SPEAKERS’ biographies
Shaharzad Akbar
Shaharzad Akbar is currently Chairperson for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. She is the first Afghan woman to study at Oxford University after defying the Taliban to get an education. Mrs. Akbar holds an International Development Studies masters from Oxford, and completed a MPhil at Oxford as a Weidenfeld scholar in 2011.Mrs. Akbar’s writing has appeared in international and Afghan media including Newsweek and Al Jazeera, and academic journals. Based in Kabul and an active tweeter and writer, Shaharzad is a leading voice on political issues related to her country and her generation. In 2017, she was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.
Reyhan Yalcindag Baydemir
Reyhan Yalcindag Baydemir, is a Kurdish lawyer and Human Rights Defender from Diyarbakir in Turkey. She acted for co-chairs, parliamentarians and co-mayors of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who have been behind bars since 2016 before the European Court of Human Rights. She has been providing legal assistance to the victims of human rights violations before domestic courts and the ECHR since 1998, and has been subjected to many judicial prosecutions due to her human rights activities. Mrs. Baydemir has been successively a Board Member, Chairperson, and Member of the Honorary Board of Human Rights Association Headquarters from 2000 until today. She is Vice-President of FIDH since 2019. Mrs Baydemir founded in 2015 the Platform for Struggle for Women Held in Captivity.
Janet Foyle
Janet Foyle, Vice President of OPEN ASIA, is an international humanitarian law and human rights law lawyer. She currently works as Advocacy Officer for Médecins du Monde (Canada) based in Montréal, Quebec. Her professional background includes work as a legal advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross and missions as an ICRC field delegate, as well as work focused on the rights of persons deprived of their liberty for the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.
SHAWAN JABARIN
Shawan Rateb Abdallah Jabarin is the general director of Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization in the West Bank. He is also the Secretary General of FIDH; the International Federation for Human Rights. Mr. Jabarin is a resilient veteran activist for a just peace, a joint Palestinian-Israeli international struggle for human rights and an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories, in accordance with international law. Detained and kept from traveling multiple times by the Israeli government, Mr. Jabarin was the first Palestinian to be recognized by Amnesty International as a "prisoner of conscience". He has been a part-time lecturer at Birzeit University since 2010, has won many human-rights awards and has contributed to journals such as Foreign Policy.
GUISSOU JAHANGIRI
Guissou Jahangiri , FIDH Vice-President, OPEN ASIA|Armanshahr Executive Director, studied political sociology and is a life-time committed feminist, human rights defender, peace and cultural activist. She worked 15 years as a journalist for Courrier International, spent 5 years in Tajikistan during the civil war as HRW researcher and acting head of UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In 2006, she founded Armanshahr Foundation & Publishing House in Afghanistan, created the Simorgh International Peace Prize and the Women’s Film Festival in Herat.
David Knaute
David Knaute is a humanitarian worker, human rights activist and anthropologist, with a long-lasting passion for Afghanistan since 2004 where he has travelled and worked. His PhD thesis was on Pakistan’s Zoroastrian community. David has been program manager, country director and consultant for various NGOs, UN agencies and the ICRC in Africa, Asia, the Near-East and the Caribbean. In 2014, he became an OPEN ASIA|Armanshahr board member and was recently nominated as President of the organization. His dream? An eco-friendly world of peace and harmony for tomorrow’s children.
Rodolfo Domínguez Márquez
Rodolfo Domínguez Márquez, a Mexican lawyer specializing in gender-based violence against women and protection mechanisms for women, is a leading figure in the fight to shed light and accountability on these crimes. He has been a Human Rights Defender for over 13 years. As General Coordinator of Justice, Human Rights and Gender civil association (Justicia, Derechos Humanos y Genero ) and its SIWA virtual multicultural and multi media platform, he works in Mexico to support strategic litigation and accompany women victims of violence and their families as they try to navigate the justice system and get protection. Mr. Márquez is also a member of the National Citizens’ Femicide Observatory (OCNF) and the global Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL).
Mansoureh ShojaeE
Mansoureh Shojaee is an iranian activist, researcher, and writer in the field of women and human rights. Her activism has involved creating libraries for women and children in deprived areas. Mansoureh helped found in 2002 one of its kind feminist organization, the Women’s Cultural Center, and launched the Sedigheh Dolatabadi and Evaz Women’s Library in 2004 and 2005. She has been pursuing Human rights and gender studies at the Institute of Social Sciences in Erasmus, and is currently a researcher in these fields with the Free University of Amsterdam and Iran Academia of Humanities and Social Sciences. Due to her environmental interests, she has written and translated pioneering works on ecofeminism. Her work has resulted in the publication of several volumes of authored, researched and translated articles in reputable quarterly magazines and websites, as well as several Persian and English books.