IHL Now 2021 Speakers' Bios

Introductory Session
 
Speaker:
Marco Sassòli, Director, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights
 
Marco Sassòli is professor of international law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva, and director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. From 2001-2003, he has been professor of international law at the Université du Québec à Montreal, Canada, where he remains associate professor. He is Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
 
Marco Sassòli has worked from 1985-1997 for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at the headquarters, inter alia as deputy head of its legal division, and in the field, inter alia as head of the ICRC delegations in Jordan and Syria and as protection coordinator for the former Yugoslavia. He also chaired from 2004-2013 the board of Geneva Call, an NGO engaging non-State armed actors to respect humanitarian rules. From 2018-2020 he has been director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.
 
Marco Sassòli has published widely on international humanitarian law, human rights law, international criminal law, the sources of international law, and the responsibility of states and non-state actors.

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Monday, May 31st, 3:00-4:00 p.m. (EDT)
Careers in international humanitarian law
Moderator:
Chris Harland, Deputy and Legal Adviser, International Committee of the Red Cross
 
Chris Harland is the ICRC's Legal Adviser and Deputy Permanent Observer at the ICRC’s Delegation to the United Nations in New York.  Prior to this position, he held ICRC legal positions in the Regional Delegation for the United States and Canada, based in Washington, D.C. (2014-2018), in Malaysia for Southeast Asia and New Delhi for South Asia. A Canadian lawyer, he worked in the Legal Division of the ICRC at its Headquarters in Geneva from 2004 to 2007. Prior to joining the ICRC, Mr Harland held positions with the United Nations in the Cyprus Referendum (2004), was a member of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Councils of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2002-2004), at the Human Rights and Rule of Law Department of OHR in Bosnia, and worked with the UN from 1996 to 1998. He has also worked in the Office of the Legal Counsel at UN Headquarters as an intern (1995) and clerked with a judge of the Federal Court of Canada (1993-1994).

Speakers:
Samit D’Cunha, Protection Delegate, International Committee of the Red Cross

Samit D’Cunha is a Protection Delegate with the International Committee of the Red Cross, based in Bukavu, DRC. Samit was previously the IHL Regional Coordinator for Eastern Canada with the Canadian Red Cross, based in Halifax. Prior to joining the RCRC movement, he was a Compliance Officer at the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, where he advised and contributed to projects related to international compliance, legal efficiency, and the development of various international disarmament standards. Other experiences include working for Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from McGill University, a Master’s and Juris Doctorate degree from American University, and an LL.M. from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

Elise Groulx, Human Rights Lawyer

Elise Groulx Diggs practices international human rights law and international criminal law from a base in Washington DC. She advises corporations on human rights risks in their strategic projects and supply chains. A recognized expert in international criminal law, she also assists businesses in assessing the legal risks of operating in fragile states and conflict zones. She advises corporations, law firms and organisations in the United States, Canada, France, United Kingdom and in Spanish-speaking countries.
 
She is associate tenant at Doughty Street Chambers in London and “Of Counsel” to Alkyne Avocats (Paris, France), Endo et Associés (Montreal, Quebec) and to Geni & Kebe (Dakar).
She is also Principal of the international consulting group, BI for Business Integrity & Partners LLC, based in Washington with partners in Kinshasa (DRC), Dakar (Senegal) and France as well as partners in England. She also joined the Advisory Board of Lawyers for Better Business (L4BB.org).
 
Elise offers legal advisory and training services to support corporations conducting human rights due diligence, audits and social risk assessments. She is an expert at helping businesses and financial institutions to assess their legal exposures related to business operations and supply chains in conflict-affected regions. She has advised multinational corporations on a variety of issues including: due diligence assessments for investments in conflict-prone countries; business complicity in war crimes; corporate criminal liability; and remediation programs for victims of human rights violations occurring near mining projects.
 
Elise convenes the Advisory Board of the Business and Human Rights project of the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights and has spoken on these issues for the last 10 years. She organized a major conference, held in Paris in March 2013, on International Corporate Liability in Conflict Zones jointly with the leaders of the French National Bar Council (Conseil National des Barreaux/CNB), the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Quai d'Orsay) and the American Bar Association (ABA).
 
She has a track record of convening and mobilizing the international legal profession, dating from 1996 when she first entered the field of International Criminal Law (ICL). She has been a respected voice for the defence and an advocate for the international legal profession at the International Criminal Court (ICC), leading the creation of the International Criminal Bar (ICB) in 2002.
 
A precursor organization led by Elise, the International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association (ICDAA), was responsible for proposing essential provisions on the rights of the defense that were entrenched in the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the ICC in 1999-2000. The ICDAA participated in the establishment of a legal aid system in Afghanistan from 2005 until 2011 and did planning work for a similar legal aid project in Haiti.
 
Elise spent much of her career as a criminal defence attorney in Montréal, litigating complex court cases and engaging in plea-bargaining and negotiations. As a public defender for nine years, she represented thousands of indigent clients. She then started her own practice and handled cases dealing with complex legal policy issues, notably police brutality and a "self defence review" of the cases of women who claimed to have killed their partners in legitimate self-defence. She also sat on a Military Justice Panel advising the Judge Advocate General of Canada for three years.
 
Elise is licensed to practice law as a barrister and solicitor in Québec (Canada), Paris (France) and European legal institutions including the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She is also a licensed legal consultant in the State of New York.
 
She was educated in Montréal and has a BA in Political Science from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and a law degree, with distinction, from the Université de Montréal. She has a certificate in criminology and comparative criminal law from the Université of Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) and an L.L.M. in criminology and comparative criminal law from the London School of Economics (LSE).
 
In 2009, she was selected to participate in a workshop in the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict at the Tufts University Fletcher Summer Institute in Boston, Mass. She trained to become an accredited mediator in 2010.

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Tuesday, June 1st 1:00-2:30 p.m. (EDT)
The conflicts of Yemen
 
Speakers:
Omar Mekky, Regional Legal Coordinator for Middle East and North Africa, International Committee of the Red Cross


Educational background: Bachelor of Laws from Alexandria University Faculty of Law, Alexandria, Egypt; a Master of Law degree (LLM) in International Human Rights Law, Saint Thomas University School of Law, USA; a Postgraduate Diploma of International Criminal Law, Salzburg Law School, Salzburg, Austria; and a PhD degree in International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, Switzerland.
Current Position: Regional Legal Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
 
Important Previous Positions/Activities: February 2005 –October 2012: Public Prosecutor in the Egyptian Judicial Authority, Alexandria, Egypt; August 2010- July 2011 Fellow Legal Researcher at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, Washington DC, USA; July 2011 –November 2011: Investigative Assistant in the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain; December 2011 –December 2012: Legal Adviser at the ICRC Regional Delegation for the Gulf Cooperation Council, Kuwait; October 2012 –present: Judge in the Egyptian Courts of First Instance, Luxor, Egypt (Seconded to the ICRC).
 
Publications:
 
Central Tracing Agency; National Information Bureau; Protecting Powers (short entries) in Pons & Djukic (eds.), “Companion to International Humanitarian Law” (Brill, 2018).
Available at: https://brill.com/view/title/34586
Training Manual for Judges on the Provisions of IHL (Arabic), ICRC Book, 2018
Available at: https://www.icrc.org/ar/document/ihl-guide-for-judges
International Humanitarian Law in Contemporary Conflicts (Arabic), ICRC Book, 2017
Available at: https://www.icrc.org/ar/publication/IHL-contemporary-conflicts
Justice for Attacks against Aid Workers: The Elephant in the Room (English), Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Available at: http://www.atha.se/blog/justice-attacks-against-aid-workers-elephant-room
An Unwarranted Human Sacrifice in the Middle East (English), ICRC Humanitarian Law and Policy Blog
Available at: http://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2016/09/26/human-sacrifice-middle-east/
Does IHL Protect Migrants? (Arabic), ICRC Publication, Al-Insani Magazine No.60
Available at : https://www.icrc.org/ar/document/alinsani-60
In Today’s Wars: Morals Fight As Well (Arabic), ICRC Publication, Al-Insani Magazine No.59
Available at:  https://www.icrc.org/ar/document/alinsani-59
Human Rights and Freedom under International Law and Egypt New Constitution (Arabic), IDEA
Available at: http://www.constitutionnet.org/ar/vl/item/msr-lmhwr-llmy-llbn-ldstwry-drs-mqrn-lmwss-ldwly-lldymqrty-wlntkhbt-2012

Rasha Jarhum, Co-founder and Director, Peace Track Initiative

 Rasha Jarhum is a South Yemeni. Jarhum is co-founder and Director of the Peace Track Initiative. Jarhum has been supporting inclusion of women in the peace process in Yemen and protecting women human rights defenders. She has led efforts to draft the Yemeni National Agenda for Women, Peace, and Security and led civil society consultations for supporting the development of the National Action Plan for Implementing UNSC 1325 resolution in Yemen.  She is a Gender, Peace, and Security Expert with more than 15 years’ experience working to advocate women’s, children’s and refugees’ rights with many organisations including Oxfam, UNICEF, ESCWA, and UNDP. Jarhum was named among the Apolitical 100 influential people in Gender Policy in 2021. She was invited among seven women by the UN Special Envoy to Yemen to support the peace talks held in Kuwait in 2016 and has briefed the UN Security Council on Yemen and Women’s Rights to push for peace. Jarhum holds a master’s degree from the University of Nottingham, in International Business Management. Jarhum is an award winner of the Women Have Wings Award (2016) and Women Rebels Against War: Anita Augspurg Prize (2019). She is a member of the Women Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) and member of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, at Ottawa University. She is also a 2016 New Voices Aspen fellow at Aspen Institute, USA. She is also a founding member of the Women Solidarity Network in Yemen, and a member of the MENA regional Coalition of Women Human Rights Defenders and member of the Women, Peace and Security Network- Canada.
 
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Wednesday, June 2nd, 1:00-2:30 p.m. (EDT)
Protecting the environment: IHL as a solution.
 
Speakers:
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Professor, Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities. He is founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History (PMNH) and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University (http://palestinenature.org). Qumsiyeh published over 150 scientific papers and several books on topics ranging from cultural heritage to human rights to biodiversity to cancer. His many published books include “Bats of Egypt”, "Mammals of the Holy Land", "Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle" and "Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment". He also published hundreds of articles and letters to the editor. He serves on the board of a number of Palestinian youth and service organizations.
 
Aung Thiri Shwesin, Environmental Research Fellow at Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Dr. Thiri Shwesin Aung is a Research Fellow at the Asia Center, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. Her current project explores the impacts of natural resource extraction on the ethnic armed conflicts, the environment and livelihood in conflict-affected areas in Myanmar. Prior to joining Harvard, Dr. Thiri was a Post-doctoral Researcher at the School of Environment and Energy, Peking University, China. Her project explored the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI) with a particular focus on natural resource extraction and infrastructure development in the countries along the initiatives. She has published extensively on the environmental impact assessment (EIA), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), environmental economics, waste management, land use land cover changes and environmental rights. Dr. Thiri earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), where she currently holds a principal researcher position at the Faculty of Engineering.
 
Iryna Nikolaieva, Consultant, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine

Dr. Iryna Nikolaieva is a Kyiv-based Independent Expert on environmental safety, state certified environmental auditor. She is a skilled professional with PhD degree on environmental safety with a main focus on industrial waste management. Her 17-year professional career consists of practical research works on the basis of legal requirements:

• environmental audits – determining of the compliance of industrial enterprises’ activities with environmental legislation of Ukraine, acting as the lead auditor
• scientific research activities on the safety of hazardous facilities – Tailings Storage Facilities (TSFs), including the research in armed conflict area in Eastern Ukraine and the Dniester River Basin in Western Ukraine, as the team leader
• implementation of international projects as the consultant to the different international organizations – Organization for Security and Co‑operation in Europe (OSCE), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), German Environment Agency (UBA), Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents of the UNECE (UNECE TEIA Convention).

Iryna is the author of the Methodology of environmental express-audits for industrial enterprises, co-author of the Methodology for improving the TSF safety based on the UNECE "Safety Guidelines and Good Practices for Tailings Management Facilities”. She is engaged in teaching activities combining theoretical knowledge of environmental legislation and practical experience - lectures and trainings for government personnel, specialists at postgraduate courses and university students. She has been published in scientific publications and participated in the development of national legislation on environmental protection.
More information is available on her personal website: http://www.ecoplatform.org/en

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Wednesday, June 3rd, 1:00-2:30 p.m. (EDT)
Ethiopia and the Tigray crisis

Speakers:
Daniel Mekonnen, Human Rights Lawyer

Dr. Daniel Mekonnen is a Geneva-based Independent Consultant and Fellow of the African Studies Centre, Leiden University. In his scholarly work and practice, he focuses on pressing issues related to International Human Rights Law, International Security Law, and Migration & Diaspora Studies. Of Eritrean and Ethiopian origin, he has particular interest in the working methods of the UN human rights treaty monitoring mechanisms, with focus on the Human Rights Council. He is a practitioner of cause lawyering, a form of activism involving the deployment of legal and non-legal skills in the pursuit of human rights. As a persecuted scholar, he is continuously engaged in the research agenda of “scholars at risk,” including in the context of his forthcoming book, Activism in Exile: An African Story of Lawyering for Change and the Enduring Search for Meaning. Further information about his work & publications is available from his personal website: www.danielmekonnen.com.
 
Lea Mehari, Founder, Addis Ababa University International Humanitarian Law Clinic

Lea Mehari Redae is the founder of the Addis Ababa University International Humanitarian Law Clinic. She has taught International Humanitarian Law at the Addis Ababa University School of Law in Ethiopia. She studies at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.




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Friday, June 4th, 1:00-2:30 p.m. (EDT)
Responding to sexual violence in conflict
 
Speakers:
Valerie Oosterveld, Professor, Faculty of Law, Western University
 
Valerie Oosterveld is a full Professor at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law. Her research and writing focus on gender issues within international criminal justice and, more recently, outer space law. She is the Acting Director of Western’s Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction. She is a member of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice and Western’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration. Before joining Western Law, Valerie served in the Legal Affairs Bureau of Global Affairs Canada. In this role, she provided legal advice on international criminal law, including international criminal tribunals. She served on the Canadian delegation to International Criminal Court-related negotiations. She earned her JSD and LLM from Columbia Law School, her LLB from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and her BSocSc from the University of Ottawa.

Margot Wallström, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sweden (2014-2019)

Ms. Wallström, a Swedish Social Democratic Party politician and diplomat, was Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs from October 2014 to September 2019. She previously served as European Commissioner for the Environment from 1999 to 2004 and as First Vice President of the European Commission, responsible for institutional relations and communication strategy from 2004 to 2009. From 2010 to 2012, Ms. Wallström was the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. She has served as Chair of the Board of Lund University, Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders Ministerial Initiative and as Board Member of the Global Challenges Foundation. She was Chair of the Board of Advisers of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in 2014 and a Member of the Board from 2011 to 2014. Ms. Wallström has received honorary doctorate degrees from Chalmers University of Technology, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Umeå University and Mälardalen University.

Fati Ibrahim Makintami, Nigerian Lawyer

Solicitor and advocate- Fati Ibrahim Makintami - State Ministry of Justice (Public Prosecution Department) Yobe, Nigeria.

Fati Ibrahim Makintami graduated from Nigerian Law School in 2011. She worked as part-time lecturer at Faculty of Law, Yobe State University before proceeding for her master degree at University of Maiduguri, Borno where she obtained an LLM.
As a member of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Nigeria, she has been offering pro-bone services to vulnerable women/girls and children affected by Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) for years. She has also been working (as a legal advisor) with different women association/Ngos. She is a legal adviser to Federation of Muslim Women Association of Nigeria (FOMWAN) Yobe, Nigeria, legal adviser to Ummuhatul Mu’uminal, and Zaid Bin Tabith Memorial School. She was a legal adviser to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Yobe and presently the Secretary Welfare officer.

She is an advocate for policy change and law reforms in the state: Penal code law, Vapp Law, ACJL and Child Protection Law. She also wrote papers on Women’s right, alternative Dispute Resolution (Yet to be Publish). In 2019 she and her colleagues wrote and published in a law Journal, a paper titled “The Protection of Civilians in armed conflicts: a case study of Boko Haram Insurgency.

She is the founder/Executive Director Al-Iman Empowerment and Development Centre. Where she mentor SGBV survivors and a lots of women and youths for peace building and resilience.
She is currently working with the public prosecution Department, State Ministry of Justice, Yobe, Nigeria, prosecuting SGBV cases and other criminal matters.

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