Expert Team: Law and Peace Practice Group
Mariana Casij Peña es asociada en el Instituto para las Transiciones Integrales (IFIT), donde asesora principalmente sobre temas de justicia transicional y los derechos de las víctimas, y coordina el Grupo de Práctica de Justicia y Paz así como la Iniciativa para un Tratado de Paz.
Antes de trabajar en IFIT, Mariana trabajó como consultora para la Consejería Presidencial para los Derechos Humanos en Colombia y como asesora para la Unidad para las Víctimas durante las negociaciones entre el gobierno colombiano y las FARC-EP, al igual que en la fase posterior de su implementación. Anteriormente trabajó en la Unidad para las Víctimas en casos nacionales de reparaciones colectivas y como consultora para la Dirección de Justicia Transicional del Ministerio de Justicia.
Mariana ha sido profesora de la Universidad Javeriana en Bogotá en las áreas de memoria, justicia transicional y Derechos Humanos.
Es abogada de la Universidad Javeriana y tiene un Máster en Derechos Humanos y Democratización del Centro Interuniversitario Europeo para los Derechos Humanos y Democratización.
Idiomas de trabajo: español, inglés y francés.
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Baba Jallow is the inaugural Roger D. Fisher Fellow in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at
Harvard Law School. Prior to his appointment to this fellowship, Baba served for four years as
Executive Secretary of Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC).
Baba holds a Ph.D in African History from the University of California (Davis), a Masters in Liberal
Studies from Rutgers University (Camden), and a BA in History and Political Science from Fourah
Bay College, the University of Sierra Leone. He has taught African and world history at
Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska and La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Before going into exile in the United States in September 2000, Baba was a journalist and
served as Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Observer and Independent newspapers in his home
country of Gambia.
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Elizabeth Salmón is a Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. She is also Executive Director of the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights of the same university (IDEHPUCP). She holds a PhD in International Law from the University of Seville (Spain).
Professor Salmón is currently a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee and a Consulting Expert of the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace. She has acted as a consultant to the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Defense of Peru, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). She also participates as a speaker in numerous seminars, conferences and events around the world and she is the author of several publications in Public International Law, International Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law and Transitional Justice.
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Dr Asli Ozcelik Olcay is Lecturer in International Law at the University of Glasgow, where she co-directs the Erasmus Mundus Master in International Law of Global Security, Peace and Development.
Her expertise spans the fields of public international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and comparative constitutional law, with a particular focus on armed conflicts, peacemaking, transitional justice, and post-conflict constitutional reform.
She has been part of collaborative international projects on the role of youth in peace processes, the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, and the relationship between peacemaking and constitutional reform in Colombia, Ukraine and the Philippines. Her research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Global Challenges Research Fund.
Asli has consulted and collaborated with international organisations, civil society organisations, and independent international institutions in relation to human rights, peace mediation, and peacebuilding. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Scottish Human Rights Defender Fellowship.
She holds an LLM in International Law from the University of Cambridge and an LLB from Bilkent University, Turkey. She was awarded her PhD by the University of Glasgow.
Working languages: English and Turkish
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Galuh Wandita began working on peace and conflict issues in the 1990s in Indonesia, focusing on women’s health and human rights, community rights impacted by mining, with an emphasis on empowering local actors, during the authoritarian New Order regime. Together with a group of East Timorese (then under illegal occupation of Indonesia), she founded a women’s organization, Fokupers, dedicated to stopping violence against women in 1997.
Galuh was a humanitarian worker with Oxfam during the 1999 referendum in East Timor. In 2002-2005 she was appointed Deputy Director of Timor-Leste’s truth commission (CAVR). Together with CAVR’s executive director and senior staff, she designed and managed the fieldwork conducted by the CAVR district teams, and supervised the commission’s work on truth-seeking and victim support. Later on, she drafted key chapters in the commission report, “Chega!” (2005). She returned to Indonesia as a Senior Associate for the International Center for Transitional Justice, working on accountability in Indonesia and Timor-Leste.
In 2012, Galuh co-founded Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR) and continues to lead the organization as its Executive Director, managing programs and staff in Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Bangladesh, Myanmar and other countries. In 2014, she was a co-convener and member of a “citizen’s council” working with a coalition of 50 NGOs across Indonesia in a civil society-led truth-seeking process. She is co-founder and chair for Associacaon Chega Ba Ita, an NGO in Timor-Leste dedicated to supporting women survivors and conducting advocacy on the recommendations of the truth commission. As a member of the Working Group on the Stolen Children, she has led the initiative to find more than 160 survivors of childhood abduction from Timor-Leste (now living in Indonesia), reuniting 80 stolen children with their families.
She was appointed by Timor-Leste’s Prime Minister as a member of the international advisory council on the Centro Nacional Chega (CNC), a follow-up body with a mandate to preserve memory and assist survivors. She also is engaged as an advisor to the Aceh Truth and Reconciliation Commission, working with civil society designing its mandate (2008), supporting key activities in the early period of its establishment (2017), and as member of the writing/editorial team of its final report (forthcoming.)
Galuh holds a Master’s Degree in International Human Rights Law from Oxford University (2006). She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology/Anthropology from Swarthmore College, PA (USA) in 1988.
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Mariana Casij Peña is an Associate at the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) and manages the Law and Peace Practice Group and the Peace Treaty Initiative. She has led IFIT’s research on negotiating with violent criminal groups, supported the countering violent extremism project, and advised key stakeholders on transitional justice issues in contexts such as El Salvador, Nigeria, Ethiopia, the Gambia, and Libya. Additionally, for the past six years, she has overseen IFIT’s transitional justice work in Colombia.
Prior to joining IFIT, Mariana worked with the Presidential Advisor for Human Rights in Colombia and served as a legal adviser for the Victims Unit during the negotiations between the Colombian Government and the FARC, as well as during the subsequent implementation phase. She also worked for the Victims Unit on national cases of collective reparations and as a consultant for the Transitional Justice Directorate of the Colombian Ministry of Justice.
Mariana also previously taught at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, in areas of memory, transitional justice, and human rights.
She holds a BA in Law from the Universidad Javeriana and a Master’s degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation.
Her focus areas include transitional justice, amnesties, accountability, reparations and reconciliation.
Working languages: English, Spanish and French
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Yasmin Sooka is a leading human rights lawyer and the Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights in South Africa. The Foundation is the country’s primary indigenous grant maker, established by President Mandela’s government in 1996 and the European Union to fund the human rights sector in South Africa. Sooka chaired the government’s Steering Committee of the National Forum Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances, which is responsible for developing a National Action Plan to combat racism in the country.
A leading international expert in the field of transitional justice, Sooka served on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1996-2001 and chaired the committee responsible for the final report from 2001-03. She was appointed by the United Nations to serve on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone from 2002-04. She is also a member of the Advisory Body on the Review of Security Council Resolution 1325.
In July 2010, Sooka was appointed to the three-member Panel of Experts advising the Secretary General on accountability for war crimes committed during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka. The report was published in May 2011. She published two additional reports on Sri Lanka in 2014. She is the co-author of “The Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka: 2009-2014” with the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and the International Truth and Justice Project, Sri Lanka. Sooka is also the co-author of an interactive report, “Five Years On: The White Flag Incident 2009-2014”, with the International Truth and Justice Project, Sri Lanka.
In March 2014, Sooka co-authored the African Union’s Policy on Transitional Justice. She has also assisted many governments in setting up transitional bodies such as truth commissions and has advised on reparation programs. She has also consulted on issues of transitional justice and gender.
Sooka was also appointed by the Secretary-General to a three-member Panel of Experts to advise him on the UN response to allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of children by foreign military forces not under United Nations command in the Central African Republic as well as abuse of power by UN officials in their responses to the allegations
Sooka has been part of many advisory missions on transitional justice for the United Nations including Afghanistan, Burundi, Kenya, Nepal, and Uganda. In addition, she has consulted for the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in Switzerland, and has participated in several missions including to Burundi, Libya, and Tunisia. She also served as the Inaugural Soros Chair at the School of Public Policy at the Central European University in Budapest.
Working languages: English and Afrikaans
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Tecla Wanjala is the Director of the Social Healing and Reconciliation Program of the Green String Network in Nairobi. Prior, she served as one of the Commissioners of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission Kenya (TJRC-Kenya). Moreover, she was the Relief and Rehabilitation Coordinator for victims of the ethnic and land clashes in 1991/1992 under the Catholic Diocese of Bungoma and the National Coordinator for the Peace and Development Network. She also acted as an in-house Consultant in Peace Building and Post Conflict Reconstruction with the Japan International Cooperation Agency for Eastern and Southern Africa.
Tecla holds a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies from Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. She attained a Master’s degree in Conflict Transformation from the Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg in Virginia and holds a diploma in Social Development Work from Embu Development Institute.
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Professor Slye is a Professor of Law at the Seattle University School of Law. He is an internationally-recognised expert in international criminal law, transitional justice, and international human rights law, and is co-author of a best-selling casebook in the United States, International Criminal Law and Its Enforcement (Foundation Press). He taught in the clinical program at the Yale Law School and served as the Associate Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School.
Professor Slye has represented victims of human rights violations before US federal courts under the Alien Tort Claims Act, and before various UN human rights bodies. He has provided advice to countries in their efforts to address a legacy of gross violations of human rights, including Tunisia, Colombia, Burundi, and Uganda. He is a legal advisor and board member of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has addressed the legacy of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. He was a legal consultant to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1996 to 2000. From 2009 to 2013, Professor Slye served as one of three international commissioners (and the only commissioner not from Africa) on the Kenyan Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission.
Professor Slye received his B.A. from Columbia University, his M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, and his J.D. from the Yale Law School.
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As the former Diplomatic Correspondent specialised in humanitarian action and international justice for the daily newspapers Libération (Paris) and Le Temps (Geneva), Pierre Hazan has been a close observer of many conflicts, including in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and the Middle East. As a Fellow at Harvard Law School (2005) and the United States Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. (2006), his published works include Justice in a Time of War (Texas A&M), Judging War, Judging History; Behind Peace and Reconciliation (Stanford University Press, 2010), and La Paix contre la Justice? (AVE/GRIP, 2010). He is also the editor of The Tenth Anniversary of the International Criminal Court, the Challenges of Complementarity (Politorbis, Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2012).
In recent years, Pierre has collaborated with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2013, he was also a U.N. expert with the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights for two reports, respectively the Report on the writing and teaching of history (A/68/296) presented to the U.N. General Assembly in Autumn 2013 in New York, and the Report on memorialization processes (A/HRC/25/49) presented on 12 March 2014 at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Since 2014, Pierre has been a special advisor in Transitional Justice with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. He is also a member of the International Contact Group of the Basque Country, co-organisers of the 2011 Peace Conference, which led to the end of political violence in the Basque Country. He also works with La Fondation Hirondelle, which creates or supports independent, civic-minded news media in conflict, post-conflict and crisis zones. Since June 2015, Pierre has been the head of a new media project, justiceinfo.net, which is dedicated to justice issues in societies in transition. Justiceinfo.net is a bilingual (English and French) media project of La Fondation Hirondelle in partnership with Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI).
Pierre is currently a lecturer at the Geneva University of Art and Design, where he co-chairs a research project on Memories in Divided Societies. In January and February 2015, this research led to an exhibition in Geneva called “Beyond the Monument”. Pierre is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Journalism and Media, Neuchatel University and also lectures at the Geneva Center for Education and Training in Humanitarian Action (CERAH, Geneva University/Graduate Institute). In 2014, he led a weekly discussion of contemporary historical issues on the Swiss Broadcasting Company program Histoire Vivante. In 2016, he was invited to serve as the guest editor of The International Journal of Transitional Justice for a special issue on “Beyond Borders: Regional Dimensions and Dynamics of Transitional Justice”.
Working languages: French and English
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