Focus: Human Rights
Sawsan Zaher
Sawsan Zaher is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a feminist, and a human rights lawyer currently with Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, serving as the Director of the Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights Unit since 2005. Through her work with Adalah, Sawsan litigated several landmark cases before the Israeli Supreme Court challenging discrimination and racism against the Palestinian minority in Israel. Sawsan has received several fellowships and honors, including being selected as a 2015 Young Global Leader, an integral part of the World Economic Forum, a 2012 Fellow at the Women in Public Service Project at Wellesley College, and a 2008 Fellow of the Public…
More Information
Amira Yahyaoui
Amira Yahyaoui is a Tunisian human rights advocate and founder of the award-winning Al Bawsala, a public policy and accountability NGO. Al Baswala monitors the work of the Tunisian Parliament, the Constitutional Assembly, and Tunisian city halls, using technology to make information accessible to citizens. When she was a teenager, Amira was banned from her homeland for her human rights activism and fled to Paris as a refugee. After the Arab Spring, Amira returned to Tunisia for the political transition and writing of the new Tunisian constitution. She won a Vital Voices Global Trailblazer award in 2012 for women transforming the Middle East and was named top 100 most powerful…
More Information
Chinwe Philomena Uwandu
Chinwe Philomena Uwandu retired from the service of the Federal Government of Nigeria in January 2020. In the course of her career as a Government Legal Advisor, she counseled the Federal Republic of Nigeria, its Agencies, and Overseas Missions on a diverse and complex range of legal issues. She also represented Nigeria at bilateral and multi-lateral meetings at sub-regional, regional, and international levels, and participated in the negotiation and preparation of bilateral and multi-lateral treaties, and other agreements. As Lead Counsel to Nigeria’s Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, Chinwe uncovered crimes and gross human rights violations during thirty years of Military dictatorship in Nigeria. She also prosecuted criminal cases on…
More Information
Ernest "Duga" Titanji
Ernest "Duga" Titanji is a founding member and senior partner of the Duga & Co. Law Firm, and president of the Cameroon Bar Association Human Rights Commission and Training Commission. He also serves as a senior lecturer in law at the University of YaoundĂ© and consults for the World Bank. As chairman of the National Human Rights Observatory, Duga works fearlessly to remedy human rights abuses in Cameroon. He is particularly focused on cases of child abuse and violation of the rights of girls, and has defended men charged with homosexual acts. His law firm is the first in Cameroon to launch a pro bono practice for those unable to foot…
More Information
Hassan Jabareen
Hassan Jabareen is a Palestinian human rights lawyer and the founder of Adalah, a law firm practicing human rights law in Israel. He has served as Adalah’s general and legal director since its establishment in 1996. Over the last 25 years, he has litigated scores of landmark constitutional law cases regarding Palestinian citizens of Israel, including the Palestinian leadership, and international humanitarian law cases concerning Palestinians in the 1967 Occupied Territory before the Israeli Supreme Court. Also, since 1998, he has been an adjunct lecturer for a course that he initiated on the legal status of the Arab minority in Israel and other law courses in the Faculties of Law…
More Information
Natalia Arboleda
Natalia Arboleda is an attorney and a diplomat specializing in human rights, humanitarian, and public international law. During her 15-year career, she has negotiated peace agreements with guerrilla groups, represented Colombia at the U.N. Security Council, and led reconciliation efforts in remote areas of Colombia. Natalia was a core member of Colombia’s peace negotiating team in Havana, where under the auspices of Cuba and Norway, Colombia and the FARC guerrilla group brought one of the longest armed conflicts in the world to an end. After the successful negotiation of the peace agreement, Natalia played an active role in the approval of the constitutional amendments required to implement the terms of…
More Information
Federica Du Pasquier
Federica Du Pasquier is a delegate at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), most recently coordinating its humanitarian diplomacy globally around the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Federica previously advised the ICRC President on digitalization, the institutional strategy, and roll-out of key diplomatic initiatives, with a focus on advancing the ICRC’s role as a neutral intermediary. In parallel, she spearheaded a partnership with the Swiss Polytechnic Schools to develop innovative solutions for more impactful humanitarian action. Prior to this, Federica contributed to ICRC’s protection activities and dialog with authorities in Ethiopia, Syria and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and to its legal and diplomatic outreach at the UN in New York. A former…
More Information
Diego A. Tituaña
Diego A. Tituaña, a Kichwa Otavalo from Ecuador, is a diplomat of the Ecuadorian Foreign Service. He has multilateral experience in human rights, disarmament, and migration issues. Diego is currently serving as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Ecuador Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. From 2020 to 2022, in his capacity as head of the Technical Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the province of Imbabura, he oversaw human mobility and foreign policy issues in the northern border area. In 2014, Diego became the first indigenous career diplomat that was appointed at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations. From 2014 to 2019, he was the facilitator…
More Information
Olena Sotnyk
Olena Sotnyk is a Ukrainian politician, lawyer, and human rights defender and currently serves at Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine. As a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament, she is a well-known legislator and public policy maker in areas such as rule of law, judicial system reform, anticorruption, and youth policy. Olena also represents Ukraine in the international arena and is one of the leading the voices of Ukrainians against Russian aggression. She holds prominent positions in the working bodies of several international organizations, including the Council of Europe, and focuses on issues including Euro-integration of Ukraine and female empowerment. Prior to her political career, Olena was…
More Information
Frank N. Rusa
Frank N. Rusa is the Country Representative of the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD), a Hague-based international NGO that works to promote dialogue among and between political actors for consensus building on matters of national development and peaceful co-existence. NIMD also works to strengthen the capacities of political parties to deliver on their respective legal and political mandates. Frank serves as the Executive Secretary of the inter-party Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD), a forum that brings together political party leaders of all the parties represented in the Parliament of Uganda. As Executive Secretary of IPOD, Frank facilitates important discussions among presidents and secretaries general of political parties to build consensus…
More Information