ICTJ Staff

Juan E. Méndez
President
jmendez@ictj.org

A native of Lomas de Zamora, Argentina, Mr. Méndez has dedicated his legal career to the defense of human rights and has a long and distinguished record of advocacy throughout the Americas. As a result of his involvement in representing political prisoners, the Argentinean military dictatorship arrested him and subjected him to torture and administrative detention for more than a year. During this time, Amnesty International adopted him as a "Prisoner of Conscience." After his release from detention in the late 1970s, Mr. Méndez moved to the United States.

For 15 years, he worked with Human Rights Watch, concentrating his efforts on human rights issues in the western hemisphere. In 1994, he became general counsel of Human Rights Watch, with worldwide duties in support of the organization's mission, including responsibility for the organization's litigation and standard-setting activities. From 1996 to 1999, Mr. Méndez was the Executive Director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica, and between October 1999 and May 2004 he was Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Between 2000 and 2003 he was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, and served as President in 2002. In July 2004, Mr. Méndez was appointed the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, a post that is complementary to his full-time position as the president of the ICTJ.

He has taught International Human Rights Law at Georgetown Law School and at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and he teaches regularly at the Oxford Masters Program in International Human Rights Law in the United Kingdom. He is the recipient of several human rights awards, the most recent being the inaugural "Monsignor Oscar A. Romero Award for Leadership in Service to Human Rights," by the University of Dayton in April 2000, and the "Jeanne and Joseph Sullivan Award" of the Heartland Alliance in May 2003. Mr. Méndez is a member of the bar of Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the District of Columbia, U.S., having earned a J.D. from Stella Maris University in Argentina and a certificate from the American University, Washington College of Law.

Ellen Baird
Program Administrator
ebaird@ictj.org

Ellen Baird worked as the assistant to the Chief of Staff-Financial Services at the Administration for Children's Services, was executive assistant to design partners at the architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and was the administrator for the National Dance Residency Program at the New York Foundation for the Arts. Previously, she spent three years teaching English as a Second Language to Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese women refugees for the San Francisco-based nonprofit, Refugee Transitions, and taught English for a year to children in bilingual schools in Guadalajara and Guanajuato, Mexico. She holds a B.A. in German (with honors) from the University of California-Berkeley and an M.F.A. in Dance/Choreography from Mills College. Ms. Baird has performed and choreographed for dance companies in San Francisco and New York City.

Lorraine Belgrave
Executive Assistant to the President
lbelgrave@ictj.org

Lorraine Belgrave received her B.A. in Mathematics with a minor in Education. She worked for the New York City Public School System teaching third and fourth grades, before joining the Ford Foundation as assistant to Fred Friendly, considered the dean of broadcast journalism. Upon Mr. Friendly's retirement, Ms. Belgrave became assistant to the president of Barnard College and later of the American Museum of Natural History. Ms. Belgrave is a member of the Seraphic Society.

Louis Bickford
Director, Networks and Capacity Building Unit
lbickford@ictj.org

Louis Bickford, a political scientist, has consulted with governmental and nongovernmental organizations, human rights activists, and democratic movements on strategies for confronting the legacies of past abuse in more than a dozen countries, including Burma, Mexico, and Nigeria. As Director of Alliances and Capacity Development, he manages the Transitional Justice Alliance (a global network of NGOs and individuals involved in transitional justice); coordinates fellowship programs in Cape Town, South Africa, and Santiago, Chile, and develops training materials in collaboration with international partners such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He also develops the Center's thematic work on monuments and memorials. Previously, he was the Associate Director of the Global Studies Program and a lecturer in International Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In addition to teaching regular seminars on human rights, he coordinated the Legacies of Authoritarianism project, working closely with partner institutions and with scholars and human rights activists from Latin America, South East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Southern Africa. Prior to his arrival at the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Bickford worked as a frequent consultant to the Human Rights and the Democratic Governance Programs at the Ford Foundation in Santiago, Chile, and was a Visiting Researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO-Chile). He earned a Ph.D. at McGill University (1997) and an M.A. at the New School for Social Research (1993), both in political science, and did additional graduate work at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published in Human Rights Quarterly, Latin American Research Review, and various magazines and newspapers, and has book chapters in a number of edited volumes. He is a contributor to the forthcoming book "The Art of Truthtelling After Authoritarian Rule", and is the author of the entry on Transitional Justice for the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (Macmillan). He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at numerous colleges and universities, and is currently Adjunct Professor of graduate studies in the department of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Lydiah Bosire
Program Associate
lbosire@ictj.org

A Kenyan national, Lydiah Bosire holds a Masters in Public Administration from Cornell University and a B.A. with honors in government with a concentration in international relations from the same university. Prior to joining the ICTJ, Ms. Bosire was involved in a wide range of projects focused on the participation rights of youth in the policy dialogue on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. She is also co-founder of Youth Against AIDS, an international network of organizations and activists, and in that capacity, she has worked with such organizations as the UN Youth Unit and UNICEF. Most recently, under Family Health International, Ms. Bosire was coordinator for the Barcelona YouthForce, bringing together more than 40 different organizations, key stakeholders, and the media around the youth platform at the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain. She has participated in various international human rights programs, including the International Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution program, and has also been a student delegate to Václav Havel's Forum 2000.

Paddy Clark
Program Associate / Office Administrator
paddyclark@ictj.org.za

Paddy Clark has worked with ICTJ fouding President Alex Boraine since 1975 in the South African Parliament, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission and, currently, in the South Africa office of the ICTJ.

Eric Darko
Documentation Officer
edarko@ictj.org

A lawyer and librarian from Ghana, Eric O. Darko heads the documentation department of the ICTJ. Mr. Darko's interest in human rights dates back to his student days at the University of Ghana, where he served as the Organizing Secretary of the Movement for Freedom and Justice, a pressure group that advocated a return to democratic rule in Ghana. He was admitted to the Ghana Bar in 1994 and practiced law for one year before moving to New York. He worked as Foreign Associate for two law firms in New York as well as a reference librarian at The New York Public Library, where he helped set up libraries in correctional facilities. He also worked as head of circulation and bibliographic instruction librarian at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, Riverdale. He holds a B.A. in Law and Political Science from the University of Ghana, Legon, a Barrister at Law degree from Ghana School of Law, an M.S. in library and information science from Long Island University, and an LL.M. in international business and trade law from Fordham University School of Law. He was a Crowley Advocate of International Human Rights at Fordham and took part in a fact-finding mission to Ghana. He is a member of the American Library Association, Ghana Bar, and New York Bar.

Pablo De Greiff
Director, Research Unit
pdegreiff@ictj.org

Pablo De Greiff, a native of Colombia, obtained his B.A. at Yale and his Ph.D. in philosophy at Northwestern University. Most recently, he was associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has written extensively on transitions to democracy, democratic theory, and the relationship between morality, politics, and law. From 2000 to 2001, he was the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is currently completing a book entitled Redeeming the Claims of Justice in Transitions to Democracy.

Erik Detiger
Deputy Director of Development
edetiger@ictj.org

Erik Detiger has over 10 years of experience as an international project manager and development professional, most recently as a program officer with UNICEF’s Global Health Program. Erik has worked in the non-profit field since 1995: in the Netherlands for a grass-roots human rights organization; in Tanzania and the United States for UNICEF emergency and health programs; and in Nepal for the International Labor Organization’s Child Labor Elimination Program. He has degrees from Webster University and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Roger Duthie
Research Associate
rduthie@ictj.org

Roger Duthie has an M.A. in International Relations from Yale University and a B.A. in History with a concentration in International Relations from Cornell University. Before attending graduate school, he worked as a researcher and writer at KPMG; a program assistant at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, where he edited the quarterly publication, Human Rights Dialogue; and an editorial assistant at Oxford University Press. Mr. Duthie has also worked as an intern in the Best Practices Unit at the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the Foreign Policy Association, and the United Nations Association.

Elsa E. España
Travel Coordinator
eespana@ictj.org

Elsa E. España, a native of Honduras, obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration in International Management from Pace University in 2002, where she focused on the region of Latin America, minored in Spanish, and widely studied travel and tourism. Prior to her work at the ICTJ, she was a Logistics Coordinator and Travel Coordinator for the nonprofit organization AFS Intercultural Programs/USA in Miami, New York, and Chicago, where she arranged and implemented travel plans for more than 3000 foreign exchange students hosted in the United States.

Mark Freeman
Senior Project Manager
mfreeman@ictj.org

Mark Freeman holds a BA from McGill University, an LL.B from the University of Ottawa, and an LL.M from Columbia University where he was a Human Rights Fellow and Bretzfelder International Law Fellow. He has published widely in the field of human rights. He is co-author of International Human Rights Law (Irwin Law, 2004) and International Human Rights Law: Texts, Cases and Materials (Irwin Law, forthcoming 2005), and author of Truth Commissions and Procedural Fairness (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2005). As a specialist in the field of transitional justice, he has conducted missions to a wide range of countries including Morocco, Kenya, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Sri Lanka, Panama, Colombia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro. He has taught at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, and is Senior Research Fellow in Human Rights at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies.

Eduardo Gonzalez
Senior Associate
egonzalez@ictj.org

Eduardo Gonzalez is a Peruvian sociologist with a M.A. from the New School for Social Research in New York. He has been the Global South Outreach coordinator for the worldwide NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court, a civil society campaign that worked toward putting into force the Rome Statute of the ICC. He was also a staff member of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he was responsible for Public Hearings and Victims and Witnesses Protection, and a member of the editorial committee for the Commission's Final Report.

Suzana Grego
Director of Communications
sgrego@ictj.org

Suzana Grego has several years of communications experience in the private sector, most recently directing communications programs for IBM Lotus Software. Prior to her high-tech marketing and communications work, Ms. Grego was active in the international economic development and human rights fields. She has managed a business development program in Russia under the auspices of the International Executive Service Corps, a nonprofit consulting organization. As a human rights activist with the Croatian Helsinki Committee in Zagreb, Croatia, Ms. Grego investigated and reported human rights violations committed by government officials and civilians against the minority Serb population. She obtained a B.A. with honors in government with a concentration in international relations from Harvard University and a Master of International Affairs with concentrations in human rights and Eastern Europe from Columbia University.

Blaz Gutierrez
Program Assistant
bgutierrez@ictj.org

Blaz Gutierrez earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Cello Performance from the University of Redlands, before beginning a Masters in Latin American Studies at Tulane University, focusing on the Guatemalan truth commission. Previously, he interned with Creative Associates International, a civil society advocacy group in San Salvador; with Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum in Mexico City; and most recently with the ICTJ.

Priscilla Hayner
Director, International Policymakers Unit
phayner@ictj.org

Priscilla Hayner, a co-founder of the ICTJ, is an expert on truth commissions and transitional justice initiatives around the world and has written widely on the subject of official truth-seeking in political transitions. She is the author of Unspeakable Truths (Routledge, 2001), which explores the work of more than 20 truth commissions worldwide. Prior to joining the ICTJ, she was a consultant to the Ford Foundation, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other organizations. Ms. Hayner was previously a program officer on international human rights and world security for the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation in New York. She holds degrees from Earlham College and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Rachel Madenyika
Management Research Associate
rmadenyika@ictj.org

Rachel Madenyika joins the ICTJ with a background in Financial Management and International Studies-Latin America from Guilford College, NC and a Masters in Nonprofit Management from the New School University-Milano Graduate School of Management & Urban Policy. Prior to the ICTJ, Ms. Madenyika worked at the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in the Peace Development Program. While at QUNO, she worked closely with numerous NGOs and well as with other intergovernmental organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF. Prior to that, she interned with the European Union-Zimbabwe, and was project coordinator for Save the Children-KY. She is currently pursuing a Masters in International Affairs from the New School Graduate Program in International Affairs. Ms Madenyika serves on the advisory committees of the AFSC-Africa Program and the Quaker United Nations Office, NY.

Lisa Magarrell
Senior Associate
lmagarrell@ictj.org

Ms. Magarrell holds law degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of El Salvador, and an LL.M. from Columbia University, where she was a Human Rights Fellow and Kent Scholar. For the ICTJ, she currently advises the Greensboro (North Carolina) Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and leads the ICTJ’s program in Peru, where she has done extensive work on reparations issues. She leads ICTJ’s country work on reparations, and in that capacity has engaged in providing technical assistance to Colombia, Ghana, Guatemala, and Timor -Leste. Her human rights work over the past 25 years also includes six years of legal advocacy on behalf of asylum seekers and migrant workers in the U.S .; more than 7 years leading the international legal work of the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES); and more than five years as a political affairs officer with the United Nations Verification Mission for Guatemala (MINUGUA).

Giulia Marchiori
Program Assistant
gmarchiori@ictj.org

Giulia Marchiori obtained her B.A. in Comparative Literature with a concentration in French, Italian, and Spanish Literature from Barnard College in 2003. Before joining the ICTJ, she worked as a paralegal in the Business Reorganization Department at Willkie, Farr & Gallagher LLP.

Alexander Mayer-Rieckh
Research Consultant
amayer-rieckh@ictj.org

Alexander Mayer-Rieckh, a native of Austria, is a human rights lawyer with extensive experience in postconflict institutional reform. In 2003, he was the recipient of a fellowship at the Center for Civil and Human Rights, University of Notre Dame Law School, where he conducted research on international legal standards for vetting of civil servants in transition situations. In 2002, he participated in a comprehensive assessment of United Nations peace operations at King's College London and was the principal drafter of its East Timor country study. Mr. Mayer-Rieckh was Chief of the Human Rights Office of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Head of the Operations and Documentation Unit of the United Nations Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda, and Head of the Policy and Planning Unit of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor. He has also worked for the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Mr. Mayer-Rieckh obtained his B.A. in philosophy at the Hochschule fuer Philosphie in Munich, his M.Div. at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his Masters in Law at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.

Jim McGarry
Director of Finance and Administration
jmcgarry@ictj.org

Jim McGarry has more than 30 years' experience in various nonprofit organizations, including serving as CFO of City Harvest Inc. and the American Ballet Theatre. For the past eight years he has taught courses in financial management for not-for-profit organizations at the NYU School of Professional Development.

Hanny Megally
Director, Middle East and North Africa Program
hmegally@ictj.org

Hanny Megally has more than 26 years of experience in the field of human rights in the Middle East and North Africa. From 1984 to 1994, he headed the Middle East Research department at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, based in London. In the four ensuing years, he ran the Ford Foundation's social justice program in the Middle East from the Foundation's Cairo office, and from 1997 to 2003 he was the Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. He is widely traveled in the region, including leading human rights research missions and conducting high-level meetings with heads of state and government officials.

Kelli Muddell
Program Associate
kmuddell@ictj.org

M. Kelli Muddell graduated from North Park College of Chicago with a B.A. in Sociology in 1996. She received a Presidential Fellowship to attend Fordham University, where she earned an M.A. in International Political Economy and Development with a concentration in Development Studies. While in graduate school, she interned in the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, and was a contributing writer for its World Report 2000.

Vasuki Nesiah
Senior Associate
vnesiah@ictj.org

Vasuki Nesiah heads up the ICTJ's work in South Africa, Ghana, and Sri Lanka. She also leads the Center's work on gender and non-state actors in transitional justice, and co-leads the project on Innovations in Justice. Originally from Sri Lanka, Ms. Nesiah joined the ICTJ from a teaching fellowship with the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School. She recently completed her doctorate in public international law at Harvard Law School, where she also received her J.D. with honors. She has published and lectured in international and comparative law, feminist theory, law and development, postcolonial studies, constitutionalism, and governance in plural societies. She holds a B.A. in philosophy and political science from Cornell University, where she graduated with distinctions in all subjects. She was also a visiting student of philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University.

Veerle Opgenhaffen
Program Assistant
vopgenhaffen@ictj.org

Veerle Opgenhaffen holds an M.A. in International Affairs from the New School for Social Research, with a concentration in Rights and Governance. During her graduate career she worked as a research assistant to Professor David Gold and interned with Hanny Megally in the MENA department at the ICTJ. She earned a B.A. in International Relations from Antioch College, where she had the opportunity to intern at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, the Kenyan Voluntary Development Agency, and the Center for Health and Development in Haiti. Prior to working at the ICTJ, she worked as a senior editor and writer for a human rights publication in Ohio and for Gale Publishing.

Dawn Page
Development Coordinator
dpage@ictj.org

Dawn Page earned a B.A. degree in History from Swarthmore College and focused most of her coursework in the areas of Latin American Studies and International Relations. While at Swarthmore, Dawn studied in Merida, Venezuela. She has also studied at the University of Salamanca in Spain. She has worked at Swarthmore College, where she planned events for the president of the College. Most recently, she organized fundraising events and assisted in the development office at New School University.

Caitlin Reiger
Senior Associate
creiger@ictj.org

Caitlin Reiger is an Australian lawyer with a BA (History)(Hons) and LLB (Hons) from the University of Melbourne and an LLM (International Law/Human Rights) from the London School of Economics. She has worked on post-conflict justice initiatives in several countries and in 2001 she co-founded and served as Legal Research coordinator of the Judicial System Monitoring Program in East Timor to provide independent monitoring and analysis of the serious crimes process and trials. Ms. Reiger appeared as defence counsel before the Special Panels for Serious Crimes and has provided policy advice and comparative research on hybrid national-international tribunals for serious human rights violations. She joins the ICTJ from Freetown, Sierra Leone, where since 2003 she has been the Senior Legal Adviser to the judges of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Hani Sabra
Program Associate
hsabra@ictj.org

Prior to joining ICTJ's Middle East and North Africa Program in July 2005, Hani Sabra served as Senior Researcher in the Middle East and North Africa Department of the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York. During his four years at CPJ, Mr. Sabra worked on several advocacy campaigns for imprisoned journalists, published articles in CPJ's biannual magazine Dangerous Assignments and wrote sections of CPJ’s annual report, Attacks on the Press. Mr. Sabra was educated at the American University in Cairo and New York University.

Graeme Simpson
Country Program Unit Director
gsimpson@ictj.org

Graeme Simpson has an LL.B. and an M.A. in history from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He has worked extensively on issues related to transitional justice, including extensive work with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and on the transformation of criminal justice institutions in South Africa. Mr. Simpson was a founder and, from 1995-2005, Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, in Johannesburg. He was one of the drafters of the National Crime Prevention Strategy, adopted by the South African cabinet in May 1996, as well as being a member of the drafting team for the South African White Paper on Safety and Security. Mr. Simpson has worked as a consultant to both governmental and non-governmental organizations in various countries, including Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia and Indonesia.

Miranda Sissons
Senior Associate
msissons@ictj.org

Miranda Sissons, an Australian, is a specialist in human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) in the Middle East. She also has a long-standing interest in East Timor. Before joining the ICTJ, Ms. Sissons worked as a researcher and consultant at Human Rights Watch; helped develop Arab civil society networks on the International Criminal Court; and served in the Australian diplomatic service. She has authored numerous publications on human rights and IHL issues in the Middle East and elsewhere. Ms. Sissons holds a BA (Hons) from Melbourne University and an MA in international relations from Yale University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar.

Carol Skyrm
Director of Development
cskyrm@ictj.org

Carol Skyrm has more than 15 years of experience as a professional fundraiser, most recently as director of development for the Population Council from 1994 to 2001. She has worked in international organizations since 1981: at the American University in Cairo and International House, New York, as a fundraiser; and in communications at the United Nations Department of Public Information and Interlink Press Service, an affiliate of Inter Press Service. She has degrees from Western Washington State University, the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), and from the Graduate School of Communications at the University of Washington.

Paul van Zyl
Program Director
pvanzyl@ictj.org

Paul van Zyl has acted as an adviser and consultant to human rights organizations, governments, international organizations, and foundations on transitional justice issues in many countries, including Colombia, Indonesia, East Timor, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 1995 to 1998, he served as Executive Secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. In that capacity he helped establish the Commission and develop its structure and modus operandi, and he played a central role in policy and strategy development throughout the life of the commission. He has also worked as a researcher for the Goldstone Commission, as a department head at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, and as an associate at Davis Polk and Wardwell in New York. Mr. van Zyl was recently director of Columbia University Law School's Transitional Justice Program, and now teaches law at both Columbia and New York University Law Schools. He obtained a B.A. and an LL.B. from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and an LL.M. in International Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He completed a second LL.M. in Corporate Law at New York University, where he was a Hauser Scholar.

Marieke Wierda
Senior Associate
mwierda@ictj.org

As a Dutch national born and raised in the Republic of Yemen, Marieke Wierda has had an avid interest in international issues from a young age. She was educated as a lawyer at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (LL.B., First Class Honors) and New York University (LL.M., Hauser Scholar), specializing in international law and human rights. The majority of her practical experience has been with the United Nations, most recently as an associate legal officer for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from 1997 to 2000. Prior to this, Ms. Wierda served as a researcher in the Office of the Legal Counsel at United Nations Headquarters in New York, and has volunteered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in London and with Interights, a London-based international human rights organization. Recently, Ms. Wierda provided legal assistance to the state of Eritrea in regard to the Claims Commission established to compensate victims of the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict. She has also taught international criminal law at the University of Richmond and has co-authored several publications in this field, including a book on International Criminal Evidence, co-authored with Judge Richard May of ICTY. At the Center, Ms. Wierda works on Sierra Leone (the Special Court and Truth and Reconciliation Commission), Afghanistan, the International Criminal Court, and other international justice issues.