Louise Mallinder is a Professor of Law at Queen’s University Belfast, School of Law. Within her broad interests in international human rights law, international criminal law and law and politics in political transitions, Louise has a particular research interest and expertise in amnesty laws, the role of lawyers as transitional actors, and socio-legal research methods related to transitional justice. She has conducted fieldwork in numerous locations including Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Chile, South Africa, Israel, Palestine, Tunisia, Argentina, Uruguay, Uganda and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Her research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Nuffield Foundation and the Socio-Legal Studies Association. In addition, Louise’s monograph was awarded the 2009 Hart SLSA Early Career Award and was jointly awarded the 2009 British Society of Criminology Book Prize.
Louise is also a member of the AHRC and ESRC Peer-Review Colleges and the Royal Irish Academy Ethical, Political, Legal and Philosophical Studies Committee. In addition, Louise is the Chair of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a human rights non-governmental organisation in Northern Ireland.
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Leigh A. Payne is Professor of Sociology and Latin America at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She is the author of a number of books, book chapters, and articles on transitional justice.
Among her publications in the last five years are: Confessions to Intimate Violence: FARC Confessions to Sexual Violations in the Colombian Conflict (2024); The Right against Rights in Latin America (2023); Understanding Collaborators (2022); Disappearances in the Post-Transition Era in Latin America (2021); and Transitional Justice and Corporate Accountability from Below: Deploying Archimedes’ Lever (2021). She is also the co-author of Transitional Justice in Balance and the co-editor of Amnesty in the Age of Human Rights Accountability.
Based on her research findings, Payne has been involved in numerous academic-practitioner impact projects around the world. For her academic research and policy impact work, she has received grants from foundations including Open Society, Ford, Oak, Newton, and Zennström. She has also received funding from research councils, including the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), British Academy, and National Science Foundation (US).
Professor Payne received her PhD in Political Science at Yale University.
Working languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese
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Iván Orozco is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá). He is a specialist in constitutional law and legal theory, and has a PhD in political science from the University of Mainz.
As an academic, Orozco has worked at the following universities: the Andes, the National, Kassel, Augsburg and Notre Dame.
Orozco has written several books that have had a major influence on Colombian law and politics. These include “Fighters, Rebels and Terrorists”, “War and Law in Colombia”, “The Limits of the Humanitarian Conscience”, and “Transitional Justice in a Time of Obligatory Memory “.
In June 2013, the Colombian Office of the High Commissioner for Peace hired Orozco to serve as an expert adviser to the government delegation to the peace negotiations with the FARC taking place in Havana. He served in that role until December 2015, when a final agreement was reached on the issue of Victims (point 5 of the negotiation agenda).
Prior to his work on the process, Orozco also served in other public policy positions, including as head of the human rights office of Gustavo Bell when he was Vice President of Colombia, and as a member of the Historical Memory Group.
Working languages: Spanish, English, German
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Hanny Megally is a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC), where he focuses on violent extremism, human rights and rule of law. Prior to joining CIC, Megally served as Chief of the Asia, Pacific, Middle East and North Africa Branch at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
Previously, he was Vice-President for Programs at the International Center for Transitional Justice, which he joined in 2003. He has nearly forty years of experience in the field of human rights, transitional justice and conflict resolution, having begun his professional career at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in 1977. From 1984 to 1994, he headed the Middle East Research Department at Amnesty International in London. He later ran the Ford Foundation’s social justice program in the Middle East from the Foundation’s Cairo office, and from 1997 to 2003 he served as the Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.
Mr. Megally has overseen country programs and traveled extensively in the MENA and Asia/Pacific regions, including leading human rights investigation missions and conducting high-level discussions with heads of state and governments. He is a widely sought after commentator on human rights and political developments, particularly in the MENA region.
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Habib Nassar is the Director for Policy and Research at Impunity Watch. He is a lawyer and activist with more than fifteen years of experience working on human rights and transitional justice issues. Before joining Impunity Watch, he worked at PILnet: The Global Network for Public Interest Law where he served as Acting Executive Director and Director for the Middle East and North Africa, a region where he developed the organisation’s programming in the area of strategic litigation and clinical legal education. Prior to PILnet, he developed extensive experience working on transitional justice in a variety of contexts. He advised the UN OHCHR on transitional justice in North Africa. He also worked at the International Center for Transitional Justice where he held several positions including Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program in the wake of the “Arab Spring”. Before, he worked for several grassroots and international human rights groups on matters including enforced disappearance, human rights defenders, and elections. He has taught transitional justice as well as human rights at Hunter College in New York. He has an LL.M. from New York University, a Master of International Law from Université Paris II and a law degree from Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut.
Working languages: English, Arabic, French, Portuguese
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Dr. Castresana has been a practicing attorney, magistrate, investigating judge, and prosecutor for over 30 years. Currently, he is the UN Commissioner for Human Rights in South Sudan and advises the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia.
In 1989, he entered the Public Prosecutor’s career in Spain. Since then, he has worked in the prosecutor’s offices of Barcelona and Madrid, as well as in the special Anti-drug and Anti-corruption prosecutor’s offices. In 2005, he was promoted to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court of Spain, and later to the Court of Auditors.
In 2007, the UN Secretary-General appointed Dr. Castresana as Commissioner against Impunity in Guatemala, with the category of UN Assistant Secretary-General. Dr. Castresana held this position until 2010. In recognition of his work in Guatemala, he received the Stella della Solidarietà as Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana, the Grand Cross of the Order of Quetzal of Guatemala, the Order of Civil Merit of Spain, and was named Officer of the Legion of Honor of France. Dr. Castresana is also the recipient of the National Human Rights Award in Spain and holds the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Guadalajara (Mexico), the Central University of Chile, and the National Institute of Criminal Science of Mexico (INACIPE).
Dr. Castresana has served as an expert on a number of legal missions, including those of the Council of Europe, the EU, the UN, and the World Bank, among others. He has written multiple articles published in media and specialized legal journals and has lectured at universities and other institutions in Europe and America (including Harvard, Yale, NYU, CUNY, Drexel, Berkeley, Stanford, the US Departments of Defense and of State). He has also been a Professor of Criminal Law at Carlos III University of Madrid and International Criminal Law at the University of San Francisco (California), Haverford College (Pennsylvania), and the Centro Universitario de Estudios Financieros (CUNEF) in Madrid.
In 2016, he was awarded the First Prize for Transparency, Integrity, and the Fight against Corruption from the General Council of the Spanish Bar and Transparency International, and in 2024, the Medal of the Barcelona Bar Association.
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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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Ahmad Nader Nadery is a senior fellow Peace and Global Justice with HiiL, a visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and was Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center. A recognized leader in peacebuilding, governance reform, and human rights, Nadery has spent over two decades working at the highest levels of law, policy, and international diplomacy.
Most recently, Nadery served as a member of the Peace Negotiation Team for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan during the 2020–2021 Doha peace talks. In this capacity, he negotiated critical constitutional and human rights frameworks, engaging directly with Taliban leadership in efforts to secure a political settlement.
Prior to his negotiating role, Nadery served as Chairman of the Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Service Commission (IARCSC). He led one of the country’s most significant institutional overhauls, spearheading a massive digitization and anti-corruption initiative that implemented biometric identification systems and introduced merit-based recruitment to modernize the Afghan public sector. He has also served as Senior Advisor to the President on Public and Strategic Affairs, advising on freedom of expression and human rights protection.
A lifelong advocate for the rule of law and Human Rights, Nadery served for seven years as a Commissioner of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). He directed major investigations into war crimes and abuses, becoming a leading voice for transitional justice and the end of impunity. In civil society, he served as Director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), the country’s top policy research institute, and founded the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA).
Nadery’s public service dates back to the 2001 UN Bonn Conference, where he represented Afghan youth activists. He subsequently served as the spokesperson for the 2002 Emergency Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly).
He has written extensively on human rights, governance and international relations and appears regularly on major media like WSJ, New York Times, Washington Post, PBS news hour and BBC. He is a member of the Board of Editors of the International Journal on Transitional Justice and has led rule of law missions in post-revolution Libya. Time Magazine named him an “Asian Hero” in 2005, and the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader in 2008.
Nadery holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from George Washington University and a Bachelor’s degree in Law and Political Science from Kabul University. He also studied leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
