure that the peace agreement of 1998 incorporated strong provisions on human rights and equality, and was honored with the Council of Europe Human Rights Prize for its efforts in this regard. Maggie previously worked from 1971-1988 with the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, in the latter years having primary responsibility for campaigning and membership initiatives worldwide as Head of Campaign and Membership, which involved extensive human rights related international travel.
Akila Belembaogo (Burkina Faso)
Akila Belembaogo is Deputy Regional Director of UNICEF’s Office for the Middle East and North Africa. Previously she was Head of the Gender Equality and Human Rights Unit in the Division of Policy and Planning of UNICEF, and as the UNICEF Representative to Chad. From 1992 to 1995 Akila assumed the function of Minister of Social Action and Family in Burkina Faso. At this position, she was able to put in place a national mechanism to report on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and she contributed to the adoption of strategies and laws for the protection of vulnerable populations including children. She has also been member and Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Akila has contributed as author or co-author of various articles and publications on children’s rights.
Tapan Kumar Bose (India)
Tapan Kumar Bose is Secretary General of the South Asia Forum for Human Rights in Nepal. He is also an award winning documentary filmmaker, human rights and peace activist, and writer. He is the Convenor of the Committee for Initiative on Kashmir and General Secretary of the Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy. Tapan set up Cinemart Foundation in 1977, India’s first independent documentary film producer’s forum. He is the Chairperson of The Other Media and of Mahanirvan Calcutta Research Group. He is also a Council Member of Forum for Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER), London. He contributes regularly to leading journals and news magazines in India, Nepal and Pakistan and his international and national award winning films include An Indian Story, Beyond Genocide: Bhopal Gas Tragedy, Behind the Barricades – Punjab and Jharkhand.
Roberta Clarke (Trinidad & Tobago)
Roberta Clarke is the Regional Programme Director of UNIFEM Caribbean Office. She is a sociologist and attorney at law with a specialisation in human rights law. She has written extensively on gender and development including on violence against women and gender mainstreaming. She has a long history of activism on women’s rights within the NGO movement in the Caribbean. Affiliations include Vice President of the Trinidad and Tobago Family Planning Association, Editor of the legal journal of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago The Lawyer and Board member of the organisation Women, Law and Development International.
Lyse Doucet (Canada)
Lyse Doucet is a presenter and correspondent for BBC World Television and BBC World Service Radio. She is also one of the regular presenters on the BBC’s Talking Point programme. She is often deployed to anchor special news coverage from the field, and has presented from Amman, Jordan and from Iraq during the war of 2003. After the events of 11 September 2001, Lyse anchored special programmes from Pakistan and Afghanistan throughout the war that followed in Afghanistan, and she was later nominated for a Royal Television Society Award for her exclusive coverage of the attempted assassination of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Before joining the BBC’s team of presenters, Lyse spent more than a decade working as a BBC foreign correspondent in the Middle East, in West and South Asia and in West and North Africa.
Tiébilé Dramé (Mali)
Tiébilé Dramé is the Former Foreign Minister of the transitional government of Mali 1991-1992 and leader of the Party for the National Rebirth (Parti pour la renaissance nationale, PARENA). He was member and later President of the inter-parliamentary Committee of the Economic and Monetary West African Union, the pre-Parliament of Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA). Tiébilé has also held seat with the Malian National Assembly as Deputy for the Western Sahel as an elected official of PARENA. He has also served as Minister in charge of arid and semi-arid regions in 1996-1997. A human rights activist and journalist, Tiébilé worked during several years as researcher for Amnesty International in London and has also founded the weekly newspaper Le républicain. He is a former “prisoner of conscience” adopted by Amnesty International.
Imrana Jalal (Fiji)
Imrana Jalal is Human Rights Advisor at the Regional Rights Resources Team (RRRT), a Pacific regional human rights project based in Fiji. Imrana is a feminist lawyer, activist and opinion shaper in the Pacific Islands region. She is also a founding member of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement and works locally, regionally and internationally as a human rights lawyer.
Hina Jilani (Pakistan)
Hina Jilani is Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders. She is also Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. She is the founding member of several national, regional and international human rights organisations. In 1981 she established the first all-woman law firm in Pakistan, along with her sister, Asma Jahangir. In 1984 Hina and Asma set up AGHS Legal Aid, the first free legal aid centre in Pakistan. She has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Millennium Peace Prize in 2001. She is specialised in human rights and constitutional rights litigation. Special areas of concern and activity in the field of human rights have been democratic development, the rights of women, minorities and children.
Konstantin Korkelia (Georgia)
Konstantin Korkelia is First Deputy Minister of Justice in Georgia and Deputy Director of the Institute of State and Law at the Georgian Academy of Sciences. He is also Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of International Law and International Relations, Tbilisi State University. From 2000 to 2002 he was Government Representative of Georgia to the European Court of Human Rights. His areas of specialisation are public international law, international protection of human rights and treaty law.
Ian Martin (United Kingdom)
Ian Martin is Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Nepal, where he was previously Representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He has worked for the UN in various capacities, including as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the East Timor Popular Consultation, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Special Adviser to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Chief of the UN Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda, and Director for Human Rights of the International Civilian Mission in Haiti. He also served in the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina as Deputy High Representative for Human Rights. He was Secretary-General of Amnesty International from 1986-92 and Vice President of the International Center for Transitional Justice 2002-05. His writings include Self-Determination in East Timor: the United Nations, the Ballot, and International Intervention.
Juan Mendèz (Argentina)
Juan Mendèz is President of the International Center for Transitional Justice. He served as United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide from July 2004 to 31 March 2007. Between 1999 and 2004 he was Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Prof. Mendèz has dedicated his legal career to the defence of human rights and has a long and distinguished record of human-rights advocacy throughout the Americas. In 2001, he was elected to a one-year term as first Vice President and in 2002 was elected President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. From 1996 to 1999, he served as executive director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica. Prior to that, he worked with Human Rights Watch for 15 years.
Jessica Montell (Israel)
Jessica Montell is Executive Director of B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Prior to joining B’Tselem, Jessica Montell worked at HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, another Israeli human rights organisation. Jessica Montell also served as a consultant to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. She is the author of B’Tselem’s comprehensive report Prisoners of Peace: Administrative Detention in the Oslo Process, and has published numerous articles and given presentations on human rights and counter-terrorism, accountability for human rights violations, international humanitarian law and the challenges of promoting human rights in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu (Nigeria)
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu is Senior Legal Officer for Africa Open Society Justice Initiative. He is also a Lecturer in Laws, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before joining the Justice Initiative, Chidi was Senior Legal Officer responsible for Africa and Middle East at the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights (INTERIGHTS) in London, Human Rights Advisor to the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL), and Brandeis International Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Justice and Public Life of Brandeis University. He is a Trustee of the International African Institute University of London, a member of the Human Rights Advisory Council of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and of the Board of Fund for Global Human Rights.
Devendra Raj Panday (Nepal)
Devendra Raj Panday is former Finance Secretary and Finance Minister in Nepal and a founding Bureau Member of South Asians for Human Rights. He was also an elected member of the International Board of Directors of Transparency International, Berlin and the former President of its Nepalese chapter. He was also the Founding Vice Chairman of Human Rights Organisation of Nepal. After he resigned his civil service post in 1980, he has become well known for his professional and civic society engagements in Nepal and South Asia.
Taswell Papier (South Africa)
Taswell Papier practiced as an attorney during the apartheid years prior to 1994, where he became well established over 17 years as a human rights litigator with a general legal practice. He participated in the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program in 1993 as a visiting fellow, and subsequently completed the LL.M programme in 1995. He was appointed three times as an acting Judge in the High Court of Cape Town and was awarded the UK-based Legal Business International Lawyer of the Year award in 2006. He is past president of the Cape Law Society, national representative of LexNoir (an international lawyers’ network), national chairman of the Law Society of South Africa’s Pro Bono Committee and a member of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL). He contributed to the concept of lawyers providing obligatory pro bono services to indigent communities, which has grown to become a national imperative. In 2004 he joined Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs (ENS) as a director where he now specialises in corporate and commercial law.
Jelena Pejic (Serbia)
Jelena Pejic is a Legal Adviser at the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva responsible, among other things, for issues related to terrorism and international humanitarian law. She also heads the ICRC’s Project on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law. Prior to the ICRC, she was Senior Program Coordinator at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in New York (now Human Rights First) and was a lecturer in Public International Law and International Relations at Belgrade University Law School.
Emma Playfair (United Kingdom)
Emma Playfair is a British human rights lawyer by training. After practicing law in the City of London, she spent ten years working on human rights in the Middle East, initially as a researcher with the first Palestinian human rights organisation, Al-Haq, in the West Bank, and then establishing the human rights program in the Ford Foundation’s Cairo Office. In 1993 she became Executive Director of INTERIGHTS, the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights, in London, returning to Cairo nine years later to rejoin the Ford Foundation as Regional Representative for the Middle East and North Africa, a position she held until April 2008. She has written on human rights and humanitarian law, and on philanthropy. Amongst other publications, she edited International Law and the Administration of Occupied Territories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Usha Ramanathan (India)
Usha Ramanathan, Member – Advisory Council for India, is an internationally recognized expert on law and poverty. She is research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, teaches environmental law, labour law and consumer law at the Indian Law Institute and conducts training programmes at the National Institute for Programmes and Policies on Child Development in New Delhi. She has also been invited to teach in many universities around the world. She is a frequent adviser to non-governmental organisations and international organisations. She a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, a member of Amnesty International’s Advisory Panel on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a member of the Governing Board of the Centre for Equity Studies and has been called upon by the World Health Organisation as a expert on mental health on various occasions. She is also the South Asia Editor of the Law, Environment and Development Journal (LEAD Journal), a peer-reviewed academic journal jointly published by IELRC and SOAS. She studied law at Madras University, the University of Nagpur and Delhi University. Her research interests include human rights, displacement, torts and environment. She has published extensively in India and abroad. In particular, she has devoted her attention to a number of specific issues such as the Bhopal gas disaster, the Narmada valley dams or slum eviction in Delhi.
Roger Raupp Rios (Brazil)
Roger Raupp Rios is a Federal Judge since 1994 in the State of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. He is also a Professor of Law at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. As an academic researcher, he has studied the United States Supreme Court’s equal protection doctrine to elaborate his Master’s thesis research on a comparative study between the principle of equality in Brazilian Law and the equal protection doctrine facing sexual orientation discrimination. He has done extensive work with different women’s rights and LGBTT organisations in Brazil and in other countries in the region. He was a Visiting Scholar of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, New York. He has a Ph.D in Law focused on a systematical examination of affirmative action through a comparative study between the principle of equality in Brazilian Law and the equal protection doctrine developed in American Constitutional Law.
Anthony Romero (United States)
Anthony Romero is Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Prior to that, he led the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights and International Cooperation Program. He also served for nearly five years as a Ford Foundation Programme Officer for Civil Rights and Racial Justice; and for two years on the programme staff of the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a member of the New York Bar Association and has sat on numerous non-profit boards. He is a graduate of Stanford University Law School and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs.
Marco Sassoli (Switzerland)
Marco Sassoli is Professor of International Law at the University of Geneva since 2004. He chairs the Boards of Geneva Call, an NGO engaging non-state armed groups to comply with humanitarian rules, and of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. From 2001 to 2003 he was Professor in the Legal Studies Department of the Political Science and Law Faculty at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), where he continues to serve as Associate Professor. He served as Clerk to the Swiss Federal Tribunal in Lausanne, and before that as Executive Secretary of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. For thirteen years, he worked at the International Committee of the Red Cross, in Geneva, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia.
Wilder Tayler (Uruguay)
Wilder Tayler, a Uruguayan lawyer, is Deputy Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). Between 1997 and 2007 he was Legal and Policy Director of Human Rights Watch. From 1995 to 1996, he was Programme Director of the Americas Region of Amnesty International. Between 1990 and 1995, he was Legal Advisor of Amnesty International with responsibility for the Americas and Asia regional programmes. From 1987 to 1990 he was Executive Director of the Institute for Legal and Social Studies (IELSUR) in Uruguay and before that, Legal Officer (1983-1987), co-ordinating the Institute’s defence of political prisoners.