Advisory Board

A legal professional with extensive experience in advocacy and policy within the nonprofit sector. Currently serving as the Lead for Legal and Shareholder Advocacy at Oxfam America, Kearney is also a board member of Amnesty America. She has previously held roles as a Policy Associate at Accountability Counsel and as a Visiting Instructor and Telford Taylor Fellow at the Cardozo School of Law. Kearney initially worked at Oxfam America as a Legal Advisor in the Private Sector Department and has gained valuable experience through internships and advocacy roles at organizations such as USAID, the Global Justice Clinic, and Amnesty International Australia. Kearney holds a Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law, a Master’s degree in Development Economics and International Development from Lund University, and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Boston University.

Prof. Keith D. Watenpaugh is Professor of Human Rights Studies at the University of California, Davis and founding director of the university’s Human Rights Studies Program (2015-2025). Author of Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (University of California Press, 2015) and Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton University Press, 2006). His articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, Social History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Humanity, and the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies. An American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, he has received support for his scholarship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Social Science Research Council, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; he has been a residential scholar at the American Academy in Berlin and the American University of Beirut, and was awarded the Institute of International Education’s Centennial Medal for his work on behalf of refugee university students. He is completing a graphic novelization of Karnig Panian’s Goodbye, Antoura: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide for Stanford University Press and writing a human rights history of Syria 2011-2024.

Brenda Lis Austin is a lawyer and a Provincial Legislator for the province of Córdoba. She served two terms as a National Deputy. She teaches Constitutional Law at the National University of Córdoba (UNC) and holds a Master's degree in Public Policy. She has experience in human rights, constitutional and conventional law, and electoral processes.

The Honourable Jason Kenney recently completed a distinguished twenty-five-year career in public service. He was elected to Parliament in 1997, and was re-elected six times with an average of 76% of the vote.

He served in the Harper government some of the largest federal departments as Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism; Minister of Employment and Social Development; and Minister of National Defence, while chairing the influential Cabinet Operations Committee.

In 2016 Jason launched a successful campaign to unite Alberta’s free enterprise parties, going on to win a landslide majority to become Alberta’s eighteenth Premier. His government focused on the successful renewal of Alberta’s economy, while working with Indigenous people to create economic opportunity. He now serves as a Senior Advisor at Bennett Jones LLP, and BMO, is a Senior Fellow of the C.D. Howe Institute, and is a member of several corporate boards.

Valérie Boyer is a French Senator since 2020, member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and the Armed Forces, member of the European Affairs Committee. She belongs to the right wing of Les Républicains party. She was MP at the National Assembly from 2007 to 2020, deputy mayor of Marseille from 2008 to 2014 and mayor of the sixth sector of Marseille from 2014 to 2017. She advocates for the Armenian Genocide (particularly she led the legislative battle to punish its denial), the self-determination of Nagorno-Karabakh and for the protection of Eastern Christians.

James W. Carden served as an advisor to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission and to the Special Representative for Intergovernmental Affairs at the US State Department under President Obama. His work on US foreign policy has appeared in publications across the political spectrum, including The National Interest, The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Realist Review, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Spectator, Quartz, among many others. He serves on the boards of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy and the American Committee for US-Russia Accord. 

Janine di Giovanni is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished foreign correspondents of her generation. She has reported from 18 war zones and three genocides. She is currently the Executive Director and CEO of The Reckoning Project, a transnational war crimes documentation initiative she co-founded in 2022. She is a geopolitical analyst and Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs. Her expertise spans human rights, transitional justice, and accountability, with a regional focus on the Middle East, the Balkans, Ukraine/Russia, and Africa. Author of eighտ books, including The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria (2016), and The Vanishing: Faith, Loss, and the Twilight of Christianity in the Land of the Prophets (2021)

Professor of Law at Yale Law School,. Bâli’s teaching and research interests include public international law — particularly human rights law and the law of the international security order — and comparative constitutional law, with a focus on the Middle East. She has written on the nuclear non-proliferation regime, humanitarian intervention, the roles of race and empire in the interpretation and enforcement of international law, the role of judicial independence in constitutional transitions, federalism and decentralization in the Middle East, and constitutional design in religiously divided societies. Bâli’s scholarship has appeared in many law reviews. She has also written essays and op-eds for such venues as The New York Times, The Boston Review, The London Review of Books, Jacobin, and Dissent. Bâli currently serves as co-chair of the Advisory Board for the Middle East Division of Human Rights Watch. She is also on the board of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association and on the editorial board of the American Journal of International Law.

Gert M. Binder is an Austrian based in Geneva and holds a Master's Degree in Law and Latin American studies from the University of Vienna and an MPI Peacebuilding course from Mindanao, Philippines. He has lived and worked for several years in countries like Mozambique, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Venezuela, evaluating INGO projects and/or managing development cooperation projects.

Gert has performed different positions since 2002 as an election observation expert in over 27 Asian, African, and Latin American countries with the European Commission, UN, OSCE, NGO,s and the Carter Centre. Some of these missions were conducted in politically complex and volatile security environments.

Ricard Torrell i Blanquer is an independent public affairs consultant. He served as head of the European Parliament President’s office (2003-2007), Secretary-General of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) (1988 -1993), President of the European Youth Forum (EYF) (1993 – 1995).

Reinhold Eckhardt is an educator and NGO manager with extensive experience working with children and young people, asylum seekers of all ages, and training programs that support unemployed individuals in re-entering the labour market. He has also contributed to development projects across Africa, Central America, and the Middle East.

In Austria, he has been actively involved in the political planning of a wide range of regional and national social initiatives, including children’s protection shelters. Earlier in his career, he served for 20 years as a Political Executive Officer for the Social Democratic Party of Austria.

He has advised Austrian prime ministers, governors, and members of the European Parliament. His leadership roles include serving as General Secretary of the Socialist Youth of Austria, Vice President of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY), and a board member of the National Youth Council.

In addition, he has worked on projects aimed at increasing societal participation in democratic processes and still as a political advisor. He currently serves as CEO of Zeit!Raum, a nonprofit foundation that acts as an umbrella organization for sociocultural projects in Vienna, Carinthia, and other regions of Austria.

Knut W. Fleckenstein is the former Member of the European Parliament (2009-2019), VP of the group of Progressive Alliance of Sozialist and Democrats. Coordinator for foreign policy | Member of EURONEST

He is a German member of SPD (Sozialdemokratic Party) , living in Hamburg. 

He is chairman of the federal board of a German welfare organisation with 1.6 mil members, Arbeiter Samariter Bund. 

The organisation is i.a. working on social care, medical aid and and health issues in Germany and in more than 30 different countries.

He is also president of the European organisation: Samaritan International