Victor Abramovich

Victor Abramovich is currently a member of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in the Organization of American States (OAS). He received his Juris Doctor degree with honors from Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) and his Masters in Law from American University. He has been a visiting professor in the Universities of Valencia and Castilla-La Mancha and American University. He is an adjunct professor of the Human Rights course of the law school of Universidad de Buenos Aires and teaches for the specialization program of the Universidad de Palermo in Argentina. He has been in charge of the Human Rights Law Clinic of UBA and was the former Executive Director of the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), one of the most important institutions engaged in the legal work on human rights in Latin America. In CELS, he litigated many cases in domestic courts and in the Inter-American system. He did advocacy in the U.N. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Committee and litigated a case regarding the right to food in the World Bank Inspection Panel. He also has been Legal Advisor of the Ombudsman office of Buenos Aires and consultant of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. He wrote a number of articles, books and law reviews concerning human rights particularly, about the impact of litigation on the economic, social and cultural rights.

Gudmundur Alfredsson

Gudmundur Alfredsson has a law degree from the University of Iceland (1975), an M.C.J.-degree from New York University School of Law (1976) and an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School (1982). He worked at the UN Secretariat for 12 years, with the Office of Legal Affairs in New York (1983-85) and the Centre for Human Rights in Geneva (1985-95). He is now Professor at the Law Faculty of Lund University and Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (on paternity leave 2005-2006). He is a member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (from 2004). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, the editor of several books and the author of over one hundred articles on a variety of human rights and international law issues.

Philip Alston

Philip Alston is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, at New York University Law School. He is currently Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the subject of Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions as well as Special Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Millennium Development Goals. He chaired the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights from 1991 to 1998 and played an active role as an Independent Expert appointed by the UN Secretary-General to report on measures to ensure the long-term effectiveness of the UN human rights treaty bodies. He was the sole Legal Adviser to UNICEF throughout the period of the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and was an expert adviser in the preparation of the Machel Report on children in armed conflict. He and John Tobin are currently working on a comprehensive Commentary on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to be published in 2007 by Oxford University Press. He is also President of the Board of Directors of the Center for Economic and Social Right and Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law.

Elizabeth Andersen

Elizabeth Andersen is the Executive Director of the American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) in Washington, D.C. Before joining CEELI in October 2003, Ms. Andersen served as the executive director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. Ms. Andersen had worked for Human Rights Watch since 1995, first as a researcher and later as the advocacy director for the organization's Europe and Central Asia division. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Ms. Andersen served as legal assistant to Judge Georges Abi-Saab of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and as a law clerk to Judge Kimba M. Wood of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. Ms. Andersen specializes in international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law, and she has authored a number of speeches and articles on those topics. Ms. Andersen is a graduate of Williams College, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and Yale Law School. She is admitted to the New York bar and a member of the American Society of International Law and the American Bar Association.

M. Cherif Bassiouni

M. Cherif Bassiouni is a Distinguished Research Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law and President of the International Human Rights Law Institute. He is also President of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy, as well as the Honorary President of the International Association of Penal Law (President 1989-2004), based in Paris, France. In 1999, Professor Bassiouni was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the field of international criminal justice and for his contribution to the creation of the International Criminal Court. . He has received several honor medals from different countries government. He has also received numerous academic and civic awards, including the Special Award of the Council of Europe (1990); the Defender of Democracy Award, Parliamentarians for Global Action (1998) The Adlai Stevenson Award of the United Nations Association (1993); and the Saint Vincent DePaul Humanitarian Award (2000).Professor Bassiouni is the author of 27 and editor of 44 books, and the author of 217 articles on a wide range of legal issues, including international criminal law, comparative criminal law, and international human rights law.

Thomas Buergenthal

Thomas Buergenthal grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Kielce (Poland) and later in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. On 4 December 1951, he emigrated from Germany to the USA. He studied at Bethany College in West Virginia (graduated 1957), and received his J.D. at New York University Law School in 1960, and his LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees in international law from Harvard Law School. Buergenthal is a specialist in international law and human rights law. Since 2000, he has sat as a judge on the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Prior to this appointment, he was Lobingier Professor of International and Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at The George Washington University Law School and has held numerous prestigious academic positions. He has served as a judge for many years, including lengthy periods on various specialized international organization bodies. Between 1979 and 1991, he served as a judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, including a stint as that court's president; from 1989 to 1994, he was a judge on the Inter-American Development Bank's Administrative Tribunal; in 1992 and 1993, he served on the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador; and from 1995 to 1999, he was a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Buergenthal is the author of more than a dozen books and a large number of articles on international law, human rights and comparative law subjects.

Antônio Cançado Trindade

Antonio Cançado Trinidade is a judge and a former President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He obtained his Ph.D in International Law at Cambridge University, Great Britain, with the thesis "Developments in the Rule of Exhaustion of Local Remedies in International Law" (in 2 volumes, 1.728 pages). His thesis was awarded the York Prize, granted by the Cambridge University Law School in 1978. Professor Cançado Trinidade obtained his Masters degree in International Law at Cambridge University (1973); he is a Lawyer from Universidad Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil (1st Prize in Civil Law, 1969); he is an alum of the International Institute if Human Rights (Strasbourg, France, 1974): obtained Certificates from the Research Center of the International Law Academy of the Hague (1974) and of the Seminary of the United Nation's International law Commission (Geneva, 1975), amongst others. Published works of Professor Cançado Trinidade includes:  "Co-existence and Co-ordination of Mechanisms of International Protection of Human Rights"(volume 202 of the "Recueil des Cours de l'Académie de Droit International", The Hague 1987); "The Application of the Rule of Exhaustion of Local Remedies in International Law", Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983 (based on the author's Ph.D. thesis); "Repertório da Prática Brasileira do Direito Internacional Público" (volumes I-VI), Brasilia, FUNAG/MRE, 1984-1988; "Princípios do Direito Internacional Contemporâneo", Brasilia, Ed. Universidad de Brasilia, 1981; "O Esgotamento de Recursos Internos no Direito Internacional", Brasilia, Ed. Universidad de Brasilia, 1984 (1st. ed.) and 1997 (2nd. ed.).

Rebecca Cook

Rebecca Cook, A.B. (Barnard), M.A. (Tufts), M.P.A. (Harvard), J.D. (Georgetown), J.S.D.(Columbia), called to the Bar of Washington, D.C., is a Professor of Law, & Faculty Chair in International Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto; Co-Director, International Program on Reproductive and Sexual Health Law, University of Toronto. She is ethical and legal issues co-editor of the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and a member of the editorial Board of the Human Rights Quarterly. Her publications include over one hundred and fifty books, articles and reports in the areas of international human rights, the law relating to women's health and feminist ethics. Her most recent book, co-authored with Bernard M. Dickens and Mahmoud F. Fathalla, is Reproductive Health and Human Rights: Integrating Medicine, Ethics and Law.

Asbjørn Eide

Asbjørn Eide, b. 1933,  is former Director and presently senior fellow of the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo. He was previously a Director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, a former Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association, and the author of numerous books, contributions to books, articles in periodicals and studies for the United Nations on peace and conflict issues and human rights. Among the books edited by him is ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Common Standard of Achievement’ (with Gudmundur Alfredsson’) and ‘Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A textbook’ (with C.Krause and A.Rosas).He has been Torgny Segerstedt Professor at the University of Gøteborg, Sweden and is presently visiting professor at the University of Lund. He was for 20 years, until 2004, expert member of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and from 1995 to 2004 Chairman  of the United Nations Working Group on the Rights of Minorities. For some years until June 2006 he was also member and President of the Advisory Committee on the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

James Goldston

James A. Goldston is the Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, an operational program of the Open Society Institute that promotes rights-based law reform and the development of legal capacity worldwide. Previously, as Legal Director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center, Goldston spearheaded the development of ground-breaking civil rights litigation before the European Court of Human Rights, United Nations treaty bodies, and domestic courts in 15 European countries. In 1996, Goldston served as Director General for Human Rights of the Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, where he oversaw monitoring, reporting and individual protection activities nationwide. For five years, Goldston was a prosecutor in the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he specialized in the prosecution of organized crime. He previously worked for Human Rights Watch. A graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, Goldston has written widely on issues of human rights and racial discrimination. He has engaged in law reform fieldwork and investigated rights abuses in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He is a Lecturer on Law at Columbia Law School.

Felipe González

Felipe González is the Director of the Human Rights Program at Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, where he also teaches International Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law. He also coordinates a Latin-American Network of Public Interest and Human Rights Clinics that litigates cases both internationally and domestically.  He was the delegate for Latin-America of the International Human Rights Law Group between 1991 and 2003, first in Washington D.C. and then in Santiago (Chile) litigating cases in the Inter-American system of human rights and the U.N system. He also has taken part in the preparation of several international instruments. Author of numerous human rights publications, he obtained his LL.M. at American University in 1991 and has been Professor at the Academy of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at AU since 2001. What is more, he has been a Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, and Visiting Professor at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid, Universidad de Deusto and Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. In 2004, American University conferred him the Peter Cicchino Award for his "Outstanding Advocacy in the Public Interest."

Christof Heyns

Christoffel Hendrik Heyns is Dean of the Faculty of Law and Professor of Human Rights, and the past Director of the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria. PhD (University of the Witwatersrand); LLM (Yale); MA (Philosophy); LLB (University of Pretoria). He also teaches on a regular basis in the human rights programme at Oxford University. He has served as consultant to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on a number of occasions. He served as co-leader of a major study into the impact of the UN human rights treaties in 20 countries around the world on treaty reform. He has also served as consultant to the Organization of African Unity/African Union and the South African Human Rights Commission. He was a member of the task group responsible for the repeal of discriminatory legislation at the Multi-Party Negotiation Process, tasked with writing South Africa's first democratic constitution. He was also a member of the South African delegation at the meeting of experts convened to draft the Protocol aimed at setting up the African Court on Human Rights. His books include Human Rights Law in Africa (Martinus Nijhoff, Netherlands), The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level (Kluwer Law). Co-editor of the African Human Rights Law Journal and the African Human Rights Law Reports. His academic writings have been published and translated into English, French, Spanish, Portugese, Arabic and Afrikaans. He has won Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt Fellowships as well as the University of Pretoria's Chancellor's Award for Teaching.

Sarah Joseph

Professor Sarah Joseph is the Director for the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. Her teaching and research interests are International Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law.She has published a number of books including Corporations and Transnational Human Rights Litigation (Hart 2004), co-authoring The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Cases, Commentary and Materials (OUP, 2nd ed., 2004), Federal Constitutional Law: a contemporary view (Thompson, 2nd ed., 2006), and A Handbook on the Individual Complaints Procedures of the UN (OMCT, 2006).She was a lead investigator on an ARC linkage project on Multinational Corporations and Human Rights (2002-4), and is the lead investigator on a Discovery project on the WTO and Human Rights. In 2006 she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Board to the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, American University, Washington DC. Since 2005 she has been a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Establishment of a new Law School in New Delhi, India.  Sarah has also conducted numerous professional human rights training courses for overseas and Australian Government officials. Areas of expertise are Human rights, International humanitarian law, and Constitutional law.

Fernando Mariño

Fernando Mariño Menéndez (Noja, Spain) has a summa cum laude PhD from the University of Bolonia (Italy, 1970). He earned a diploma in Public Law from the International Law Academy of The Hague (1976), and a diploma from the Research Center of the Academy of International Law of The Hague (1980). He has taught International Public Law at the universities of Cordoba and Zaragoza. Since 1990, he has been a Professor of International Public Law in University Carlos III, Madrid, where he also is the Director of the "Francisco Vitoria" Institute of International and European Studies since 1994. Since that year, he has also been the Director of the Concepción Arenal Program on Persons Protective Law and Disadvantaged Groups. He is a Jean Monnet Professor of European Law designated by the European Communities Commission since 1996. He has been a member of the United Nations Committee Against Torture since January 2002, and was elected as its President for the 2003-2005 period. He also was the President of the Pro-Human Rights Association of Spain. He has directed more than 20 PhD theses on International Public Law and European Community Law. A guest lecturer at different Latin-American and European universities, he has been invited by the United Nations University for Peace (1991), Oxford University (2005) and Phanteon-Sorbonne University in Paris (2006). He has published and edited several books, amongst them: " Nociones de Derecho Internacional Público". Zaragoza, 3ª edición, 1990. "Derecho Internacional Público. Parte general", Madrid, 4ª edición 2005. "Protección Internacional de las minorías" (Ed.) Madrid, 2001. Moreover, he has published more than 80 papers, articles and collaborations on International Public Law, International Human Rights Law and European Law.

Elisa Massimino

Elisa Massimino (M.A., J.D.) is Washington Director of Human Rights First, formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. Ms. Massimino is the organization's chief advocacy strategist, a national authority on refugee law and policy and an expert on a range of international human rights issues. She testifies frequently before Congress, writes extensively for legal and popular publications, and serves as one of the organization's primary spokespeople with the media. Ms. Massimino taught philosophy at several universities in Michigan before embarking on a second career in law. As a litigation associate at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, she was pro bono counsel in many human rights cases. Ms. Massimino joined Human Rights First as a staff attorney in 1991 and has been the Washington Director since 1997. She holds philosophy degrees from Trinity University (B.A. 1982) and Johns Hopkins University (M.A. 1984), and a J.D. from University of Michigan Law School (1988). She has taught international human rights law at the University of Virginia School of Law, refugee and asylum law at George Washington University School of Law, and teaches Human Rights Advocacy at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Manfred Nowak

Manfred Nowak is Professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights at the University of Vienna and Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (BIM). Since 1996, he has served as Judge at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, since 2000, as Chairperson of the European Master Programme on Human Rights and Democratization (EMA) in Venice. From 1987 to 1989, he was Director of the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) at the University of Utrecht, and from 2002 to 2003 Olof Palme Visiting Professor at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) at the University of Lund. Prof. Nowak was a member of the Austrian delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights for many years, before he was appointed in 1993 as expert member of the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances. During this term he also served as UN expert on missing persons in the former Yugoslavia, and in 2001 he was appointed UN expert on legal issues relating to the drafting of a binding instrument on enforced disappearances. In December 2004, he was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Prof. Nowak was appointed in 2000 chairperson of a Human Rights Commission at the Austrian Ministry of Interior with the task of monitoring the police. In 1994, he was awarded a UNESCO prize for the teaching of human rights. He has published more than 350 books and articles in the fields of human rights, public law and politics. Prof. Nowak holds an LLM from Columbia University in New York and a PhD from Vienna University.

Nigel Rodley

Nigel Rodley acted as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture from 1993 to 2001 and is currently a member of the UN Human Rights Committee. He is also a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists. He has worked at UN Headquarters in New York and was founding head of the legal office at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International. Professor Rodley has taught human rights and international law at the University of Essex since 1990. He has also taught at Dalhousie University, the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research (New York), and at the London School of Economics. He has published widely in the field of international law and organization, especially on human rights issues, focusing more recently on the treatment of prisoners and the prevention of torture. His works include The Treatment of Prisoners under International Law (1987, 1999); (ed.) To Loose the Bands of Wickedness - International Intervention in Defense of Human Rights (1992); (with J I Domniguez, B Wood and R A Falk) Enchancing Global Human Rights (1979); (co-ed with C N Ronning) International Law in the Western Hemisphere (1974); (co-ed with Y Danieli and L Weisaeth) International Responses to Traumatic Stress (1995). Professor Rodley was awarded a knighthood in 1998 in recognition of his services to human rights and international law. He is currently Chair of the Human Rights Centre.

Leila Sadat

Leila Sadat is one of the country's leading experts in international and comparative law. She is the author of more than three dozen articles and several books on international criminal law and justice, terrorism, crimes against humanity, French law and European Union Law. From May 2001 until September 2003 Sadat served as Commissioner on the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom. Named to chair the International Law Association (American Branch) committee on the court in 1995, which grouped most of the leading experts in the field, she has authored or edited several monographs on the Court both in her capacity as chair, and writing individually. In addition, she was an NGO delegate to the conference preparatory committee and to the 1998 United Nations diplomatic conference in Rome at which the court was established. Her seminal article on the Court, The New International Criminal Court: An Uneasy Revolution, was published in the March 2000 issue of the Georgetown Law Journal. Her recent book on the international criminal court, The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law: Justice for the New Millennium, was supported by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace.  Her areas of expertise include war crimes, criminal law, criminal justice, European Community law, international law, U.S. constitution, foreign relations, international business planning, international criminal court, international criminal law, European Union law and many other fields.

Susana Villarán

Susana Villarán de la Puente is a Peruvian educator, journalist and politician. She was Concertación Descentralista's presidential candidate for the 2006 national election, being one of three female candidates, along Lourdes Flores and Martha Chávez. She received 0.62% of the vote, coming in 7th place.

She was a member of Lima's Metropolitan Municipality from 1983 to 1985. She became Minister of Women's Promotion and Social Development during Valentín Paniagua's transitory government. In 2002 she assumed the role of Ombudsperson for the Police. She also founded the Party for Social Democracy (Partido por la Democracia Social).

Leo Zwaak

Leo Zwaak is a Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) and University Lecturer, Utrecht University. Professor Zwaak is currently involved in two projects: the Digest of Strasbourg Case-Law Relating to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe and Gross and Systematic Violations of Human Rights in Europe: the Case of Turkey. The Digest project (in cooperation with Council of Europe, Directorate of Human Rights; Professor P. van Dijk, co-editor) is designed to meet the needs of all those who are required to be, or have an interest in becoming, familiar with the case-law of the organs of the European Convention on Human Rights. The present project is an up-date of a six-volume publication on the case-law of the European Commission and Court of Human Rights, covering the period from 1955 to 1996. The Digest is regularly updated. The second project addresses the question of whether the mechanisms under the European Convention on Human Rights will be effective in case of gross and systematic violations of human rights. The case of Turkey shows that the present mechanism lacks effectiveness when dealing with gross violations. Professor Zwaak received his LLM from Utrecht University.