Expert Team: Practice Groups
Professor Gibril Faal is a multi-disciplinary business and development executive. He is the co-founder and director of GK Partners, which specialises in socially responsible business models, sustainable development and programme implementation. He is also a visiting professor in practice at the London School of Economics (LSE) and at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA); a council member of Carnegie African Diaspora Program; and Lead Consultant to the African Union Commission on innovative, development and diaspora finance.
In the early 2000s, Professor Faal was part of the small team of experts that worked on a Department of Trade and Industry project to develop the UK’s social enterprise business support, legal and financing structures. In 2003, he founded RemitAid™ as a mechanism to transform remittances into a sustainable form of development finance. In 2017, he initiated the Migration and Sustainable Development in The Gambia project (MSDG) in partnership with the governments of Switzerland and The Gambia.
Professor Faal has previously served as: vice chair of Bond, the network of UK NGOs working on international development; chairman of AFFORD-UK, the pioneering diaspora-development charity; founding director of the Africa-Europe Diaspora Development Platform (ADEPT); and as a magistrate in Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service. He has worked as a technical expert with the United Nations, World Bank, European Union, University of Oxford, and many development institutions and governments across the world. In 2017, he served as overarching expert for the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), and has addressed the UN General Assembly several times. In the past 25 years, he has been appointed to various strategic, development and management boards and panels across the world. In the UK, he has been appointed to several public function roles by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State for International Development, Home Secretary, and the Lord Chancellor. In 2014, Professor Faal was appointed an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to international development.
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Adrian Magendzo is an entrepreneur and Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Kentucky. As an independent international consultant in innovation and entrepreneurship policy, he has worked with various institutions including the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank. With IFIT, he has contributed to the Institute’s work on strengthening entrepreneurial ecosystems in The Gambia and Uzbekistan.
Prior to these roles, Adrian served as an economic attaché to the Chilean embassy in Washington, D.C., and as director and professor of the Master in Innovation and Entrepreneurship programme at the Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in Santiago, Chile. He was previously Executive Director of the High Impact Entrepreneurship Policy division at Innova-Corfo, the Chilean government’s innovation and entrepreneurship promotion agency. As an entrepreneur, Adrian has founded several companies in the technology, manufacturing, and food industries.
Adrian has a Master’s of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Chile and a Master’s in Technology Commercialisation and Innovation from the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin.
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Rachel Scott heads the Impact team at the Multilateral Performance Network (MOPAN) Secretariat, hosted at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Here, she focuses on supporting the 22 MOPAN members to use their collective voice, and the evidence from MOPAN assessments, to fulfil their role as responsible shareholders and funders of the multilateral system. Rachel also specialises in organisations working in crises, and is currently assessing the trustworthiness and performance of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
Rachel joined the OECD in 2010 as Senior Humanitarian Advisor, reviewing donor practices, and then took on a leadership role in the Crises and Fragility team, supporting the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF), a member state network. During this time, she focused on financing for crises and fragile contexts, about which she has written extensively. Prior to her global policy work, Rachel spent many years in beautiful, fragile contexts around the world, working for the UN and for a range of international NGOs.
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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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Moky Makura is the Executive Director of Africa No Filter. She was born in Nigeria, educated in England and has lived in London, Johannesburg and Lagos. Before her role at ANF, Moky was the Deputy Director for Communications Africa at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where she was responsible for building and managing the foundation’s reputation on the continent. She took on an interim role as the foundation’s Country Representative to South Africa in 2017, leading on government relations and internal program coordination.
Before joining the Gates Foundation, Moky worked as Communications Director for the Tony Elumelu Foundation in Nigeria. She has also worked as a well-known TV presenter, producer, author, publisher and a successful entrepreneur in her own right. Moky holds an Honours degree in Politics, Economics and Law from Buckingham University in the UK. She serves on the advisory boards of the Junior Achievement Africa, the Houtbay Partnership and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.
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Dr. Jasmina Brankovic is a Research Associate with the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT). Her research interests include narrative approaches to conflict management, socioeconomic transformation, climate justice, and civil society strategies for social change in transitional contexts, with a focus on participatory methods.
Jasmina is the co-author of Violence, Inequality and Transformation: Apartheid Survivors on South Africa’s Ongoing Transition (2020) and The Global Climate Regime and Transitional Justice (2018) and the co-editor of Advocating Transitional Justice in Africa: The Role of Civil Society (2018). She is the Senior Research Specialist at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, South Africa, and the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Transitional Justice. Jasmina has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Marburg.
Areas of expertise: transitional justice, violence prevention, climate justice, civil society strategies, participatory research, learning, monitoring and evaluation, Africa.
Working languages: English and Bosnian
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Mariana Casij Peña is an Associate at the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), leading the Law and Peace Practice Group and the Peace Treaty Initiative.
She guided IFIT’s research on negotiating with violent criminal groups, advised the countering violent extremism project, and played key roles in El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Gambia. For the past 6 years, she has also led IFIT’s work on transitional justice 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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