IHRIP's Advisory Board

IHRIP relies on a small international Advisory Board to define its focus, policies, program areas and priorities. Advisory Board members are activists from different regions of the world who bring to the program an understanding of broad developments and trends in their regions as well as knowledge about human rights work and organizations there. Advisory Board members make all decisions on applications submitted to the program.

Current Advisory Board members are:

Mr. D. J. Ravindran, Chair from India, was the founder of Forum-Asia. He currently coordinates the human rights program of UNMIS in Sudan, and prior to that, was with the UN human rights programs in East Timor and Cambodia.

Mr. Fouad Abdelmoumni is the CEO of Association Al Amana in Morocco, a “bank of the poor” that provides half a million micro-loans.   Prior to his work with Al Amana, Mr. Abdelmoumni managed MADI (Maghreb Développement Investissement), a social venture capital fund.  He is a civil society activist and former Vice President of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights.

Ms. Bibiane Mbaye Gahamanyi is a human rights activist from Rwanda, who lived for a number of years in Senegal. Ms. Mbaye formerly worked with the African Centre for Human Rights Studies in Banjul and is currently working with Action Aid International as a Policy Coordinator for West and Central Africa. Fundamental to her work there is a rights based approach to development, which involves understanding poverty in terms of human rights.

Mr. Johannes L. "Babes" Ignacio is a lawyer from the Philippines who was the founder and for many years Director of Alterlaw in Manila. He has served as a trainer in a number of Forum-Asia programs.

Ms. Viviana Krsticevic is the Executive Director of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). Ms. Krsticevic previously worked as a fellow at Cambridge University and Somerville Legal Services, where she counseled refugee women from Somalia and Haiti on immigration law. Ms. Krsticevic has also taught at American University, Stanford University and the Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) .

Professor David Weissbrodt was the founder of IHRIP. He is with the Faculty of Law at the University of Minnesota and a member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.