Expert Team: Expert Advisory Group

Binalakshmi “Bina” Nepram is an indigenous scholar and a woman human rights defender, whose work focuses on deepening democracy and championing women-led peace, security, and disarmament in Manipur, Northeast India, and South Asia. She is the founder of three organizations: the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network, the Control Arms Foundation of India, and the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice, and Peace. In 2010 Bina also initiated the Northeast India Women Initiative for Peace to ensure that indigenous women in Northeast India are included in peace talks and peace processes. Bina has authored and edited five books, including Deepening Democracy, Diversity, and Women’s Rights in India (2019), Where Are Our Women in Decision Making? (2016), Meckley: A Historical Fiction on Manipur (2004) and South Asia’s Fractured Frontier (2002). Her work has garnered international recognition, including the Anna Politskovskaya Award (2018), Women have Wings Award (2016), CNN IBN Real Heroes Award (2011), Ashoka Social Innovators Fellowship (2011), and the Sean MacBride Peace Prize (2010).

In 2013, the U.K.-based Action on Armed Violence named her one of “100 most influential people in the world working in armed violence reduction.” Forbes (India) had listed Bina as one of 25 young minds in India that matter in 2015.

Ms. Nepram served as a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in 2017–2018 and later was IIE-SRF Visiting Scholar at Connecticut College in 2018–2019 where she designed and taught a course based on 15 years of her activism on “Women, War and Peace”. Bina also was a Reagan Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Spring 2020 where she worked on deepening democracy and ensuring rule of law and gender justice in Northeast India. 

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Until recently Betty Bigombe has been Senior Director, Fragility, Conflict and Violence at the World Bank. Bigombe has played a key role in conflict resolution in Africa. She led the peace and humanitarian efforts in northern Uganda, first in the 1990s as Minister of State for Northern Uganda and again as chief mediator to the conflict in the mid-2000s. She is a recipient of many international awards including the Ordre National de la Legion d’honneur, in 2016, being one of a number of awards honouring her long-standing commitment to peace and humanitarian affairs throughout her career. Prior to her appointment to the World Bank Group, Bigombe served as State Minister for Water Resources in the Ugandan Cabinet and Member of Parliament. She is currently the Uganda Special Envoy to the peace process in South Sudan.

She has been a visiting scholar at John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, the Woodrow Wilson Center and a Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, consulting on the impact of war and violence. She has served as a Commissioner for the Women’s Refugee Commission and led election observer missions in Zimbabwe and Rwanda.

Her career has included a development focus in previous positions at the African Development Bank and at the World Bank where she was a Senior Social Scientist focusing on gender and conflict, disarmament and child soldiers. Bigombe holds a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Rural Economy from Makerere University in Uganda.

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