ISHR board

Shaharzad Akbar is a woman human rights defender and former Chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. She is the Executive Director of Rawadari and a member of the Global Women Leaders Network. She was previously Deputy of the National Security Council on Peace and Civilian Protection, a Senior Advisor to the Afghan President on High Development Councils, Country Director for Open Society Afghanistan, and a journalist with BBC Afghanistan.

Taaka Awori is the Founder and CEO of Busara Africa, a Pan-Leadership Development Firm. She possesses expertise in Leadership and Organizational Development, is a Certified Coach, and has significant experience as a Facilitator within the public sector, private sector and civil society. Taaka  has extensive experience working with foundations, and international NGOs across Europe and the United States such as Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, Mastercard Foundation, Actionaid International, Greenpeace International and Care International.  She also works extensively with the UN, notably, the UN Resident’s Coordinators Office in Ghana and UN Women. 

Taaka is also the Chair of the Board of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF). Taaka holds a B.A in Government from Harvard University (Boston, USA) and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) in Law from Columbia University (New York, USA). She is the author of the recently released book:  Leadership in Africa Redefined – Untold Stories (2022).

Jamil Dakwar is an international human rights lawyer and expert. He is currently the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program. He serves as the ACLU’s main representative to the United Nations and leads the ACLU’s advocacy before other regional and international bodies, including the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Jamil was one of ACLU’s first legal observers to the military commission system at Guantanamo Bay in 2004. In 2020, he was appointed as a member of the New York State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Prior to joining the ACLU in 2004, Jamil worked at Human Rights Watch, where he conducted research, advocated, and published reports on issues of torture and detention in Egypt, Morocco, Palestine/Israel. Before moving to the United States, he was a senior attorney with Adalah (Justice), a leading Palestinian human rights group in Israel, where he filed and argued human rights cases before Israeli courts and advocated before international forums. He teaches human rights courses at New York University and Hunter College.

Vrinda Grover is an Indian lawyer and human rights defender, successfully litigating landmark cases in relation to women’s rights, police accountability, freedom of the press and sexual minorities. She is a Board member of the Fund for Global Human Rights and a member of South Asians for Human Rights and the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN. She has been at the forefront of a range of successful law reform campaigns, including in relation to women’s rights and children’s rights, among others.
 

Oleksandra Matviichuk heads the human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties. During her lead in 2022, the organisation received the Nobel Peace Prize for its work aimed at protecting human rights and establishing democracy in Ukraine and the OSCE region. In 2022 she was also awarded with the Right Livelihood Award and recognised as one of the 25th influential women in the world by Financial Times. Oleksandra Matviichuk also coordinates the work of the initiative group Euromaidan SOS. Since the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the group has been monitoring political persecution in occupied Crimea, documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Heba Morayef is an Egyptian human rights defender and currently Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Director. Prior to that she was Associate Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, worked with International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch’s as Egypt director in Cairo and previously Libya researcher. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science with a specialisation in Public International Law from the American University in Cairo and an LLM in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Florian Pollner is an organisational development and strategy expert, with expertise in business and human rights and three decades of experience as a former Partner with McKinsey & Co and Senior Consultant with IBM. Florian has worked in more than 25 countries across Europe, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia.

Mona Sabella is a human rights advocate and defender. She coordinates global efforts to stop corporate capture and ensure corporate accountability at ESCR-Net. Mona was formerly an International Advocacy Officer with the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies in Geneva focusing on UN advocacy in support of communities and defenders in Libya, Palestine, Yemen and beyond. She also formerly worked on the protection of defenders with Front Line Defenders in Dublin, and worked for several years with Al-Haq focusing on colonial practices of dispossession impacting human rights in Palestine. Mona holds an LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (University of Essex).

Bruno Stagno Ugarte is Chief Advocacy Officer with Human Rights Watch. He was previously Executive Director of Security Council Report, Foreign Minister of Costa Rica from 2006-2010 and Ambassador of Costa Rica to the UN in New York from 2002-2006. Bruno also served as President of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court from 2005-2008.

Mirosław Wyrzykowski has been Chair of the Human Rights Department, Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw, since 2006. He is a former judge of the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland, as well as a former Head of the Department of Constitutional Freedoms and Rights in the Office of the Commissioner for Citizens Rights, and a former member of the Prime Minister’s Legislative Council.