Stephen J. Rapp

Stephen J. Rapp is the former U.S. Department of State’s Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice. Prior to his appointment, he served as Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. His office also achieved the first convictions in history for sexual slavery and forced marriage as crimes against humanity, and for attacks on peacekeepers and for recruitment and use of child soldiers as violations of international humanitarian law.

Prior to that, he served as Senior Trial Attorney and Chief of Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he led the trial team that achieved the first convictions in history against leaders of the mass media for the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide.

He received a B.A. from Harvard College and a J.D. from Drake Law School.

Honorable Tom Andrews

Tom Andrews is President and Chief Executive Officer of United to End Genocide. A former Congressman from Maine, Tom is also the National Director of Win Without War, a coalition of forty national organizations promoting a more progressive national security strategy that calls for prudent use of military engagement.

A long-time advocate of democracy and human rights in Burma, Tom has worked closely with the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, facilitated the creation of the European Burma Network and served as General Secretary of the Nobel Peace Laureate Campaign for Aung San Suu Kyi. Tom is a Senior Advisor to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Tom was elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 1982, the Maine Senate in 1984 and the United States House of Representatives in 1990. Tom also served as president of New Economy Communications, a not-for-profit organization providing strategic planning and communication services to individuals and groups advancing labor and human rights issues.

Dr. Eric Reeves

Dr. Eric Reeves is professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he teaches courses in Shakespeare, Milton, and the history of literary theory and the history of literacy. Before coming to Smith, he received degrees in English Literature from Williams College and the University of Pennsylvania.

He has spent the past sixteen years working as a Sudan researcher and analyst. He has testified several times before the Congress, has lectured widely in academic settings, and has served as a consultant to a number of human rights and humanitarian organizations operating in Sudan. Working independently, he has written on several aspects of Sudan’s recent history, in particular what he identifies as genocide in the Darfur region, and the role of the Sudanese and Chinese governments in perpetuating it.

He has received a generous grant from Humanity United (Redwood City, CA) to support his research and travel. A collection of his essays on ongoing war and human destruction in Darfur appeared as A Long Day’s Dying (Key Publishing, 2007). More recently he published a lengthy eBook about Sudan’s history of the past five years: “Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 – 2012”.

This work has led to Reeves’s receiving a number of honorary degrees, and many other forms of national recognition.

Dr. Gregory H. Stanton

Dr. Stanton is a Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution of George Mason University. He has a long history of involvement in genocide studies and genocide prevention. He is the founder of and President of Genocide Watch. Dr. Stanton is the former director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, which was founded in 1981.

Dr. Stanton taught Human Rights classes at the University of Mary Washington. In 1999 he was selected to serve as the Chair of the International Alliance to End Genocide, the world’s largest anti-genocide coalition. From 2007 – 2009, he served as the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Previously, Dr. Stanton served in the State Department, where he played a critical role in drafting the United Nations Security Council resolution that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Burundi Commission of Inquiry, and the Central African Arms Flow Commission. He also drafted the U.N. Peacekeeping Operations resolutions that helped bring about an end to the Mozambique civil war. Because of his unique contribution to the practice of diplomacy and human rights issues, Dr. Stanton won the American Foreign Service Association’s prestigious W. Averell Harriman award in 1994.

Dr. Stanton has degrees from Oberlin College, Harvard Divinity School, Yale Law School, and a Masters and Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Ambassador Mathilde Mukantabana

Mathilde Mukantabana is the Ambassador of the Republic of Rwanda to the United States of America and non-resident Ambassador to Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.

Prior to her appointment, Ambassador Mukantabana was a tenured Professor of History at Cosumnes River College (CRC) in Sacramento, California from 1994-2013. She is also co-founder and President of the Friends of Rwanda Association (FORA), a non-profit American relief association created in the wake of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. Since its inception, FORA’s dual purpose has been to expand the circle of friends of Rwanda and to support genocide survivors through a variety of initiatives. In addition, under the aegis of the United Nations Development Programme, Ambassador Mukantabana started the academic program of Social Work at the National University of Rwanda in 1999, and as an Invited Lecturer taught a variety of subjects in their summer program until recently.

Ambassador Mukantabana has been a passionate community organizer for several decades and co-founded many associations and organizations whose main purpose was to promote the positive collaboration of Rwandan communities in the U.S. with other groups and organizations for the benefit of their respective countries. She is an active Board Member of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Sonoma State University in California and belongs to various local and international organizations, including the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the Organization of African Leaders in Diaspora that she co-founded and for which she is currently acting as Board Chair.

Fatou Bensouda

Fatou B. Bensouda is a Gambian lawyer, former advisor of Yahya Jammeh, international criminal law prosecutor and legal adviser.

She has been the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor since June 2012, after having served as a Deputy Prosecutor in charge of the Prosecutions Division of the ICC since 2004 and having been minister of justice of the Gambia. She has held positions of Legal Adviser and Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Bensouda has been the recipient of various awards, most notably, the distinguished ICJ International Jurists Award (2009), which was presented by President of India P.D, Patil. Bensouda was given this award for her contributions to criminal law both at the national and International level. Bensouda has also been awarded the 2011 World Peace Through Law Award presented by the Whitney Harris World Law Institute, Washington University, which recognized her work in considerably advancing the rule of law and thereby contributing to world peace.

Niemat Ahmadi

A native of North Darfur, Sudan, Niemat Ahmadi is Founder and President of Darfur Women Action Group and the former Director of Global Partnerships for United to End Genocide. Ms. Ahmadi previously worked for the Save Darfur Coalition as a member of the coalition’s policy and government relation team. She is a founding member of the Darfuri Leaders Network, a coalition of over twenty U.S.-based Darfuri organizations working to promote peace and security in Darfur. She served as advisor at the seventh round of inter-Sudanese Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria in 2006.

A veteran human rights advocate, Ms. Ahmadi worked with international NGOs in various fields of emergency and development with a focus on women’s empowerment and capacity-building while in Sudan, including Oxfam Great Britain, Intermediate Technology Development Group (currently Practical Action), and the UN’s World Food Program. She also served as an executive member of the Darfur Assessment Mission, a consortium of six Sudanese NGOs in Khartoum, Sudan working on documenting human rights violations in Darfur at the time of the crises. Ms. Ahmadi led the Darfur Diaspora Association of East Africa in Kenya. She also participated in many regional forums, including but not limited to, African women conference for peace and security, and Sudanese women forum for peace.

While in college, Niemat established Darfur call for private education that seeks scholarships and raises funds to support the education of poor Darfurian students. She was also a founding member of the Darfur Student Association at Ahfad University, which seeks to secure scholarships and help students from Darfur receive tuition waivers. She was forced to leave her country after two attempts on her life because of her role in helping victims and being vocal about massive human rights abuses and the genocide in Darfur.

In 2007, Niemat received a fellowship from Ford Motor Company for leadership. She has been recognized by former President George W. Bush as one of the eight global human rights fighters for freedom of their people of the year in 2008.

While in the U.S., Niemat has traveled to over 24 states to tell her personal story and the stories of many other victims of the Darfur genocide to educate the American people about the current genocide in Darfur. Niemat has also testified about the Darfur genocide and the use of rape as a weapon of war before the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council, the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee and many international conferences.

Ms. Ahmadi earned an M.S. In Sustainable Development and a B.A. in Psychology and Pre-school Education from Ahfad University for Women in Khartoum.

Dr. Jo-Marie Burt

Jo-Marie Burt teaches political science at George Mason University, where she is also director of Latin American Studies and Co-director of the Center for Global Studies. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, where she conducts research and writes commentaries on human rights and transitional justice issues in the region.

She previously worked as editor at NACLA Report on the Americas. In 2010, Dr. Burt was the “Alberto Flores Galindo” Visiting Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

Dr. Burt has published widely on Latin American politics and society in academic journals, edited volumes, and in journalistic magazines and newspapers. She is author of Silencing Civil Society: Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), which was published in Spanish in early 2009 (with a second edition in 2011) as Violencia y Autoritarismo en el Perú: Bajo la sombra de Sendero y la dictadura de Fujimori by the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) and the Asociación Servicios Rurales (SER). She is co-editor of Politics in the Andes: Identity, Conflict, Reform (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004).

Professor Burt has commented frequently on Latin American politics for various news media, including BBC World, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio as well as Peruvian print and electronic media. She has received grants and fellowships from the Open Society Foundation, Fulbright, U.S. Institute of Peace, the Aspen Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Inter-American Foundation, the Latin American Studies Association Otros Saberes Initiative, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and was a fellow of the International Human Rights Internship Program of the Institute for International Education and the Ford Foundation. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Norrie Kurtz

Norrie was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1943 during World War II. Her family moved to a small resort town in upstate NY when she was 12. After receiving her Masters degree, Norrie worked as a speech pathologist in a school for neurologically impaired youngsters and subsequently as an audiologist for 20 years at Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital in NYC.

In 1989, eighteen months after the adoption of her 7 year old son from South Korea,her husband passed away. Norrie became a single parent and changed careers to become a data research analyst of institutional investors of fixed income, work that ended in August 2010 as her work was transferred to the Philippines.

When she learned of the genocide in Darfur, she joined a local faith-based group (the Summit Darfur Genocide Rescue Committee) that responded to the genocide with outreach, political action and resettlement resource activity. Initially, she was Chair of the resettlement sub-committee and subsequently became Chair of the entire group. She is presently Chair of the Board for Darfur Women Action Group.

Bama Athreya

Bama Athreya is the Senior Specialist for Labor and Employment Rights at USAID.  She formerly was the Executive Director of United to End Genocide which is a collaboration with the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention New York. She has spent many years with her dedication to human rights, ending genocide, and preventing human rights atrocities.

She worked in the 1990s to expose mass atrocities by Exxon Mobil in Aceh as well as lived in Cambodia during the United Nations Transitional Authority attempt to end the civil war. Athreya also is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the National Committee on US- China Relations and holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. She also is an appointed member of the special Consultative Group on Forced and Child Labor and publishes on issues of child labor in countries abroad.

Myra Dahgaypaw

Professor Ahmed Adam

Professor Ahmed Adam is an internationally known Sudanese politician who is from Darfur.  He gained his law degree from Sudan before moving to the UK to get a degree in public international law from Westminster University.  Mr. Adam quickly became one of the most prominate voices for the people of Sudan on the international stage.  He became one of the principle negotiators on behalf of the people of Darfur in peace talks sponsored by the United Nations, the Arab League and the African Union.

Professor Adam is currently working on a book called Darfur Betrayed: An Insiders Perspective which will analyze the peace process and the regional and international response to it as well as the Darfur crisis since 2004.  From 2012 to 2014 Ahmed Adam was a visiting professor at Columbia University.

Elfadel Arabab

El-Fadel Arabab is a survivor of the Darfur genocide and has become an activist speaking at many events about Darfur and the importance of bringing President Bashir to justice.

When Mr. Arabab was only 12 years old, the Janjaweed attacked his village. He managed to escape and get to Khartoum where he lived for years as a homeless child on the streets. He then found a relative in the city who managed to get him to Egypt where he stayed until 2004 when he traveled to the US.

Mr. Arabab is the secretary and lecturer of the Fur Cultural Revival Organization which is an organization committed to raising governments awareness of the Darfur genocide and helping serve the Darfur community in the Portland area.

Zeinab Mohamed Blandia

Zeinab Mohamed Blandia is a Muslim peacemaker from Sudan and has been involved in creating community and maintaining peace in the Nuba Mountains which is one of the most conflict-affected and neglected regions of the world. She is the founder and director of Ruya, or “Vision,” which is an organization in Kadugli in the south and also in Omdurman in the north where Zeinab trains and cultivates fellow “women peace ambassadors.”

She works in the Nuba Mountains to develop economic skills of women through teaching on subjects such as savings accounts. Her groups together identify conflict issues and work with peacebuilding at the level. She is also involved in the program “Women Bridging” which allows women to exchange vists within the state as well as trains illiterate women in solar engineering. She is working in training women in technology as well as conflict resolution methods in indigenous areas.

Elizabeth Bohart

Elizabeth Bohart is the Director for Outreach Strategy and the Executive Producer with Watchers of the Sky. She worked with strategic planning in Eastern Africa and also worked with an UK based consultancy on assisted private equity. She oversaw the development of the film and its educational outreach that targeted middle and high school curriculum. She is a strategist behind the development of the film’s program and community engagement.

She is also on the board of directors of Maloto which is a nonprofit organization based on Malawi. Bohart also works with a violence-preventative organization that works to teach young people conflict resolution skills.

Amelia Green Dove

Amelia Green Dove is a producer, filmmaker, and journalist. She was a field producer for the filmmaker Michael Moore’s Academy Awared feature documentary and was an associate producer for Bill Moyer. She worked as a researcher for the BBC Open University division in London and has worked with Edet Beluberg on The Recruiter. She is also the film outreach Engagement Campaign Manager for Watchers of the Sky.

Omer Ismail

Omer Ismail was born in the Darfur region of Sudan and is the Senior Enough Advisor. For the past 20 years, Omer worked with international organizations on human rights and relief efforts. He founded the Sudan Democratic Forum and helped develop a think tank for Sudanese intellectuals who were assisting with the development of democracy in Sudan. He also founded the Darfur Peace and Development organization to spread awareness of the ongoing problems in Darfur and worked as policy adviser with agencies in crisis management. Ismail was also a fellow at Harvard University for the Kennedy School of Government.

Jeffrey Eide

Having spent a majority of his life living and working abroad, Jeffrey Eide became strongly intertwined with human rights and especially women’s rights in particular as a vehicle for progress in the world. The resistance to women’s progress cemented his passion. Now living the USA, Jeffrey heads the education and media outreach committee at the Fargo Rape and Abuse Crisis Center, where his current focus is The Redefining Masculinity Project, which aims to educate about attitudes and the role men play in preventing assault.

Ikhlas Mohammed

Ikhlas Mohammed is a Sudanese youth leader with United States Institute of Peace’s Middle East & Africa team, with with responsibility for conducting a research project in Women Role and Conflict Resolution in Darfur. From 2010 up 2013 she was working as a translator and interpreter with United Nations and African Union Mission in Darfur in Zalingei. Currently she is working with UNAMID/ Khartoum Office in Security Section since 2013; she also worked as Volunteer Teacher with Sudanese National Association for Blinds from 2007 up 2010. She was working as communication and coordination secretary in National Staff Association in UNAMID, and Published Nafaj Magazine that discusses the National Staff concerns in UNMAID and the sociocultural issues of the local citizens in Zalingei and the role of the mission in Zalingei.

Ikhlas has a bachelor degree in arts and humanities sciences department of English language from University of Juba, and she is a master degree holder in Gender and Migration studies from Ahfad University for Women in Sudan.

Reverend Dr. Kemi Onanuga

Rev. Dr. Kemi Onanuga is the Founding President for the Pawla Organization and the Co-founder for the African Immigrant Caucus (AIC) as well as Ambassador for the United Nations.  She also working on bringing advocacy to issues in Nigeria and working with Jesus House as well as MD State Coordinator for the campaign launched in response to the kidnappings of women and girls in Nigeria.

Her work with Jesus House was to alleviating the damages of the violence  in Nigeria and also in outreach efforts within the United States. She is an author and life-coach with her work as a role model well-known to young generation leaders. She also works as an administrative professional in Business Management and has a Doctorate in Theology. She is the Minister in Charge of the Pastoral Care Ministry at Jesus House DC and the Executive Director of the Redeemers’ Community Development Corporation.

Marion Arnaud

Marion Arnaud is the current representative for the office of the United Nations Secretary General on Genocide Prevention. She is a strong advocate for discussing conflict resolution and has participated in numerous End Genocide Action summits  as a panelist. Ms. Arnaud works with numerous ongoing conflicts and works to bring awareness to political and civilian issues at hand by working with the United Nations Press Release. Ms. Arnaud has a Master of Arts in Conflict, Security and Development from the University of Leeds, England and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from McGill University. Her work focused on the Responsibility to Protect in Darfur, which she began upon working at an internship in 2006. Ms. Arnaud has also worked on various educational and humanitarian projects ranging from France to Peru. She has also worked with providing briefings of the United Nations to the public as the officer for the Project Officer at the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect.

Ms. Arnaud has also participated in the 2000 Millenium Summit in which she worked on the reports on the status of crimes against humanity in North Korea and the responsibility for preventing war crimes.

Tanotamon Gerais

Tanotamon Gerais is a board member of Voices for Sudan, an organization which works to give a voice to the Sudanese diaspora community and help end the political crisis.  Mr. Gerais is also the co-founder of Nubia Project, an organization which advocates for the protection of Nubian artifacts and culture against the flooding due to the building of dams by the government of Sudan.

Mr. Gerais has participated and attended prestigious events numerous times, at the US State Department, US Congress, and Hudson Institute.  He has spoken at many colleges and universities on the topic of Kush Heritage in order to help bring more attention to the issue as well as educating the younger generation on a topic which is not widely discussed in the classroom.

Reverend Kimberly Barnes

Reverend Kimberly Barnes is the pastor Gethsemane African Methodist Episcopal Church in Landover, Maryland.  She is co-pastor with her husband Reverend Ronald Braxton.  This is her first pastorate position which she began in 2010.  Before joining Gethsemane AME Church she was the assistant pastor of Metropolitan AME Church in Washington D.C.

Reverend Barnes also serves as the Executive Director and Founder of Voices for Hope.  She has been volunteering in her community for many years, including volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club.  When she was working as the assistant pastor for Metropolitan AME Church she became a co-facilitator of the Darfur Interfaith Network.  While in this position Reverend Barnes organized many different protests including a protest on the Sudanese Embassy in Washington DC. Her activism lead to Reverend Barnes being nominated by the Washington Chapter of the American Jewish Committee to travel to Israel with a delegation of pastors and inspect the Palestinian Israeli Conflict.