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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Barney Afako is a lawyer with vast experience in conflict mediation, transitional justice and human rights. In June 2018, he was selected as the inaugural IFIT Alex Boraine Fellow: a fellowship established in honour of IFIT’s first Board president, Dr Boraine, who passed away in 2018.
Afako has worked in the fields of human rights, refugee law, criminal justice and transition issues in several countries. He was the Chief Legal Advisor for the Juba Peace Talks between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (2006-8), developing and drafting the agreement on Reconciliation and Accountability: the first efforts to address transitional justice in an ongoing conflict in which the International Criminal Court was active.
From 2009, he advised the African Union Panel on Darfur (AUPD), chaired by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, and was responsible for drafting the justice recommendations of the AUPD’s report. From 2010, he advised the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel on Sudan and South Sudan, which facilitated negotiations of the Cooperation Agreement between Sudan and South Sudan and supported responses to conflict in the Horn of Africa.
Afako has been a member of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan since 2018; and for several years he was a member of the United Nations’ Standby Team of Senior Mediation Advisors, supporting peace processes in Yemen, Afghanistan, Western Balkans, Great Lakes and Horn of Africa, among others. In Uganda, he has advised the Government, and particularly the Amnesty Commission, on conflict resolution issues.
He is the author of several publications on justice and peace issues.
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Thomas Carothers is director of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an international affairs think tank.
Widely recognised as a leading authority on democratisation and international support for democracy, he has worked on democracy and governance assistance projects around the world for many public and private organisations.
He is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed books and reports as well as many articles in prominent journals and newspapers. He has been a visiting faculty member at Oxford University, the Central European University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the London School of Economics, and Harvard College.
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Noha El-Mikawy is Professor of Practice in the Public Policy and Administration Department, and Dean of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo (AUC). She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from AUC, and holds a master’s degree in comparative politics and international relations and a PhD in comparative politics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Previously, El-Mikawy served as the regional director of the Ford Foundation for the Middle East and North Africa. Her tenure at Ford helped create university partnerships between the region and North and Central America, the UK, India, and South Africa, as well as helped provide institutional support to various universities and think tanks in the Arab region, including AUB, AUC, Cairo University and the Arab Council for Social Sciences. She previously worked with UNDP’s Bureau of Development Policy and Regional Bureau of Arab States as the regional policy advisor, providing technical advice on governance programs of UNDP offices across the Arab region. In addition to being a policy practitioner, El-Mikawy’s academic background includes research development and management at the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn, Germany, as well as teaching at UCLA, AUC, the Free University of Berlin and the University of Elangen. She has published two books on Egypt with AUC press and several articles and book chapters on governance and institutional reform in Egypt and the Arab region, including with Oxford and Cambridge University Press.
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Mark Freeman is the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT).
A leading expert in political transitions and high-level peace negotiations with more than 30 years of experience, Mr Freeman is regularly consulted for advice on crisis management and conflict resolution. He has worked in countries including Ukraine, Venezuela, Colombia, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Bosnia, Burundi, DRC, The Gambia, El Salvador, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocco, Nepal, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.
Prior to founding IFIT, Mr. Freeman was Chief of External Relations at the International Crisis Group. He also helped launch the International Center for Transitional Justice and served as its first Director of International Affairs. Before that, he worked at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in New York and as a corporate lawyer in Toronto.
A recognised thought leader in international law and human rights, Mr. Freeman is the co-author of Negotiating Transitional Justice (Cambridge, 2020), which draws upon his years as an adviser inside the Colombian peace talks in Havana. He is also the author of Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice (Cambridge, 2010) and Truth Commissions and Procedural Fairness (Cambridge, 2006), and the co-author of International Human Rights Law: Essentials of Canadian Law (Irwin Law, 2004).
Mr. Freeman holds a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University, a Juris Doctor from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, and a Master of Laws from Columbia Law School where he was a Human Rights Fellow and James Kent Scholar. He has been a Lecturer-in-Law at KU Leuven and the University of Ottawa, and a Visiting Professor at Queen’s University Faculty of Law.
Mr. Freeman is a Paris Institute for Advanced Study Fellow, a Salzburg Global Fellow, a member of the International Panel of Experts of the International Commission on Missing Persons, and an Advisor to the International Strategy Forum. A Canadian and Belgian citizen, he speaks English, French, Spanish, Italian and Catalan.
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Martha Maya is the Deputy Global Director at the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) and the Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. She has been with IFIT since 2017. Her work places a strong emphasis on reducing polarisation, fostering dialogue, and advancing regional knowledge exchange to strengthen democracies and address structural challenges.
With nearly two decades of experience in public policy, negotiation, and transitional justice, Martha has served across key sectors of the Colombian government, including security, defence, foreign affairs, and the Office of the Presidency. During the peace process between the Government of Colombia and the FARC guerrillas, she was Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Interior and later at the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, acting as the official liaison in Havana for the agenda item on political participation. Earlier in her career, she also worked in Colombia for the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP) during crucial national junctures on conflict and transition.
Martha previously worked as a journalist and researcher at La Silla Vacía and she has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, El País, and El Tiempo. She is a lawyer and graduate of Universidad de los Andes, with advanced studies in law and public policy, and she holds a master’s degree in Law and Economics (LL.M / MSc).
Working languages: Spanish, English, and French
