Niemat Ahmadi

A native of North Darfur, Niemat Ahmadi serves as Founder and President of Darfur Women Action Group as well as the Director of Global Partnerships for United to End Genocide, which involves promoting greater outreach to civil society organizations worldwide, particularly those that represent the communities affected by genocide and mass atrocities from the regions that UEG is working to address.

Ms. Ahmadi previously worked for the Save Darfur Coalition as a member of the coalition’s policy and government relation team for four years, during which she also promoted the collaboration between the coalition and the Sudanese diaspora within the United States and abroad to empower and amplify their voices. 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 an advisor at the seventh round of inter-Sudanese Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria 2006.

A veteran human rights advocate, Ms. Ahmadi worked with NGO’s 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 (the current Practical Action) and the United Nation’s World Food Program. She also served as an executive member of the Darfur Assessment Mission, a consortium of six Sudanese non-governmental organizations 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, included 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 scholarship and raise 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 helps students from Darfur to be granted tuition waivers. 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. She received the Ford Motor Company international fellowship for leadership course, at Columbia University, NY and the American University summer Professional Program on Women, Peace and Security.

Because of her role in helping the victims and being vocal about massive human rights abuses and the genocide in Darfur, she was forced to leave the country after two attempts on her life. She stayed in Kenya for two years then arrived to the U.S. in March 2007.

In her advocacy work, Niemat testified about the use of rape as weapon of war before UN SC in NY, UN Human rights council UNHRC in Geneva and many other testimonies, and collaborated with the Coalition for the ICC presenting victim’s perspective for Justice in Darfur. She also addressed the UN Security Council, on June 17, 2008 to testify on the escalation of violence against Darfuris in Darfur and Khartoum following May 10th attack. On the 17th of July, 2008 she addressed the UNSC presenting the Darfuri victims perspective for justice in Darfur. She also testified on the use of rape in Darfur as weapon of war before the senate foreign relations committee on 13th of may 2009.

As a Darfuri expert, she participated with Physicians for Human Rights in developing principles and guidelines for the reparations of Darfurian victims. Beside her work with the Coalition, she is working on mobilizing the Sudanese Diaspora to organize, network and encourage them to create their own organizations and provide them with advice and facilitation so that they can be able to contribute to the lasting and peaceful settlement of the Darfur conflict and Sudan’s multiple crises conflict.

She has been recognized by former President George W. Bush as one of the 8 global human rights fighters for freedom of their people of the year, along with representative from other 7 countries on July 24th 2008, in a meeting before his freedom speech.

Dr. Lee Ann De Reus

Dr. Lee Ann De Reus is an Associate Professor of Human Development & Family Studies and Women Studies at Pennsylvania State University-Altoona and the co-founder of Panzi Foundation USA.

As a scholar-activist, Dr. De Reus travels regularly to Panzi Hospital in eastern DR Congo to conduct research, develop programs for rape survivors, and inform her advocacy work in the U.S. She co-leads annual field experiences for PSU students to Rwanda and Mozambique. Dr. De Reus is a 2009 Carl Wilkens Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards from Penn State University in recognition of exemplary teaching and in honor of her commitment to global service and outreach.

She is a featured activist in John Prendergast’s book, The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa’s Worst Human Rights Crimes, a guest blogger for Women Under Siege, and a frequent speaker about the crisis in the DRC. Her presentations include TEDxPSU, Daring to Make a Difference for Congo and the Oslo Freedom Forum, A Different Kind of Warfare.

Senator Mobina Jaffer

Senator Mobina Jaffer represents the province of British Columbia in the Senate of Canada, where she chairs the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. Appointed to the Senate on June 13, 2001 by the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien, she is the first Muslim senator, the first African-born senator, and the first senator of South Asian descent. Senator Jaffer also sits as a member of the Senate’s Anti-terrorism and Legal and Constitutional Affairs committees.

Senator Jaffer served as Canada’s Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan from 2002 to 2006. From 2002 to 2005, she chaired the Canadian Committee on Women, Peace, and Security. Senator Jaffer is often invited to speak at international conferences on security issues and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which “urges all actors to increase the participation of women and incorporate gender perspectives in all United Nations peace and security efforts” and “calls on all parties to conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict.” As a grandmother, women’s rights and children’s rights are central to Senator Jaffer’s advocacy.

An accomplished lawyer, Senator Jaffer has practiced law at the firm Dohm, Jaffer and Jeraj since 1978. Appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1998, Senator 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 Senator Jaffer among Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in 2003, 2004, and 2005. In 2003, she received an Honorary Doctorate from Open Learning University.

Senator 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. Born in Uganda, Senator Jaffer speaks six languages and is married with two adult children and one grandson.

Joachim Savelsberg

Professor of Sociology Joachim Savelsberg has made major contributions to human rights scholarship, teaching and institution-building at the University of Minnesota. Since coming to the University in 1989, he has helped cultivate the Sociology Department into a prominent destination for theory and empirical research on human rights. Savelsberg’s work utilizes a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how collective memories and perceptions relate to the strengthening of human rights norms across space and time.

Trained as a sociologist in Germany, Professor of Sociology Joachim Savelsberg conducted early research on white collar crime legislation, criminal punishment in international comparison, and sentencing and sentencing guidelines. Issues of atrocity demanded his attention in part because of his biography. In his words: “Born in 1951, I grew up in my native Germany, where the crimes committed under the Nazi regimes were silenced far into the 1960s.” Accordingly, Professor Savelsberg’s human rights work focuses on the role the representation and collective memory of genocide and atrocity play in the development of institutional and judicial controls.

Savelsberg’s current research project as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, “Collective Representations and Memories of Atrocities after Judicial Interventions: The Case of Darfur in International Comparison,” examines the response to judicial action in Darfur in eight Western democracies. Thousands of media reports and policy documents from each country were collected and analyzed. These data have been supplemented with in-depth interviews with the producers of the documents (i.e., Africa correspondents) and their sources to gain a country- and field-specific understanding of the impact of judicial action on collective representations and the reflexive relationship between collective memory and state action.

Savelsberg has recently published the book ‘Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur’.

Elisa von Joeden-Forgey

Elisa von Joeden-Forgey is Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program at Stockton University as well as founding director of the Genocide Prevention Certificate Program. Prior to this she was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her PhD degree in modern German and African history.

She has lectured and published widely in the field of German history, gender and genocide prevention and recently spoke at the first annual United Nations International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.

She is currently completing a book on gender and the prevention of genocide that will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press and serves as the First Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Maureen Murphy

Maureen Murphy is a Senior Research Associate with the Global Women’s Institute (GWI) at the George Washington University where her primary research focus is on violence against women and girls in conflict and post-conflict settings. Prior to joining GWI, she worked with numerous humanitarian aid agencies, including in South Sudan with the American Refugee Committee and in Sierra Leone with GOAL Ireland. In addition, she worked with the Child Protection in Crisis Network, based at Columbia University, to coordinate locally driven child protection and GBV research projects in Africa and Asia. Maureen holds a Master’s in Public Health from Columbia University where she focused on gender-based violence and reproductive health topics in complex emergencies.

Renifa M. Madenga

Renifa Mary Petra Madenga is an attorney at law from Zimbabwe, currently working as a legal and gender consultant. She has more than 20 years experience in the fields of national, international criminal law, transitional justice, human rights, and international law. Ms. Madenga’s current work focuses on empowering survivors of armed conflicts, ensuring accountability through effective, professional, gender sensitive and efficient documenting and investigating of mass atrocities in conformity with international law.

Ms. Madenga has worked in both conflict and post conflict areas including Zimbabwe, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Nigeria.

Ms. Madenga previously worked with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as a case manager, assistant trial attorney, trial attorney and a legal advisor in the office of the Prosecutor (OTP).  She has been a vital member of the OTP Sexual Violence Committee from its inception.  Renifa is a Justice Rapid Response (JRR) – UN Women trained and certified SGBV expert committed to contributing significantly to ending impunity.

Ms. Madenga studied law at the University of Zimbabwe, (Bachelor of Law (BL), Honors in Law (LLB), and Masters in Women’s Law (MWL). She also did post graduate studies in the area of international humanitarian law (Diploma) at Raoul Wallenberg (Lund) Sweden. Ms. Madenga is a part time PhD candidate whose research focuses on women in armed conflict and the gender gaps in international humanitarian law.

Emily Bove (moderator)

Emily Bove is a women’s rights advocate and a gender-in-development expert currently working as the Director of the Alliance for Women’s Solutions at Women Thrive Worldwide. She has more than 10 years of experience working with grassroots women’s rights organizations in Indonesia, Cameroon, and throughout Africa and the Caribbean.

Ms. Bove worked in post-tsunami Aceh to develop community-based beneficiary feedback mechanisms and supervise the German Technical Corporation’s Economic Recovery and Microfinance Program’s monitoring and evaluation activities. Her work has also taken her to Cameroon, where she managed and implemented a Gender Transformative Fund from the German Technical Corporation in the field of gender-based violence, with a special focus on rape, HIV, and breast ironing.

Prior to joining Women Thrive, she worked on gender and financial adaptation in the Caribbean with disaster risk management teams at the World Bank.Ms. Bove holds a bachelor’s degree from the Institute of Political Studies of Lyon, France, and a master’s in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex, UK. She also completed a Graduate Exchange Program at Georgetown University.

Chris Mahony

Dr. Chris Mahony is Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law Research and Policy, Visiting Research Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, and Criminal Justice and Citizen Security Consultant at the World Bank in Washington D.C. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree (B.Com.) and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from the University of Otago, and a Master’s degree in African Studies (M.Sc.) and a D.Phil. in Politics from the University of Oxford. He was admitted to the bar of the High Court of New Zealand in 2006 where he appeared for the Crown in criminal and refugee matters. He drafted the recommendations on governance and corruption for the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and co-authored the ‘Historical antecedents to the conflict’ chapter.

In 2008, Dr. Chris Mahony directed the Witness Evaluation Legacy Project at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. He has advised the International Criminal Court, the British, Nepali and US governments, the International Centre for Transitional Justice, Bain and Company, USAID, and the Open Society Initiative, on international justice, transitional justice and justice sector reform. From 2012 to 2013, he was Deputy Director of the New Zealand Centre for Human Rights Law, Policy and Practice, Faculty of Law, Auckland University. He has published on international criminal justice, transitional justice and domestic justice sector reform. He is a regular commentator in print, radio and television on issues of international criminal justice, international relations, international political economy, and human rights.

Stephen Lamony

Stephen Arthur Lamony is a Ugandan born national who works as the Situations Adviser and Outreach liaison for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC). He holds an LLM in Human Rights and Criminal Justice from Queens University Belfast (UK), and is a co-founder of the Uganda Victims Rights Working Group UVRWG (now known as the Uganda Victims Foundation).

Mr. Lamony is the author of ‘Examining the Prospects of TRC In Uganda by Reviewing Past Efforts: Rethinking the establishment of a future TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) in Uganda, published in 2011 by LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.

Mona Ali Khalil

Mona Ali Khalil is a respected public international lawyer who believes that justice is essential for sustainable peace and that upholding the dignity of each human being is necessary to preserve our own humanity. Ms. Khalil has over 20 years of combined service in the UN and in the International Atomic Energy Agency, extensive expertise in public international law and unique experience in collective peace and security efforts including peacekeeping, sanctions, disarmament and counter-terrorism.

During her service as a Senior Legal Officer in the UN Office of the Legal Counsel, she undertook several special assignments including serving as Legal Adviser to the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on post-Saddam Iraq and to the UN Mission in post-Qaddafi Libya. More recently, Ms. Khalil served as Legal Adviser to the UN Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic and the Joint OPCW-UN Mission for the Elimination of the Syrian Chemical Weapons Programme. In September 2015, she joined Independent Diplomat as a Legal Advisor.

Ms. Khalil has authored published works on combating terrorism as well as on the protection of civilians. She has a B.A. in International Relations and a Master’s in Middle East Studies from Harvard University as well as a Master’s in Foreign Service and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University. She is a Fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.

Carl Wilkens

When genocide broke out in Rwanda in 1994, Carl Wilkens refused to leave Rwanda, even when urged to do so by his family, his church and the United States government. At the time, Carl was a missionary with the Seventh Day Adventist Church. As Mr. Wilkens listened to pleas for help from mission stations over the radio, he decided that his wife and children should evacuate the country. But he would stay to help, a decision that forever changed his life.

During the genocide, Mr. Wilkens urged for the protection of one of the orphanages in grave danger, enlisting Rwanda’s Hutu prime minister to stop the massacre of children in the orphanage. His actions saved the lives of hundreds of children and many of his Rwandan friends. Elsewhere, his  fearlessness and generosity made it possible for him to preserve the lives of hundreds of Tutsis. Many were strangers, but he worked indiscriminately to safeguard their lives within the capital of Kigali, where he was based.

Mr. Wilkens and his family spent a year and a half in Rwanda after the genocide ended to assist with the rebuilding process. In 1996, they returned to the United States where Mr. Wilkens became a chaplain at a boarding school in Oregon. In early 2008 he began traveling full-time to share what he witnessed in Rwanda in hopes of empowering others to take action and to hold their communities and elected officials accountable to doing all that they can to stop and prevent genocide and mass atrocities throughout the world.

Mr. Wilkens has been recognized with several humanitarian awards, including a 2005 Medal of Valor from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Dignitas Humana Award from Saint John’s School of Theology Seminary.

Al Sutton

Al Sutton is an American filmmaker and actor who has produced a variety of films of different genres, including documentaries in the medical field, documentaries of memorable, historic events, and theatrical films. He is also a musician, and operates his own record label, Alsut Records.

As a documentary filmmaker, Mr. Sutton produced Fraternal Twins: The First Year of Life, which was widely distributed to universities in the 1980s, when he was a practicing physician. His footage of the first Gay Liberation March in 1970 was aired, at the time, on network TV, and is now being considered for a new release. And his rare footage of the Women’s Strike for Equality, which took place in New York City in 1970, was released in 2011 as a short entitled Equality, I Am Woman.

He is a member of SAG and BAFTA.

Mr. Sutton’s film training was at the New School in New York, under Arnold Eagle; and he studied acting at the Warren Robertson Theater Workshop, in New York, under Warren Robertson and Larry Moss.

David Smith (moderator)

David Smith is the Guardian’s senior Washington correspondent. From 2010 to 2015 Mr. Smith was the Africa correspondent for The Guardian for which he was based in Johannesburg, South Africa. At this time he traveled to Sudan to cover the country’s political and economic issues, as well as Darfur’s humanitarian crisis.

Eugenie Mukeshimana

Eugenie Mukeshimana was a young adult and 8 months pregnant when the genocide broke in Rwanda in 1994 and give birth to her first child in the middle of the genocide while hiding from extremist Hutu genocidaires.

At the end of the genocide, Ms. Mukeshimana struggled to raise her newborn daughter. As a widow, she found herself in a similar situation as many other mothers who have done the impossible to save their children and now have to rebuild life for their families alone. She found solace in working with communities that have been divided and disintegrated as a result of the genocide. This experience inspired her to pursue a longterm career in human services.

In 2001, Ms. Mukeshimana emigrated to the United States to pursue a degree in Social Work at the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY. She soon noticed that her classmates and teachers had no knowledge about the tragedy she had personally suffered seven years earlier. This shocking reality inspired her to embark on a new mission to educate students, teachers, and other community groups about the crime of genocide.  In 2010, she founded the Genocide Survivors Support Network (GSSN), a charitable organization with a mission to help genocide survivors rebuild their lives and educate communities about the crime of genocide.

Nasredeen Abdulbari

Nasredeen Abdulbari, who is currently a doctoral student at the Georgetown University Law Center, is a consultant on international law and human and constitutional rights. He was a lecturer in the International and Comparative Law Department, University of Khartoum. He also worked as Head of the Human Rights and Advocacy Unit of the Sudan Social Development Organization (SUDO).

In East Africa, Mr. Abdulbari was a senior researcher at the Rift Valley Institute and consultant for the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa based Nairobi, Kenya. He authored articles that were published in academic journals such as the Journal of African Law (London University) and the African Human Rights Law Journal (Pretoria University).

He is a co-author of a book in Arabic titled “The Future Constitution of Sudan: Aspirations and Views” published in 2013 by Ahfad University for Women, Khartoum, Sudan. His most recent work, an article on women and citizenship in Sudan and South Sudan, will appear in the Birkbeck Law Review (London University) this September 2016.

Myra Dahgaypaw

Myra Dahgaypaw is a Karen human rights activist from Karen State, Eastern Burma. She was an internally displaced person for about 12 years and a refugee for 17 years until she resettled to the United States. Mrs. Dahgaypaw has lost many family members and friends to the brutality of Burma’s military regime. Since the age of 13, she has played a strong role in her community as an organizer and a human rights advocate.

As a member of the Karen Women’s Organization and a board member of the Karen American Communities Foundation, Myra has testified before Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. She assists and advocates for refugees from Burma who are resettled in the US. Myra has participated in many panel discussions and conferences on Burma.

Daniel Rothbart