Gilbert Andres
Executive Director at CenterLaw Philippines

Gilbert Andres is a Filipino international lawyer admitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) List of Counsel and the Philippine Bar. He currently serves as a Common Legal Representative of the Victims in The Prosecutor v. Rodrigo Roa Duterte before the ICC.

Andres is Executive Director of CenterLaw Philippines, where he has represented families of victims of the Philippine "war on drugs" before the Supreme Court. He is also a private prosecutor in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre case, one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in history.

He represents Myanmar Chin victims in the Philippines seeking accountability for war crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction and has brought human rights concerns affecting Filipino fisherfolk over the Scarborough Shoal before the UN human rights special procedures.

Andres is Senior Partner at Butuyan & Rayel Law Offices, a firm known for strategic litigation. He co-founded and chairs the Advocates for Freedom of Expression Coalition Southeast Asia, a network of human rights organizations promoting free expression across the region.

He holds a Juris Doctor and a BS in Physics from the University of the Philippines, and an Advanced LL.M. in Public International Law from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Brandee Butler
Senior Advisor
Ariadne Network

Brandee M. Butler is a strategic advisor and philanthropic leader who helps mission-driven organizations navigate complexity, strengthen governance, and lead through political, economic, and technological transitions. Over more than two decades, she has worked across philanthropy, civil society, and the private sector to advance human rights and strengthen institutions and movements.

Brandee previously served as CEO of the Institute for Human Rights and Business, Deputy and Interim CEO of the Fund for Global Human Rights, and held senior leadership roles at the Open Society Foundations, C&A (now Laudes) Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Brandee serves as Senior Advisor and former Chair of Ariadne, a European network of human rights and social justice funders; on the Advisory Council of Global Witness; on the board of Just Associates (JASS), a feminist movement-building organization; and on the Steering Committee of Turning Tides, a collaborative philanthropy supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities advancing tenure rights and environmental stewardship. She holds a BA from Harvard University and a JD from Yale Law School and is based in Barcelona.

Boris Dittrich
Dutch Senator and former Global Advocate for LGBT+ rights at Human Rights Watch

Boris Dittrich is a Dutch senator since 2019. He is first deputy- speaker of the Senate and chair of the standing committee of Justice. He is also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe). He is Special Rapporteur on the situation of three Ukrainian OSCE staff members who were taken prisoner by Russia while on a OSCE monitoring mission and in 2020 sentenced to 14 years imprisonment, in a prison camp in Siberia.

Previously, he has been a lawyer, a judge and a member of the House of Representatives in the Dutch parliament.

In 2007 he became the global advocacy director in the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch in New York and Berlin until 2018.

Dittrich is an author. He wrote thirteen books. His thriller W.O.L.F. was chosen as the best Dutch thriller of 2016.

For his work on LGBT rights he received the Dutch Bob Angelo Award (2012) , the Dutch Jos Brink State Award in 2013 and the Dutch Living Legend Award in 2018.

Mpho Tutu van Furth
South African Anglican priest, author and human rights activist

The Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth is an episcopal priest, an artist, an author, an accomplished public speaker and retreat facilitator. She has had many roles in non-profit leadership. She was the founding executive director of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. She continues to work for environmental justice, human rights and equal access to opportunity for all people without regard to race, class or gender. With her wife, Marceline she has established and is Executive Director of the Tutu Teach Foundation to enhance access to opportunity for women and girls. Ms. Tutu van Furth and her wife live in the Netherlands. They have four children and two grandchildren.

Sigrid van Aken
CEO
Postcode Lottery Group

Sigrid van Aken is the CEO of the Postcode Lottery Group, a private company, fully owned by a non-profit foundation, and one of the world’s largest private charity donors. Under her leadership, the Group has become a leading force in fundraising across five European countries and beyond, raising €1 billion for charitable causes in 2025. Since the first Postcode Lottery was launched in the Netherlands in 1989, €15.5 billion has been donated to charities. A firm believer in the power of civil society, Sigrid is a strong advocate for unrestricted, long-term funding, recognising its vital role in today’s dynamic world where core funding is essential. The Postcode Lottery Group supports hundreds of charity partners and thousands of initiatives, contributing to a fairer, healthier, greener world while strengthening communities.

Sigrid’s leadership is defined by collaboration, innovation, and the transformative power of collective action, values that are deeply embedded in the Postcode Lottery Group’s purpose to help build a better world.

Philippe Bolopion
Executive Director
Human Rights Watch

Philippe Bolopion is the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. He was formerly the United Nations Director of Human Rights Watch and has held several leadership positions. Bolopion has extensive experience in designing and implementing Human Rights Watch’s advocacy strategies worldwide and in overseeing the organization’s advocacy response to crises. He has traveled extensively to conflict zones, including in Myanmar, Burundi, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Mali. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 2010, he spent five years working with the French daily Le Monde as the UN correspondent in New York. He has also worked as a journalist for France 24 and Radio France Internationale (RFI). Before working in New York, Bolopion was based in Pristina, where he reported on the end of the Kosovo Conflict in 1999 and 2000. Most recently he was the managing director of the French asset management firm TOBAM, where he helped launch a democracy-centered investment strategy.

Bolopion is the author of “Guantanamo: le bagne du bout du monde” (La Découverte, 2004). He is a graduate of Sciences Po Bordeaux and the CUEJ, the journalism school of Strasbourg.

Lama Fakih
Program Director
Human Rights Watch

Lama Fakih is Human Rights Watch’s Program Director. Prior to her current role, Fakih was Middle East and North Africa Director and the Director of the Beirut office from March 2022 through March 2025 . She was the Director of the Crisis and Conflict Division from October 2019 through February 2022 and the Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division from September 2016 through September 2019. She was a Senior Crisis Advisor in Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Program and was Human Rights Watch’s Syria and Lebanon researcher from 2011 to 2015.

Previously, she worked as the Gender, Human Rights, and Counter-Terrorism Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at the New York University School of Law. In 2008 to 2009 she was the Center Fellow at CHRGJ, where she worked on a range of human rights issues including corporate accountability and human rights and counter-terrorism. Additionally, Fakih was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research on the implementation of Islamic law in the Egyptian National Courts.

Fakih holds a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a law degree from New York University, where she was awarded the Ann Petluck Poses Memorial Prize for her work in the university’s International Human Rights Clinic. She speaks English and Arabic.

Arvind Ganesan
Director of the Economic Justice and Rights Division & Senior Advisor to the Executive Committee
Human Rights Watch

Arvind Ganesan is the Director of Human Rights Watch’s Economic Justice and Rights Division and Senior Advisor to the Executive Committee. He leads the organization’s work to expose human rights abuses linked to business and other economic activity, hold institutions accountable, and develop standards to prevent future abuses. This work has included research and advocacy on a wide range of issues including the extractive industries; public and private security providers; international financial institutions; freedom of expression and information through the internet; labor rights; supply chain monitoring and due diligence regimes; corruption; sanctions; and predatory practices against the poor. Ganesan’s work has covered countries such as Angola, Azerbaijan, Burma, China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, India, Indonesia, the United States, and Nigeria. His recent research has focused on predatory lending practices and governance issues on Native American reservations in the United States. He has written numerous reports, op-eds, and other articles and is widely cited by the media.

Ganesan has also worked to develop industry standards to ensure companies and other institutions respect human rights. He is a founder of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights for the oil, gas, and mining industries and is a founding member of the Global Network Initiative (GNI) for the internet and telecommunications industries, where he also serves on the board. Ganesan has helped to develop standards for international financial institutions such as the World Bank, and regularly engages governments in an effort to develop mandatory rules or strengthen existing standards such as the Kimberley Process. He serves on the board of EGJustice, a nongovernmental organization that promotes good governance in Equatorial Guinea, and is a member of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR)’s steering committee.

Before joining Human Rights Watch, Ganesan worked as a medical researcher. He attended the University of Oklahoma.

Bruno Stagno Ugarte
Chief Advocacy Officer
Human Rights Watch

Bruno Stagno Ugarte is the Chief Advocacy Officer. Before joining Human Rights Watch, he was Executive Director of Security Council Report from 2011-2014, Foreign Minister of Costa Rica from 2006-2010, Ambassador to the United Nations from 2002-2006 and Chief of Staff of the Foreign Ministry from 1998-2000, among other foreign service postings. He also served as the President of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court from 2005-2008 and Co-President of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Article 14 Conferences from 2007-2009. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, the Sorbonne and Princeton University and author or editor of several books, chapters and articles, including The UN Security Council in the Age of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2014). In 2011 he was made an Officier de la Légion d'Honneur. He is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

Anna Bacciarelli
Senior Researcher, Technology, Rights & Investigations
Human Rights Watch

Anna is the Senior Artificial Intelligence Researcher at Human Rights Watch. She leads on research relating to AI technologies for the organization globally, across all sectors and domains. She joined Human Rights Watch in 2022.

Prior to working for Human Rights Watch, Anna was AI Program Manager Open Society Foundations where she led global grantmaking and initiatives on AI. Before that, she established the global research program on AI at Amnesty International in 2016, as the organization’s first researcher focused on AI and algorithmic accountability. Previously, Anna led digital development projects and campaigns for UK human rights NGOs.

Anna co-founded and runs REAL ML, a global community of practice that advances AI accountability work rooted in interdisciplinary, collaborative approaches, and principles of equity and decoloniality. She is based in London, UK.

Elizabeth Evenson
Director, International Justice Program
Human Rights Watch

Liz Evenson is the international justice director at Human Rights Watch. Previously as associate director in the International Justice Program her research and advocacy centered on the International Criminal Court, monitoring the court’s institutional development and conducting advocacy toward court officials and its member countries. She joined Human Rights Watch in 2006 as a Leonard H. Sandler fellow in the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, focused on Uganda. During periods of leave from Human Rights Watch, Liz served as a civil society program officer with No Peace Without Justice’s Libya Project and as the Secretariat Director at the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. She was a visiting scholar from March to April 2014 at the Human Rights Center at the University of California Berkeley School of Law. She holds a B.A. from the University of Chicago, an M.Phil from the University of Nottingham, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Abir Ghattas
Chief Information Officer
Human Rights Watch

Abir is the Chief Information Officer at Human Rights Watch, where she leads the Information Security, IT Operations, and Enterprise Architecture teams. She is responsible for shaping HRW’s global technology strategy, strengthening digital resilience, and driving secure, connected systems that enable the organization’s human rights mission. Abir also leads HRW’s digital enablement and modernization agenda, aligning technology, data, and business solutions. She holds a BS in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics and an MA in Communication and Digital Strategies.

Carine Kaneza Nantulya
Deputy Africa Director
Human Rights Watch

Carine Kaneza Nantulya is a deputy director within the Africa division at Human Rights Watch. From 2018 to 2022, she was HRW’s Africa advocacy director, overseeing the division’s advocacy portfolio in approximately 30 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is a transitional justice practitioner with twenty years’ experience in human rights programming and conflict resolution in Burundi, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and South Africa, among other countries.

She led a regional human rights program called "New Tactics in Human Rights" at the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, Cape Town, South Africa, where she focused on cross regional learning and training on human rights advocacy strategy and tactics. She has also worked on the peace negotiations between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army, advising the negotiation teams.

She has worked as an independent consultant and evaluator for governments as well as international and African organizations, including the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission of Rwanda, the Forum of Conscience in Sierra Leone, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Uganda, the Ugandan Ministry of Justice, Search for Common Ground, Global Rights, and the Juba Initiative Fund (JIP) of the peace process between the government of Uganda and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Carine holds a master’s degree in Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

Akshaya Kumar
Director of Crisis Advocacy
Human Rights Watch

Akshaya Kumar is the Director of Crisis Advocacy at Human Rights Watch. She oversees the organization’s advocacy response to emergencies and develops innovative strategies to respond to evolving crises. Kumar joined HRW as Deputy United Nations Director in 2015 and represented the organization at UN headquarters in New York for four years. She previously worked at the Enough Project where she helped launch The Sentry, an initiative that seeks to freeze war criminals out of the international financial system. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Akshaya holds a JD from Columbia University and an LLM in human rights, conflict and justice from the School of Oriental and African Studies. She speaks Tamil, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic and English.

Allan Ngari
Advocacy Director, Africa
Human Rights Watch

Allan is Africa Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch. He has extensive experience and expertise on Africa’s human rights landscape and the advocacy opportunities and challenges now and in coming years. Previously at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, where as the Advocacy Programme Manager since June 2022, he facilitated a knowledge agenda on transitional justice and human rights, and provided strategic leadership to secure multi-stakeholder cooperation, partnerships, and funding for the Center’s work with the African Union, regional economic communities and mechanisms, as well as with African Union member states, civil society organizations, victim groups and associations, and women and youth groups. Prior to that Allan was the Dakar, Senegal-based West Africa Regional Coordinator for the ENACT Project at the Institute for Security Studies where he implemented a multi-Euro EU and German Foreign Office funded project with ECOWAS Commission and ECOWAS Member States on knowledge management and response to organized crime in West Africa.

Through his work, over eight years, with the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, Allan researched issues and coordinated projects to advance the fight against impunity for serious crimes and human rights violations in Africa. Among many other roles at the ISS, he coordinated the workplans of the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum’s East Africa and West Africa Working Groups, which involved policy research, advocacy and technical assistance to Central, East, Horn and West African countries to develop and implement processes relating to radicalization, violence and violent extremism. Before the ISS, Allan worked at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, Cape Town South Africa, running projects on the Great Lakes (Burundi, DR Congo, Rwanda and Uganda) and Greater Horn, and then led the Kenya and International Justice desks on transitional justice and reconciliation, gender justice, electoral reform and civic education, as well as reparations for victims of human rights abuse, and the impact of mass trauma. A prolific writer and public analyst, Allan has published in English and French, dozens of reports, policy briefs, working papers, media articles and opinions. He holds a law degree from the University of Nairobi and a master of law degree from Stellenbosch University, and speaks Kikuyu, Swahili, English, French and basic Portugues

Conor O'Loughlin
Global Media Director
Human Rights Watch

Conor O’Loughlin is Global Media Director at Human Rights Watch, where he leads the organization’s international communications strategy and outreach. With more than 20 years of experience in journalism and international advocacy, he has led high-impact communications and campaigns on issues relating to conflict and international humanitarian law.

Before joining Human Rights Watch, he held leadership roles across the United Nations system and served as Director of Communications at Crisis Action, where he led award-winning global campaigns on crises including those in Syria, South Sudan and Yemen. He holds degrees from the University of Amsterdam and Dublin City University.