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2008 International Law Review Symposium: Speaker Biographies
*Subject to Change
Keynote Address: The Role of the International Community in the Rebuilding of Iraq
Jamal Benomar, Director, Rule of Law Program, United Nations
Jamal Benomar went to Iraq as principal political advisor to U.N. Special Representative to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello. Benomar was in New York on August 19, 2003, when de Mello and at least 21 others were killed in a bombing attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. He remained involved in U.N. activities in Iraq until late 2004.
Benomar is currently a diplomat with the U.N. involved in peace-building and post-conflict issues. He has served as Director of the Carter Center of Emory University and has a Ph.D. from the University of London and graduate degrees from the University of Rabat and the University of Paris
Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S.
Mr. Samir Shakir Mahmood Sumaida'ie was appointed Iraq’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in July 2004. In April 2006, he moved to Washington DC as Iraq’s first ambassador to the United States of America for sixteen years. Prior to his appointment to the U.N., Ambassador Sumaida'ie served as the Minister of Interior in Baghdad. In this capacity he managed a domestic security force of over 120,000 and made considerable progress in reorganizing and modernizing the Ministry’s operations. In addition, Ambassador Sumaida'ie served as a member of Governing Council (GC) in Iraq. In the GC, he was Chairman of the Media Committee. He played an integral role in the founding of the Iraqi Telecoms and Media Commission and the Public Broadcasting Institution. He also held positions on the Security, Finance, and Foreign Relations Committees.
Prior to the removal of the Baathist regime, Ambassador Sumaida'ie was actively involved in opposition efforts in the United Kingdom and attended a number of high-level conferences throughout the world. As founding member of the Association of Iraqi Democrats and the Democratic Party of Iraq, he is widely renowned as an expert on the political climate in Iraq.
A successful businessman, Ambassador Sumaida'ie founded a procurement agency in 1978 and embarked on a number of entrepreneurial ventures in his career. In the 1980's Ambassador Sumaida'ie established a design office in London, pioneered the use of computers in Islamic art and completed important works in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Most recently he served as Co-Founder and Managing Director of China Business International, an investment consultancy and procurement company based in Beijing.
Ambassador Sumaida'ie was born in Baghdad and resided there until 1960. He graduated from Durham University in the United Kingdom with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1965. He then returned to Iraq to work with the Baghdad Electricity Board and Iraqi Petroleum Company before leaving the country in 1973.
Ambassador Sumaida'ie enjoys a wide range of cultural interests, including writing Arabic poetry in classical form, Calligraphy and and designs in the Islamic decorative medium.
Ambassador Heraldo Munoz , Chilean Ambassador to the U.S.
Born in Santiago, Chile, on July 22, 1948, he is married to Pamela Quick and has one daughter.
He holds a Ph.D. in International Studies from the University of Denver, Colorado (1978), a Diploma in International Relations from the Catholic University of Chile (1975, graduated with honors), and also took courses at Harvard University. He received a B.A. with a major in Political Science at the State University of New York, Oswego. Recipient of the "Distinguished Alumnus Award" from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver (1991), he was bestowed with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the State University of New York (1996). He has received fellowships from: Resources for the Future, the Ford Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, the Twentieth Century Fund, and the MacArthur Foundation. He was a Ph.D. fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. (1977).
He was president of The Economist Conferences, Chile (1998-1999), and president of Latinanalyst Consultores. He is a professor at the Institute of International Studies of the University of Chile. He founded and was Director of the foreign policy institute, "Programa de Seguimiento de las Políticas Exteriores Latinoamericanas" (PROSPEL), Santiago, Chile, 1983-1990. He has been a visiting professor or lecturer at several universities and diplomatic academies in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
He has published more than 20 books and dozens of essays in academic journals such as Foreign Policy, The Journal of Democracy, The Journal of Interamerican and World Affairs, and Latin American Research Review. Among his books in English : Latin American Nations in World Politics, 2nd Edition (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1998), co-edited with J. Tulchin. In Spanish, his most recent book is Globalización XXI (Santiago: Aguilar, 2000). He has written numerous op-ed pieces in newspapers, such as El Mercurio, Folha de Sao Paulo, The Los Angeles Times, and The Miami Herald, and Página 12. He has been often interviewed on CNN, NBC, and other TV networks in the United States, Chile, and Brazil, and by written media, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Time.
In 1973, under the Salvador Allende government, he served as National Supervisor of the People's Stores (Almacenes del Pueblo) until the coup d'etat of September 11, 1973. He is a co-founder of the Party for Democracy (PPD) and was a member of the Political Commission and Chairman of the Metropolitan Santiago Region of the PPD (1988 to 1990), elected with the highest majority in the country. He also served as Secretary of International Relations of the Socialist Party of Chile (1983-1985); was the joint representative of the Socialist Party and of the PPD in the Executive Committee of the "NO Campaign" for the plebiscite held in Chile in 1988 that defeated General Pinochet. He also was the Vice Chairman of the International Commission that prepared the foreign policy program of what later became the government of President Patricio Aylwin. In 1989 he was Campaign Chief of Ricardo Lagos' senatorial race. In 1999 he was the International Coordinator of the Presidential Campaign of Ricardo Lagos, and headed the International and Defense Commission that drafted the foreign policy platform of President Lagos.
He was Ambassador of Chile to Brazil (1994-1998) and Ambassador to the Organization of American States (1990-1994).
At the OAS he presided the Environment Commission (1991-1992) and the Permanent Council (1993). He was the chief negotiator of the "Santiago Commitment to Democracy," an instrument that, beginning in 1991, allowed the OAS member states to act multilaterally to defend democratic governments in the Americas. He also headed the OAS de-bureaucratization process that came to a close with the fusion of two specialized councils: and was responsible for introducing the struggle against corruption issue in the OAS agenda.
In Brazil he participated actively in the negotiations between Ecuador and Peru that led to a peace agreement between the two countries, and dedicated special efforts to expanding economic ties between Brazil and Chile.
He was Deputy Foreign Minister of the government of President Ricardo Lagos between March 2000 and January 2002. While at the Foreign Ministry he was chief negotiator of the trade agreement between Chile and the European Union (EU); he also negotiated the agreement that put an end to Chile's dispute with the EU over swordfish, and was one of the six "negotiators-facilitators" of the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO), presiding the group, "Trade and Environment," in the successful launching of the Doha Round which brought together Ministers Representatives from over 150 countries.
He was Minister Secretary General of Government between January 2002 and March 2003 in the cabinet of President Ricardo Lagos. In that post, he led the campaign that ended in the successful approval by Congress of the film rating law that eliminated censorship in Chile; headed the process for Congressional approval of the bill on professional sports corporations and promoted campaigns against violence in stadiums. As official government spokesman, he contributed to organizing the public message regarding government priorities.
In May 2003, President Lagos named him Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations..
Source: The United Nations Biography, available at http://www.un.int/chile/Biogr/biomunozengl.htm (last visited Dec. 10, 2007).
Zainab Salbi, CEO, Women for Women International
Ms. Salbi is the Founder and President of Women for Women International and author of Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam and The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Survival and Hope.
Zainab Salbi and Amjad Atallah founded Women for Women International in 1993. Since then the organization has reached 93,000 women affecting 5.3 million family and community members. Zainab and her work have been featured seven times on The Oprah Winfrey Show and in many other national and international media outlets. TIME Magazine named Zainab “Innovator of the Month” in 2005 for her pioneering work as a philanthropist. And in 2007 Zainab was named as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum.
A survivor of war herself, Zainab details her life growing up in Iraq in the LA Times best-selling memoir, Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam. And her new book, The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Survival and Hope chronicles the stories of women who overcome the horrors of war and rebuild their families and countries.
Women for Women International was the 2006 recipient of the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the first women’s organization to receive this honor. The $1.5 million prize is the largest humanitarian award in the world.
Zainab earned a Master Degree in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2001 and a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies from George Mason University in 1996.
Tom Farer, Dean University of Denver Graduate School of International Service
Tom Farer is Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies of the University of Denver and is former President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States and of the University of New Mexico. He is Honorary Professor of Peking University and permanent Guest Professor of the People's University and Director of the Center for China-United States Cooperation. Within the U.S. Government, he has twice served as a special assistant, first to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense and then to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. He has taught law at Columbia University, Rutgers, Tulane and Harvard and international relations at Cambridge University, Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. He also served as senior fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He has published 11 books and monographs and over 100 articles and book chapters, primarily concerning issues of international and comparative law, foreign policy, human rights and international institutions. His most recent book, Transnational Crime in the Americas, was published by Routledge in 1999. His articles have appeared in such journals as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York and London Review of Books, International Organization, World Politics and the Harvard and Columbia law reviews. Shorter pieces have appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune and Washington Post. He has lectured widely at universities in the United States, Europe, Africa, Japan and China.
Dean Farer has studied processes of economic and political development outside Europe and North American and has also been a participant. He has taught criminal law and procedure and unarmed self-defense to an African police force and assisted in Uganda's constitutional revision process in 1994-1995. He has also studied the operations of international organizations and in 1993 served as legal consultant to the United Nations Operations in Somalia. In that capacity, he investigated the attacks on U.N. forces and submitted a report to the Security Council. In 1980, he participated in the successful resolution of the hostage crisis arising from the occupation of the Dominican embassy in Bogota, Colombia by members of the M-19 guerilla organization.
Introductions
Mondi Basmenji, Editor-in-Chief, AU, International Law Review
Paul R. Williams, Executive Director, PILPG
Please see biography below.
Dean Claudio Grossman, Dean, Washington College of Law
Claudio Grossman is Professor of Law and Dean of American University Washington College of Law (WCL) and the Raymond Geraldson Scholar for International and Humanitarian Law. Since his appointment as dean in 1995, WCL has further developed its intellectual creativity, pursuing numerous and exciting initiatives. For example, more than 25 full-time faculty members have been hired, dramatically improving the law school's student-faculty ratio and expanding and enhancing scholarship, teaching and service. New WCL programs have been developed during Dean Grossman's tenure including: dual JD Programs with institutions in Canada, France and Spain, the LL.M. in Law and Government Program, the Supervised Externship Program, the S.J.D. Program, new LL.M. specializations in Gender and the Law and in NAFTA, Free Trade Agreements, and Regional Integration, summer and semester abroad programs, the International Arbitration Program, a new Intellectual Property Program, as well as new clinics in IP, Disability Rights Law, and an evening section of the Civil Practice Clinic, and integrated sections in the first year so as to promote interconnectedness among the different law courses.
Dean Grossman is a member and the Vice Chairman of the United Nations Committee against Torture (elected in 2003), and a member of the Commission for the Control of Interpol's Files (elected in February 2005). In addition, he currently serves as President of the College of the Americas (COLAM), an organization of colleges and universities in the Western Hemisphere, and as the Chair of the Committee on International Cooperation of the Association of American Law Schools.
Dean Grossman was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) from 1994-2001. He was twice elected its President, first in 1996 and again in 2001. He also served twice as the IACHR's First Vice President (2000-2001, 1995-1996) and Second Vice President (1999-2000). He was the IACHR's Special Rapporteur on Women's Rights (1996-2000), Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Populations (2000-2001), and Observer of the AMIA Trial (2001-2005). Representing the IACHR, Dean Grossman participated in missions to Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru, among others. On behalf of international and non-governmental organizations, he has also chaired or participated in missions to observe elections in Nepal, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Romania, Surinam, and the Middle East.
Dean Grossman is the author of numerous publications regarding international law and human rights (see http://www.wcl.american.edu/dean/cv.cfm). He has also received numerous awards for his work with human rights and international law, including the René Cassin Award from B'nai B'rith International in Chile and the Harry LeRoy Jones Award from the Washington Foreign Law Society. In October 2000, Dean Grossman was named Outstanding Dean of the Year by the National Association of Public Interest Law (now known as Equal Justice Works). In addition, the Inter American Press Association named Dean Grossman as the recipient of the Chapultepec Grand Prize 2002 for his achievements in the field of human rights and his work and commitment to promoting and protecting the freedom of expression and of the press for all people.
Dean Grossman is a member of numerous associations, including the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights, for which he is a member of the Board of Directors.
Opening Remarks
Rick Barton, Co-director, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project and Senior Adviser, International Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Frederick (Rick) Barton is a senior adviser in the CSIS International Security Program and codirector of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project. A member of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power and a supporting expert to the Iraq Study Group and the Task Force on the United Nations, Barton is a regular writer, commentator, and contributor to global public discussions. For the past five years, he was also a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where he was the Frederick H. Schultz Professor of Economic Policy and lecturer on public and international affairs. His work is informed by 12 years of experience in nearly 30 global hot spots, including serving as UN deputy high commissioner for refugees in Geneva (1999–2001) and as the first director of the Office of Transition Initiatives at the U.S. Agency for International Development (1994–1999). A graduate of Harvard College (1971), Barton earned his M.B.A. from Boston University (1982), with an emphasis on public management, and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Wheaton College of Massachusetts (2001).
Panel I: The Partition Potential
Carole O'Leary, American University School of International Service
Professor Carole A. O’Leary is currently leading a team of AU human rights experts to work with Iraqi stakeholders to establish an independent Iraqi Human Rights Commission, under a grant from the US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. She is also the co-director of a project to build organizational and management capacity for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq.
In July 2005, Professor O'Leary organized a team of American University experts at the request of Sheikh Humam Hamoudi, Chairman of Iraq’s Constitutional Drafting Committee, to advise him on the legislative drafting process, specifically on issues pertaining to women’s rights, minority rights and federalism. The team based itself in Baghdad and Erbil. She also directed the USAID funded Revitalization of Iraqi Schools and Stabilization of Education (RISE) Project at the American University Center for Global Peace (AUCGP) in 2003-2004, leading the team of American University technical experts working in Iraq in that period.
Professor O’Leary is the Scholar-in-Residence for the Middle East Initiative and Program Director at the AUCGP. She established an Iraq Project at the AUCGP in 2001 to examine the premise that federalism is the best organizing framework for good governance in a future Iraq.
Professor O’Leary is a member of the Iraq Working Group at the United States Institute of Peace and a former outside expert for the US Department of State Future of Iraq Project (2003). She joined the School of International Service as a research professor in 1995, cross-appointed to the Divisions of International Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) and Comparative and Regional Studies (CRS).
Professor O'Leary has traveled widely throughout the Middle East and conducted research on the politics of identity, including gender, and educational development in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, the GGC states, Iran and Lebanon. She conducted research in the former Kurdish safe haven of northern Iraq in the summers of 2000, 2001 and 2002 focused on communal dynamics among Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrian-Chaldeans, as well as democratization, civil society and education transformation in the region. She also worked with the KRG Ministries of Education, Higher Education and Human Rights to develop civic and human rights education capacity.
In 1994, she received a two year grant from the United States Institute of Peace to train American social studies teachers and develop curricula on the role of ethnic identity in international conflict situations. In 1997-1998, she led a study tour to Oman for American experts in the field of curriculum development for social studies.
Professor O'Leary is the editor of "Islam: An Introduction," published by the American Institute for Islamic Affairs (AIIA) in 1985 and the editor of AIIA's Occasional Paper Series on Islam and the Muslim World, published between 1985-87. With Karna Eklund, she is the author of “Pluralism vs. Modern Iraqi Nationalism: Root Causes of State-Sponsored Violence against Iraq’s Kurdish Community and the Search for Post-Conflict Justice,” published in the Michigan State Journal of International Law (Volume 13, No. 1/2, Spring 2005). She is also the author of “The Kurds of Iraq: Recent History, Future Prospects,” published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal in December 2002; and “Are the Kurds a Source of Instability in the Middle East?,” in The Kurdish Question and the 2003 Iraqi War, edited by Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and Michael M. Gunter, Mazda Press, 2004.
With Charles MacDonald, she is the co-editor of Kurdish Identity: Human Rights and Political Status (University Press of Florida, October 2007). She is also the author of “Whither the Kurdistan Project Since 2003,” in After the Dictator: The Rebirth of Iraq, edited by Barry Rubin (M.E. Sharpe, forthcoming 2007).
Daniel P. Serwer, Executive Director, Iraq Study Group, and Vice President, Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations Centers of Innovation USIP
Daniel P. Serwer is vice president of the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations and the Centers of Innovation. He coordinates the Institute's efforts in societies emerging from conflict, especially Afghanistan, the Balkans, Haiti, Iraq, and Sudan. He also leads the Institute’s innovative programs in rule of law, religion and peacemaking, economics of peace and conflict, media and conflict, and diaspora contributions to peace and conflict.
Serwer has worked on preventing interethnic and interreligious conflict in Iraq, and he has been deeply engaged in facilitating dialogue between Serbs and Albanians. He came to the Institute as a senior fellow working on Balkan regional security in 1998–1999. Before that he was a minister-counselor at the Department of State, where he won six performance awards. As State Department director of European and Canadian analysis in 1996–1997, he supervised the analysts who tracked Bosnia and Dayton implementation as well as the deterioration of the security situation in Albania and Kosovo.
Serwer served from 1994 to 1996 as U.S. special envoy and coordinator for the Bosnian Federation, mediating between Croats and Muslims and negotiating the first agreement reached at the Dayton peace talks. From 1990 to 1993, he was deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, where he led a major diplomatic mission through the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War.
Tony Blinken, Chief Foreign Policy Advisor, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE)
Antony J. Blinken was appointed Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April, 2002. Mr. Blinken served on the National Security Council staff at the White House from 1994 to 2001. From 1999 to 2001, he was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs. From 1994 through 1998, Mr. Blinken was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Strategic Planning and Speechwriting. From 1993 to 1994, Mr. Blinken served at the State Department. Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, Mr. Blinken was a lawyer. After leaving the Clinton Administration, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2001 - 2002). He has been a reporter for The New Republic magazine and has written about foreign policy for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Affairs and other publications. He is the author of Ally Versus Ally: America, Europe and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis (Praeger, 1987). Mr. Blinken attended high school in Paris, where he received a French Baccalaureat degree, and is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School.
Laith Kubba, Senior Director for the Middle East and North Africa National Endowment for Democracy
Laith Kubba is the Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Endowment of Democracy. Throughout 2005, he was a senior advisor to the Iraqi P.M Jaffari and a spokesman for the Iraqi government. For the period 1993 until 1998, he was the Director of International Relations at the Al Khoei Foundation in London. Kubba had extensive involvement in Iraqi politics. In 1992, he coordinated the INC meeting in Vienna, was its spokesman and served at its first executive committee. He also served on the boards of regional institutions including the Iraq Foundation and the Arab Organization for Human Rights. He has a Bachelors degree from the University of Baghdad 1976 and a Ph.D. from the University of Wales in the United Kingdom.
Source: "Is There a Political Solution in Iraq, with Dr. Laith Kubba, National Endowment for Democracy," Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, available at http://www.ypfp.org/node/625 (last visited Dec. 4, 2007).
Paul R. Williams, Executive Director, PILPG
Paul R. Williams holds the Rebecca Grazier Professorship in Law and International Relations at the American University, where he teaches in the School of International Service and the Washington College of Law. Professor Williams also directs the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), which provides pro bono legal assistance to developing states and states in transition.
Professor Williams, along with the PILPG, was nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize by over half a dozen of his pro bono government clients. In the summer of 2005, Professor Williams and a team of PILPG experts were invited to Baghdad to help re-draft the Iraqi Constitution.
Previously, Professor Williams served in the Department of State's Office of the Legal Advisor for European and Canadian Affairs, as a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and as a Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Cambridge.
During the course of his legal practice, Professor Williams has assisted over a dozen states and sub-state entities in major international peace negotiations and in drafting post-conflict constitutions. He has also advised 15 governments across Europe, Africa and Asia on matters of public international law.
Professor Williams has authored four books on topics of international human rights, international environmental law and international norms of justice, and over fifteen articles on a wide variety of public international law topics. He regularly publishes op-eds in major newspapers and is frequently interviewed by major print and broadcast media.
Professor Williams earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, his J.D. from Stanford Law School, and his B.A. from the University of California at Davis.
Private Screening: Meeting Resistance
Steve Connors , Director, Meeting Resistance
Steve Connors was born in Sheffield, England. He began taking photographs while serving as a British soldier in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. After leaving the military in 1984 he worked for London newspapers and housing charities, but maintained a preference for photographing the quirkiness of British life.
At the end of 1989 Connors started traveling - first to Czechoslovakia as the communist government fell and then into Sri Lanka in 1990. Connors spent the early1990s covering the wars following the break-up of Yugoslavia and later spending time in Russia and the former Soviet Union as the euphoria of a new age gave way to the miserable realities of economic meltdown. Connors has worked for most of the worlds' newspapers and magazines including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times in the United States; The Guardian, The Observer and The Telegraph in London and in Europe he has worked for Der Spiegel, Stern and Paris Match among others.
Connors spent fifteen months from November 2001 on in Afghanistan. Starting during the invasion, he went to Iraq, and spent fourteen months there total, working ten months solidly on Meeting Resistance.
MEETING RESISTANCE is Connors' directorial debut.
Molly Bingham , Director, Meeting Resistance
Molly Bingham was born in Kentucky and graduated from Harvard College in 1990. She began working as a photojournalist in earnest in 1994, traveling to Rwanda in the wake of the genocide. She spent a good amount of her energies for the following four years focused on the regional fallout of that event. Aside from her photojournalistic work, Bingham has also completed two special projects for Human Rights Watch - one on Burundi and another on small arms trafficking in Central Africa. From 1998 through 2001 Bingham worked as Official Photographer to the Office of the Vice President of the United States.
In 2001 Bingham returned to work in Central Africa, producing a story for the New York Times Sunday Magazine (published in August 2001) on the mineral "coltan" that is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Washington on September 11 Bingham got some of the only close up pictures of the Pentagon, and followed the story of America's response to the 9/11 attacks to Afghanistan later in the fall. 2002 found Bingham in the Gaza Strip and Iran before heading to Iraq shortly before the US attack in March 2003. Bingham was detained for eight days by the Iraqi government security services and held in Abu Ghraib prison with four other westerners during the war, and released to Jordan in early April 2003. Bingham's first major written story - on the Iraqi resistance - was published in Vanity Fair in July 2004.
Bingham teamed up with Connors in August of 2003 to begin a film about who was behind the emerging post-war violence in Iraq.
Panel II: Transitional Justice - War Crimes
Mike Newton, Vanderbilt University School of Law
Michael Newton is Associate Clinical Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University Law School. Prior to joining the Vanderbilt Law faculty this year, he served as an Associate Professor in the Department of Law, United States Military Academy. His principal responsibilities at Vanderbilt will involve teaching practice-based courses relating to international law and developing externships and other educational opportunities for students interested in international legal issues.
Professor Newton has developed a broad network of contacts with federal government agencies, intergovernmental organizations, international tribunals, and non-governmental organizations based on his many years of work on behalf of the United States government relating to international law in general and international criminal law in particular.
In his previous capacity as senior advisor to the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, he implemented a wide range of policies relating to the law of armed conflict and international criminal law. He has served as an advisor to Iraqi jurists on international legal issues and was active in the effort to establish the Iraq Special Tribunal. He was the U.S. representative on the U.N. Planning Mission for the Sierra Leone Special Court and was a member of the academic consortium supporting the work of the Special Court. From January 1999-August 2000, he served as the Special Advisor in the Office of War Crimes Issues, where he negotiated the Elements of Crimes document for the International Criminal Court. He also coordinated information-sharing between the FBI and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and worked in Kosovo on forensics fieldwork in support of the indictment of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Professor Newton began his distinguished military career after graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served as an armor officer in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor, Fort Carson, Colorado until his selection for the Judge Advocate General's Funded Legal Education Program. Professor Newton received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in May 1990, and an L.L.M. in International Law from the University of Virginia in 2001. He is a member of the Virginia Bar and has published numerous scholarly articles.
In his capacity as an operational military attorney, Professor Newton served with the United States Army Special Forces Command (Airborne), Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in support of units participating in Desert Storm. Following duty as the Chief of Operational Law, he served as the Group Judge Advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) and then six months as an Administrative Law Attorney. Professor Newton deployed on Operation Provide Comfort in Northern Iraq, as well as a number of other exercises and operations. From 1993-1995 he was reassigned as the Brigade Judge Advocate for the 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), during which time he organized and led the human rights and rules of engagement education for all Multinational Forces and International Police deploying into Haiti.
Michael Scharf , Managing Director, PILPG, author of Saddam on Trial
Michael Scharf is Professor of Law and Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. From October 2004-March 2005, Professor Scharf served as a member of the elite international team of experts that provided training to the judges and prosecutors of the Iraqi Special Tribunal. In February 2005, Professor Scharf and the Public International Law and Policy Group, a a global pro bono law firm he co-founded, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by six governments and the Prosecutor of an International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavian for the work they have done to help in the prosecution of major war criminals, such as Slobodan Milosevic, Charles Taylor, and Saddam Hussein.
During the first Bush and Clinton Administrations, Professor Scharf served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where he held the positions of Counsel to the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, Attorney-Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney-Adviser for United Nations Affairs, and delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In 1993, he was awarded the State Department's Meritorious Honor Award "in recognition of superb performance and exemplary leadership" in relation to his role in the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
A graduate of Duke University School of Law, Professor Scharf is the author of over 50 scholarly articles and seven books, including Balkan Justice, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which was awarded the American Society of International Law's Certificate of Merit for the Outstanding Book in International Law in 1999, Peace with Justice, which won the International Association of Penal Law Book of the Year Award for 2003, and casebooks on The Law of International Organizations and International Criminal Law.
Professor Scharf has testified as an expert before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee; his op-eds have been published by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and International Herald Tribune; and he has appeared on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline with Ted Koppel, The O'Reilly Factor, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Charlie Rose Show, the BBC's The World, CNN, and National Public Radio.
In 2002, Professor Scharf established the War Crimes Research Office at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, which provides research assistance to the prosecutors of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the International Criminal Court, and the Iraqi Special Tribunal, on issues pending before those international tribunals. Copies of over 70 of these research memos are available on the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center War Crimes Research Portal at: http://law.case.edu/war-crimes-research-portal.
Professor Scharf was recently profiled in a Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine cover story.
David Crane, Syracuse University, Chief Prosecutor for the Special Court of Sierra Leone
David M. Crane joined the faculty of the College of Law at Syracuse University in August of 2005 as a distinguished visiting professor of law. In 2006 he was appointed a distinguished professor of practice. He teaches international criminal law, international law, national security law, and other related courses. He is also a member of the faculty in the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at the Maxwell School of Public Citizenship. Prior to this, Professor Crane was appointed the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, an international war crimes tribunal, by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, on 19 April 2002. With the rank of Undersecretary General, Mr. Crane’s mandate was to prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international human rights committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone during the 1990’s. Professor Crane is the first American since Justice Robert Jackson and Telford Taylor at Nuremberg, in 1945, to be the Chief Prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal. The Office of the Prosecutor is located with the Special Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He is the founder of Impunity Watch, www.impunitywatch.net .
Prior to his appointment as the Chief Prosecutor, Professor Crane served over 30 years in the federal government of the United States. Appointed to the Senior Executive Service of the United States in 1997, Professor Crane held numerous key managerial positions during his three decades of public service, to include as a Senior Inspector General (Intelligence Policy/Review), Department of Defense, Assistant General Counsel of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Waldemar A. Solf Professor of International and National Security Law at the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s School.
Mr. Crane holds a Doctor of Law degree from Syracuse University, a Masters of Arts Degree in International Affairs, and a Bachelor of General Studies in History, summa cum laude, from Ohio University. In 2006 Professor Crane received the George Arendts Pioneer Medal from Syracuse University for distinction in international law. He has also received the Medal of Merit for distinguished public service in international law from Ohio University and the Distinguished Service Award from the College Law, Syracuse University in 2005. While in Sierra Leone he was made an Honorary Paramount Chief. Other awards include the Intelligence Community Gold Seal Medallion, the Department of Defense/DoDIG Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit.
Mr. Crane is married to the former Judith A. Ponder of Columbus, Georgia and they reside in the Washington D.C. area. They have two children, Katherine and David, who live in North Carolina.
Judge Ra'id Juhi al-Saedi, former Chief Investigative Judge and Spokesman for the Iraq High Tribunal
Presently, the Honorable Raid Juhi Al Saedi, (“Judge Raid”), the Clark Middle East Fellow at Cornell University School of Law in Ithaca, New York. He was formerly the Chief Investigative Judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court which investigated and tried Saddam Hussein and other former regime leaders of Iraq for Genocide War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.
Judge Raid graduated from the University of Baghdad, College of Law in July of 1993 with the degree of Bachelor of Law. He has had further legal education from the Judicial Training Institute of Iraq in criminal investigation (Valedictorian 1996); the Judicial Institute of Iraq, Judicial Sciences (2000-2002); The United States Institute of Peace (2004); the International Human Rights Law Institute (2005); as well as other judicial training in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Jordan and Iraq.
Judge Raid worked as an attorney at law in Baghdad, Iraq from his graduation in 1993 until 1995. His practice included criminal law, commercial law, family law, civil law, and disputes before various Iraqi courts. In 1995, Judge Raid became a Judicial Investigator in the Iraqi Ministry of Justice. In 1997, he was promoted to Senior Judicial Investigator supervising other Investigators in major crimes. In 2002, he was appointed by the Iraqi Minister of Justice as Investigative Judge in Al-Manathra, Iraq. In 2003, Judge Raid was appointed by the Supreme Court of Najaf, Iraq as an Investigative Judge in the Al Najaf Criminal Court of First Instance. In this later posting he conducted investigative hearing on many major and notorious crimes. From September 2003 to August 2004, after appointment by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the Chief Justice and the Iraqi Judicial Council, Judge Raid served as an Investigative Judge for the newly formed Central Criminal Court of Iraq.
In August, 2004, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi appointed Judge Raid as an Investigative Judge for the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT.) He was then popularly elected by his fellow judges as Chief Investigative Judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal. He also served as the Official Spokesman for the Iraqi High Tribunal. In his role as Chief Investigative Judge for the IHT, Judge Raid investigated and referred for trial the Al-Dujayl case, the first case against Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants for crimes against humanity. Thereafter, he investigated the Anfal Case, the second case against Saddam Hussein and six co-defendants for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against the Kurdish people of Iraq. His duties in these cases took him to many locations around Iraq. Judge Raid also led the effort to draft the IHT’s Rules of Evidence and Procedure which were enacted into law by the Iraqi National Assembly.
In 2007, Cornell University School of Law, Clark Center for International and Comparative Legal Study honored Judge Raid with the distinction of naming him as the first Clark Middle East Fellow. The Judge lives with his family in Ithaca, New York.
Panel III: Islamic Law and the Iraqi Constitution
Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and author of Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics
Ann Elizabeth Mayer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar. She has taught as a visitor at Yale University Law School, Georgetown University, and Princeton University. She has a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History from the University of Michigan; a Certificate in Islamic and Comparative Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London; and a J.D. from the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her extensive publications cover topics including the role of Islamic law in contemporary legal systems in the Middle East and North Africa, constitutionalism in these regions, and women’s international human rights. The fourth edition of her book Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics was published in 2007.
Neil Kritz, Associate Vice President, Rule of Law Program USIP
Neil J. Kritz directs USIP’s Rule of Law program, one of the Centers of Innovation, which focuses on advancing peace through the development of democratic legal and governmental systems. Kritz conducts ongoing research, writing, and consultation on the question of how societies deal with a legacy of past abuses. He has provided advice and organized conferences on questions of war crimes and mass abuses in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and South Africa.
In 1990–91, at the request of the Russian Constitutional Commission, Kritz coordinated two expert reviews of the draft Russian constitution. He directs Institute working groups on humanitarian law, constitution-making, and the administration of justice during peacekeeping operations. Since 1999, he has chaired a Palestinian–Israeli legal dialogue. At the request of the U.S. Department of Defense, Kritz prepared a curriculum on international law and the promotion of democracy for use in training U.S. and foreign military officials. He has studied and written on the advancement of the rule of law through regional organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Before coming to the Institute, Kritz served as special assistant to the chairman at the Administrative Conference of the United States. He holds a J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law.
Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow and Director of the Women and U.S. Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations
Dr. Isobel Coleman is senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and director of the Council’s Women and Foreign Policy program. Her areas of expertise include economic and political development in the Middle East, regional gender issues, educational reform, and microfinance. She recently coauthored Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (Hoover Institution Press, 2006). Her forthcoming book, Paradise Beneath Her Feet: Women and Reform in the Middle East (Random House, 2008), examines how women are bringing about reform in the Middle East within an Islamic framework.
Dr. Coleman’s work has appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Star, Dallas Morning News, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. She is a frequent speaker at academic, business, and policy conferences. Her media experience includes interviews on CNN, CNN International, ABC, Good Morning America, BBC, PBS’s Frontline, al-Arabiya, Al Jazeera and NPR. She has testified before Congress on Iraq and Afghanistan.
Prior to joining the Council, Dr. Coleman was CEO of a health-care services company and a partner with McKinsey & Co. in New York. She was formerly a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor at American University, where she taught political economy. Dr. Coleman, a Marshall Scholar, holds a DPhil and MPhil in international relations from Oxford University and a BA in public policy and East Asian studies from Princeton University.
Presentation: The Euphrates-Tigris as Strategic Water For Iraq: Short and Long Term Prospects
Rick Lorenz, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle
Frederick (Rick) Lorenz currently lectures at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, and is adjunct professor of law at Seattle University School of Law. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps for twenty-seven years as a judge advocate, including a tour as an infantry company commander. He practiced environmental/land use law from 1982-1991. In 1992, he joined the First Marine Expeditionary Force and was the senior legal advisor for the United Nations’ authorized military intervention in Somalia, and returned there as senior legal advisor for the U.N. evacuation in 1995. In 1996, he served in Bosnia as a legal advisor for the NATO implementation force and went on to teach Political Science at the National Defense University. After his retirement from the Marine Corps as a colonel in 1998, he spent a year as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in St Petersburg, Russia, teaching courses in international law and U.S. foreign policy. In 2000, he served as a United Nations legal affairs officer in Kosovo, working in the U.N. Civil Administration.
In his current role at the Jackson School of International Studies, and at Seattle University School of Law, Lorenz teaches International Humanitarian Law, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Water and Security in the Middle East. He maintains a continuing relationship with students and faculty at law schools in St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, conducting distance learning programs and traveling to Russia on behalf of the U.S. State Department. He resides with his wife Joan in Tacoma, Washington.
Mr. Lorenz received an LL.M in Land Use Management and Control with highest honors from George Washington University, a J.D. from Marquette University and a B.A. from Marquette University.
Panel IV: Bluebooking In Baghdad: The Role of Foreign Lawyers in Iraq
Abderrahim Sabir, Former UN Human Rights Officer in Iraq
Abderrahim Sabir is the Project Leader of the new Civilian Protection Initiative at Human Rights Watch. He recently returned from serving as a Human Rights Officer in the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq(UNAMI). While in Iraq, he led research on the human rights status of Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan and was also the point person for Kirkuk. He is also an editorial writer for the London-based Al Hayat newspaper.
Prior to his work in Iraq, Mr. Sabir was the Regional Director for Human Rights Education Associates (HREA). He directed a project training over 150 family court judges from throughout Morocco on new reforms in the Moroccan Family Code. He conducted a groundbreaking study of gender and minority representation in 50 elementary and junior high school text books resulting in 200-page study adopted by the Ministry of National Education. The study was published in May 2006 in Morocco.
In 2004, he was one of the first human rights monitors on the ground in Darfur for the United Nations. He led the first team of Human Rights Observers in Darfur, conducting field research into human rights violations in the Greater Darfur region, drafting human rights reports to the High Commissioner's office. He conducted trainings for over 100 human rights activists and lawyers in Darfur on human rights instruments and techniques of monitoring, documentation and reporting leading to the first documented report of systematic rape in Darfurdrafted by local human rights NGOs. Mr. Sabir served as a Liaison officer, maintaining a dialogue with the Government of Sudan, the OHCHR and the various UN agencies and NGOs.
Abderrahim Sabir has worked with various international human rights NGOs, including the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, Freedom House, the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), and is on the Board of the Arab Commission for Human Rights; Just Vision; and is a founding member of Justicia Universalis, a North African human rights NGO based in the Hague.
Darin Johnson, US Department of State, Office of the Legal Advisor
Darin E.W. Johnson is an attorney-adviser in the Department of State, Office of the Legal Adviser. He is currently assigned to the Legal Adviser’s Office of United Nations Affairs. During 2007, he served as the Embassy Legal Adviser at the US Embassy in Baghdad. In this position, he advised the US Ambassador to Baghdad and other senior State Department officials on a wide range of legal and foreign policy issues. In carrying out his responsibilities, he worked closely with members of the Iraqi government, the United Nations, foreign missions, and the US military.
From 2004 through 2006, Darin was assigned to the Legal Adviser’s Office of Political Military Affairs group (L/PM), where he specialized in the area of defense trade.
Prior to his work with the State Department, Mr. Johnson spent four years as an attorney in the Department of the Army, Office of the General Counsel Honors Program at the Pentagon. In this position, he provided counsel to the Army Secretariat on civil works, administrative, and international law matters. For his service, he was awarded the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Meritorious Service Award, and the Army Chief of Staff Badge. He has previously served as an adjunct lecturer at the American University, Washington College of Law, Legal Writing and Rhetoric Program.
Darin Johnson graduated from Yale College in 1997 with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 2000.
Eric Blinderman, Proskauer Rose LLP
Eric Blinderman is international litigation counsel for Proskauer Rose LLP. In that capacity Eric handles a variety of matters including, but not limited to, Foreign Corrupt Practice Act matters and extradition disputes. He handles matters before the International Criminal Court and other ad-hoc tribunals, complex international commercial arbitrations subject to a variety of arbitral rules, and represents sovereign states before the International Court of Justice and other international bodies.
Blinderman served from March 2004-December 2006 in Iraq, first as associate general counsel of the Coalition Provisional Authority and later as Chief Legal Counsel and Associate Deputy to the Regime Crimes Liaison’s Office.
During his time in Iraq, Blinderman advised senior members of the United States, coalition, and Iraqi governments on matters of public international law, commercial law reform, and international criminal law. He worked principally with the Iraqi High Tribunal as it tried members of the former regime (including Saddam Hussein) for atrocities committed against the Iraqi people. In May 2007, the Department of Justice presented Blinderman a Special Commendation Award for his service in Iraq.
Blinderman has authored multiple articles on international law. He is frequently called upon to lecture about his experiences at law schools and to comment on international affairs in various media outlets including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Newsweek, New York Law Journal, the ABA Journal, PBS, C-SPAN, CNN, and Fox News.
In addition, he served as law clerk to a U.S. federal judge and worked at the United Nations Development Program, the Preparatory Commission for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, and the Program in Comparative Media Law and Policy. He is also the founder and owner of the critically acclaimed restaurant Mas (farmhouse), located in New York City.
Eric received his J.D., cum laude from Cornell Law School and was awarded a M.St. in international law from the University of Oxford, with distinction.
Vanessa J. Jiménez, Senior Peace Fellow, PILPG
Vanessa J. Jiménez has been working and studying in the field of international law and human rights for the past 15 years. She currently serves as a Senior Peace Fellow with the Public International Law & Policy Group – a non-profit international pro bono law firm that assists states in transition to draft and implement peace agreements and constitutions particularly in post-conflict environments. Over the past two years she has made three trips to Iraq where she has provided advice to Iraqi Parliamentarians and politicians on the drafting and amending of their Constitution as well as legislation to implement its provisions. She currently leads PILPG’s work on Sudan related to the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. In the past, Mrs. Jimenez served as the Project Coordinator for the Washington-based Sudan Peace Support Project and traveled to the Sudan several times to meet with officials within the national government and the newly formed regional government of Southern Sudan.
Ms. Jiménez is also a Senior Attorney with the Legal and Human Rights Programme of the U.K.-based Forest Peoples Programme (FPP). At FPP, she helps to lead their legal work for indigenous peoples in the Americas, and focuses on the use of international complaint mechanisms to address human rights violations and contributes to the organization’s advocacy related to the practices of international financial institutions. She is currently represents indigenous peoples in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru in international cases before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and at the United Nations. She also works steadily in Paraguay. Ms. Jimenez has also been an adjunct professor for American University on international law and human rights, has conducted training in Cameroon and throughout the Americas on international human rights law as well as the rights of indigenous peoples, and through her past and present work with such institutions as Forest Peoples Programme, Human Rights Watch, Indian Law Resource Center, Public International Law & Policy Group, and American University, Ms. Jiménez has obtained valuable knowledge and experience in areas such as: comparative constitutional practices, the drafting and implementing of peace agreements and post-conflict constitutions, indigenous and minority rights, the operations of international organizations, the negotiations of international human rights instruments at the United Nations and the Organization of American States, the self-determination of peoples, constitutionalism, truth and accountability issues, international financial institutions, government transparency and civil society participation.
Her most recent relevant publications include: “Oil can rebuild Sudan, if they first buy into Peace”, Cape Times (South Africa) (11 May 2006); A brief independent guide to the Inter-American Development Bank's New Operational Policy on Indigenous Peoples (OP-765), Forest Peoples Programme (June 2006); Iraq’s Constitutional Process: Challenges and Future Outlook, Human Rights Brief, Washington College of Law, American University (December 2005); and Nigeria: An Experiment in Federalism and the Management of Diversity, co-authored with Ricardo René Larémont, found in Francis M. Deng, Constitutionalism And Self-Determination: An African Dilemma (pending publication in early 2007, U.S. Institute of Peace).
Ms. Jiménez received her undergraduate degree in international affairs from James Madison University in 1991 and graduated summa cum laude from the American University’s Washington College of Law in 1998.
David Tafuri, Patton Boggs LLP
David Tafuri recently returned from Iraq where he spent the past 15 months as the Rule of Law Coordinator with the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau at U.S. Embassy Baghdad. Mr. Tafuri was responsible for recommending and designing programs to rebuild Iraq’s justice system and for overseeing a number of programs to strengthen rule of law in the country. He worked with a number of contractors and grantees to execute rule of law programs and coordinated rule of law staff in the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) throughout Iraq. During his tenure, the rule of law budget was approximately $125 million, making it one of the largest rule of law programs in the world.
Upon returning from Iraq, Mr. Tafuri resumed practicing law with Patton Boggs LLP in Washington. As a practicing attorney, he handles international, litigation and public policy matters. Mr. Tafuri concentrates on finding creative, multi-forum solutions to client problems, and has tried cases in federal and state court and assisted clients with navigating the complexities of litigating overseas. In addition, he advocates on behalf of clients to members of Congress, their staff, and the Administration.
Mr. Tafuri has particular experience representing foreign governments with matters in the United States. He also assists companies in overseas litigation and has represented foreign nationals in political asylum and refugee proceedings. Additionally, Mr. Tafuri advocates for clients on homeland security, technology, health care, appropriations, tort reform, and international relations matters pending before Congress. His present clients include a former Cabinet-level secretary, the government of a Middle Eastern country, a major insurance company, a leading manufacturer of smart card and security technology, a private equity and venture capital fund, and a labor union.
In addition to his recent government experience in Iraq, Mr. Tafuri draws on his experience as an aide to the Senate Judiciary Committee and a staff assistant to several presidential and Congressional campaigns to augment his practice. Previously, Mr. Tafuri worked for the United Nations in Turkey.
Mr. Tafuri graduated with a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in Political Science from Emory University.
Panel V: Lives in the Balance: Towards a Secure Solution for Iraq's Displaced
Adil Awadh, Senior Editor, Radio Sawa
Tim Irwin, Senior Public Information Officer, UNHCR
Tim Irwin has been UNHCR’s Senior Public Information officer in the US since May 2006. In his role as spokesman he regularly provides interviews to major media outlets on a range of global refugee situations. The office’s communications efforts also include an educators’ program, which seeks to get refugee issues in classrooms across the country as well as the production of films and other multi-media on issues such as refugee resettlement in the US. Tim Irwin joined UNHCR in 2004 as a spokesman in the agency’s office in Kabul, Afghanistan. He previously worked as a journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation, based in the United Kingdom, India, Bosnia and Afghanistan.
Michael Youash, Project Director, Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project
Michael Youash is Project Director of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, a Washington, DC based project focusing on the condition of minorities in Iraq's democratic transition. ISDP sees minorities as the best indicator for the long-term sustainability of Iraq’s transition to democracy and a vital element in reinforcing moderation in the face of extremism in Iraq and the Middle East.
ISDP’s work is entering its fourth year, and has been the source of various policy initiatives, including the effort to better understand the use of US Government funds in relation to minority communities. Its work also underpins the initiative targeting the Nineveh Plain with emergency funding for religious minority internally-displaced persons (IDPs) that are amassing in such regions in substantial numbers.
ISDP’s research also meets the demands of various Iraqi minority parliamentarians, other Iraqi minority politicians, and coordinates with an array of Iraqi civil society partners.
Before joining the ISDP, Michael Youash worked for over 4 years in South Africa, developing its parliamentary budget oversight framework and operationalizing South Africa’s constitutional requirement for public participation in the legislative process. He also served the Executive Committee of the African Parliamentarians Network Against Corruption.
Kirk W. Johnson, Founder of The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies
Kirk W. Johnson is an Arabist and writer, focusing on U.S. foreign policy and political Islamism throughout the Middle East. He has worked and researched throughout the region, most recently on the reconstruction of Iraq for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad and in Fallujah.
As founder and director of The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, Johnson has become a leading public advocate for Iraqis who assisted the U.S. Government. In his capacity as director, he has brought together over 100 attorneys from two leading law firms to offer thousands of hours of pro bono representation for Iraqi refugees on his list, and is cultivating a nation-wide grassroots support effort. He has written op-eds on the subject for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and his efforts to help U.S.-affiliated Iraqis were the subject of a New Yorker article. His has discussed his project and the issue in numerous media outlets, including NPR, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, BBC, the Los Angeles Times, ABC’s World News Tonight, Anderson Cooper 360⁰, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and Al-Jazeera’s Riz Khan Show.
Johnson began working for USAID in December 2004 on a contract through the International Resources Group, serving in Baghdad as the Mission’s chief Information Officer for the first half of 2005. In the fall of 2005, Johnson was appointed to USAID’s Senior Staff as the Agency’s first emissary to the city of Fallujah in Anbar Province. As the Regional Coordinator for Reconstruction in Fallujah, he was USAID’s chief liaison on reconstruction issues with local Iraqi government officials, the Second Marine Expeditionary Force, and other international actors in the region. In this capacity, Johnson coordinated a portfolio of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance projects valued at over $20 million.
Prior to his work in Iraq, Johnson analyzed political Islamic “pulp” writings as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt (2002-2003). He holds a B.A. with general and departmental honors in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he wrote his honors thesis on the state of political Islamist currents in Egypt and the broader Middle East. During that time, Johnson received a Foreign Language Acquisition Grant to study the Syrian colloquial dialect of Arabic in Damascus. As a high school student, he started his studies of classical and Egyptian colloquial Arabic at the age of 16 at the College of DuPage, followed by summer studies at the American University in Cairo. He has lived in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and conducted research trips to Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank.
Roberta Cohen, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights
Roberta Cohen is nonresident senior fellow for the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement and principal adviser to the Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons. A human rights specialist, Cohen focuses on the humanitarian and human rights aspects of emergency situations.
Ms. Cohen’s post positions include: Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution (2001-2007); co-director Brookings Project on Internal Displacement (1998-2006); Public Member, U.S. Delegation to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (2003); Public Member, U.S. Delegation to U.N. Commission on Human Rights (1998); Senior Adviser to National Academy of Sciences and Refugee Policy Group; Consultant to UNHCR, World Bank; Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Senior Adviser to Delegation to the U.N., U.S. Department of State; Honorary Secretary, Parliamentary Human Rights Group (London); and Executive Director, International League for Human Rights (New York).
Ms. Cohen holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern, a masters from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College.
