Region: Syria
Roba El Husseini
Roba El Husseini is a journalist, having spent the past decade working with the French news agency AFP in Beirut, covering war-torn Syria and crisis-hit Lebanon, relaying breaking news and resulting human tragedies. Roba has reported on numerous military operations launched by various actors in Syria—a country bursting with regional and global powers. She has also deployed multiple times to Syria and Iraq to cover battles against the Islamic State group in Mosul, Raqa, and the jihadists’ last stronghold of Baghouz. In Lebanon, Roba covered the unprecedented 2019 protests against a corrupt ruling elite, the deadly Beirut port blast, and years of economic fallout that threaten to push the country…
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Mara Redlich Revkin
Mara Redlich Revkin is a political scientist and legal scholar conducting empirical research on legal systems during and after conflict with a regional focus on the Middle East. Currently, she is the National Security Law Fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of criminal law and procedure, international law, human rights, and transitional justice. She has conducted fieldwork in Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Oman using qualitative and quantitative research methods including large-scale household surveys, interviews, and event data based on newspapers and social media posts. Her current research aims to contribute to the development of evidence-based strategies for strengthening rule…
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Onur Burçak Belli
Onur "Burçak" Belli is a Syrian-Turkish journalist. For most of her career, Burçak has focused on conflicts in Turkey, where she has been based for the past five years, working for Die Zeit, a German weekly newspaper, covering conflicts and crises in Turkey and the broader region. With 13 years of experience writing for international media outlets, her reporting is often through a lens of comprehensive rights and freedoms, writing in feature, long-form, or non-fiction storytelling styles. In 2010, Burçak was based in Damascus covering Syria’s reform plans and the Sunni-Alawite divergences amongst the ruling elite. She then moved London, working for the BBC as a broadcast journalist, before returning…
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Rami Nakhla
Rami Nakhla, also known by his alias Malath Aumran, is a long time democratic advocate who works on political reform in Syria and the Middle East since the mid-2000s. In 2012 and due to the increased dominance of Islamic radicals in the Syrian uprising, Rami resigned from all his political positions to focus on a nonpartisan pursuit of peace and democracy in Syria. Currently, he is working with tech companies to leverage disruptive new technologies and channel them toward positive social impact. Rami has played a prominent role in the leadership of the Syrian democratic movement, serving as a spokesperson for the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) of Syria and as…
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Mina Al-Oraibi
Mina Al-Oraibi is a journalist and political analyst focused on the Middle East. Since 2017, Mina has been the Editor-in-Chief of The National, a daily English-language newspaper based in Abu Dhabi and covering regional affairs. Previous to that, she was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for State Effectiveness where she focused on the state in Iraq, Syria, and the wider Middle East. Earlier, Mina was Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Alawsat, an international daily pan-Arab newspaper. From 2009-2011, she served as Washington D.C. bureau chief for Asharq Alawsat. She has covered the Geneva talks on Syria, Iraqi refugees, and American and European foreign policies towards the Middle East and North…
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Mustafa Haid
Mustafa Haid is a founding board member of Dawlaty Foundation, a Syrian nonprofit foundation that works with nonviolent activists on capacity-building toward democratic transition and transitional justice in Syria. A Syrian human rights advocate since 2000, Mustafa was under travel bans imposed by the Syrian regime from 2007 until 2011. Mustafa worked as a consultant for Human Rights Watch and for the UN office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) from 2011 to 2012. He has written and edited numerous articles and published research and books on issues related to transitional justice, the Syrian uprising and human…
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Mohamed ElFayoumy
Mohamed ElFayoumy is an Egyptian diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East. He currently serves as Political Adviser for the United Nations Special Envoy to Syria. Mohamed served as his government’s representative to the Syrian Opposition and he was the Consul in the Egyptian Embassy in Syria where he was instrumental in evacuating thousands of Egyptian nationals from Syria during the conflict in 2011-13. He is also active in a number of civil society organizations working toward the political development of Egypt.
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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…
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Elpida Rouka
Elpida Rouka has most recently served as Chief of Staff a.i. to the UN Special Envoy on Syria whom she joined in September 2014. She remains part of his core good offices team to date. Previously, she was in Jerusalem where she led the political team for the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, an office which was set up after the Oslo Accords. She has worked for the United Nations for over 15 years and has most recently served as Principal Political Adviser for the UN's Special Political Missions both in Iraq (2007-2009) and in Afghanistan (2010-2012) where she has dealt with aspects of facilitating…
More InformationEpisode 37: 2019 World Fellow Burçak Belli
Burçak Belli describes growing up in an Arab community in Turkey, why she became a journalist, covering the war in Syria, and the challenges facing journalists.
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