Payam Akhavan is Associate Professor at McGill University. He teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, international criminal law and transitional justice, with a particular interest in human rights and multiculturalism, war crimes prosecutions, UN reform and the prevention of genocide. He was previously the Boulton Senior Fellow at McGill, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and Visiting Lecturer and Senior Fellow at Yale Law School and the Yale University Centre for International and Area Studies. He has published extensively including "Beyond Impunity: Can International Criminal Justice Prevent Future Atrocities?" (2001) 95 American Journal of International Law 7 (www.asil.org/ajil/recon2.pdf) selected by the International Library of Law and Legal Theory as one of "the most significant published journal essays in contemporary legal studies". He is also the author of the Report on the Work of the Office of the Special Advisor of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide (2005).
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Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director Emeritus of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Science (CITRIS). Her current research areas include artificial intelligence; biosystems and computational biology; control, intelligent systems, and robotics; graphics and human-computer interaction, computer vision; and security. From November 2001 to 2004, she served as director of CITRIS, an initiative bringing together the University of California campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Merced and Santa Cruz with private industry to develop ways to use information technology to affect people's daily lives. Prior to joining Berkeley, Dr. Bajcsy headed the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation where she managed a $500 million annual budget. As a former faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania, she also served as the Director of the University's General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception Laboratory, which she founded in 1978, and chaired the Computer and Information Science department from 1985 to 1990. [more...]

M. Cherif Bassiouni is a Distinguished Research Professor Law at DePaul University, where he has taught since 1964, and the President of the International Human Rights Law Institute (since 1990). He is also the President of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences, Siracusa, Italy (since 1988) and the Honorary President of the International Association of Penal Law, (President 1989-2004) and holds the position of non-resident Professor of Criminal Law at The University of Cairo (since 1996). He was a Guest Scholar at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. in 1972, Visiting Professor of Law, New York University Law School in 1971 and Fulbright-Hays Professor of International Criminal Law, The University of Freiburg, Germany in 1970, and is a frequent lecturer at universities in the U.S. and abroad. [more...]

Dr. Serge Brammertz is the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ('ICTY'), a position he has held since 1 January 2008.  In this role, Dr. Brammertz is responsible for the prosecution of all trials and appeals before the Tribunal. Prior to joining the ICTY, Dr. Brammertz was the Commissioner of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission ('UNIIIC') in Beirut, Lebanon. Dr. Brammertz headed the investigation into the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri from January 2006 until the end of 2007. [more...]

David Cohen has taught at the University of California, Berkeley since 1979. At UC Berkeley he is the Ancker Distinguished Professor for the Humanities and the founding Director of the Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center. Since 2000 he has collaborated on human rights projects in Asia with the East-West Center in Honolulu, a federally funded Asia-Pacific research center. There he serves as Director of the Asian International Justice Initiative and as Senior Fellow in International Law. From September 1, 2009 he will also be a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The War Crimes Studies Center and the Hoover Library and Archive are already collaborating on archival and IT projects in Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, and China. Cohen's involvement in research in war crimes tribunals began in the mid 1990's with a project to collect the records of the national war crimes programs conducted in approximately 20 countries in Europe and Asia after WWII. This project led to the creation of the Documentation Center for War Crimes Trials at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, co-directed by Cohen and Prof. Dieter Simon, and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. After successful completion of a pilot project of acquisitions, Cohen and Simon created a follow-on Center at the University of Marburg and Cohen founded the War Crimes Studies Center at UC Berkeley (2000). [more...]

As Executive Director of the International Bar Association (IBA) Mark Ellis leads the foremost international organization of bar associations, law firms and individual lawyers in the world. The IBA is comprised of 198 bar associations and 30,000 individual members from 194 countries. Prior to joining the IBA, Mr. Ellis spent ten years as the first Executive Director of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI), a project of the American Bar Association (ABA). Providing technical legal assistance to twenty-eight countries in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, CEELI remains the most extensive international pro bono legal assistance project ever undertaken by the US legal community. [more...]

Siri S. Frigaard is the first Chief Public Prosecutor and Director of the Norwegian National Authority for Prosecution of Organised and Other Serious Crime (2005-). The Office is responsible for the investigation and prosecution of the core international crimes, in addition to terrorism crime, computer crime, sexual abuse of children on the internet as well as organised crime. Formerly, she was the Deputy Director of the National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) in Norway (2003-05). She has been a Public Prosecutor in Norway since 1985, and Senior Public Prosecutor and Deputy Director for the regional prosecution office in Oslo since 1993. She has also been acting director for the same office in the year 2000. Prior to this appointment, she has been working as Assistant Chief of Police and prosecutor with the Oslo Police Department for about six years, mostly in charge of investigation of organised trafficking of drugs. From January 2002 until May 2003, she was Deputy General Prosecutor for Serious Crimes in East Timor, in charge of the investigation and prosecution of the serious crimes committed in the country prior to 1999. She has also served as Senior Prosecutor and special legal adviser to the General Prosecutor of Albania from June 1999 to October 2001. She has represented Norway in different committees in the European Council in Strasbourg and also in the Baltic Sea Co-operation concerning international legal aid. She is currently a member of the Norwegian Parliament's Accountability Select Committee, as well as of the executive boards of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), the International Criminal Law Services (ICLS) and the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP).

James A. Goldston is the founding Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, an operational arm of the Soros foundations network that promotes rights-based law reform worldwide. The Justice Initiative pursues international litigation, advocacy and research to address a wide range of problems, including mass atrocity crimes, statelessness, racial discrimination, barriers to free expression, excessive pre-trial detention, and corruption linked to exploitation of natural resources. In 2007-08, Goldston served as Coordinator of Prosecutions and Senior Trial Attorney at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he oversaw litigation in all cases involving the Office of the Prosecutor, including with respect to the situations in Darfur, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic. Previously, as Legal Director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center, Goldston spearheaded the development of ground-breaking civil rights cases before the European Court of Human Rights and United Nations treaty bodies. He was lead counsel in the decade-long litigation culminating in the landmark 2007 judgment of the Court in DH v. Czech Republic, which for the first time found a nationwide systemic practice of discrimination in breach of the European Convention. Goldston has also served as Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Director General for Human Rights of the Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, researcher for Human Rights Watch, and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School.

Richard Goldstone is a former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and was the first Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. He currently chairs a committee to advise the United Nations on appropriate steps to preserve the archives and legacy of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Justice Goldstone was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to the Independent International Committee, which investigated the Iraq Oil for Food program. Among his other professional endeavors, Goldstone served as chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry regarding Public Violence and Intimidation that came to be known as the Goldstone Commission; and of the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo. He also was co-chairperson of the International Task Force on Terrorism, which was established by the International Bar Association; director of the American Arbitration Association; a member of the International Group of Advisers of the International Committee of the Red Cross; and national president of the National Institute of Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (NICRO). He is also a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

Hanne Sophie Greve is Vice President of the Gulating High Court, Norway; and President of the Council of Europe Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. She has previously served inter alia as an Expert in the UN Commission of Experts for the Former Yugoslavia established pursuant to UNSC resolution 780 (1992), (1993-94); and Judge at the European Court of Human Rights (1998-2004). In the United Nations she has moreover, held office as a UNHCR assistant protection officer (1979-1981, duty station Bangkok) and as a mediator for the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (1992-beginning of 1993, duty station Phnom Penh). She has had several consultancies in and lectured extensively on international law (human rights, refugee law and criminal justice).

Mr. Motoo Noguchi is international judge of the Supreme Court Chamber at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) as well as a member of the tribunal's Judicial Administration Committee and Rules and Procedure Committee. In his home country, Japan, he is professor at UNAFEI (United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders), serving concurrently as senior attorney at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Legal Affairs Bureau. He started his career as public prosecutor at the Ministry of Justice in 1985 and has accumulated considerable experiences in criminal investigations and trials. He has also been engaged in the provision of legal technical assistance and capacity building for developing countries since 1996. From 2000-04, he was seconded to Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila as counsel at Office of the General Counsel. Since 2004, he has been acting as a legal advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning the International Criminal Court (ICC) and international criminal justice. He has written and spoken extensively on relevant subjects both in Japan and abroad. [more...]

Mr. Pace is the Executive Director of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy. He has served as the Convenor of the Coalition for an International Criminal Court since its founding in 1995 and is a co-founder and steering committee member of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect.  He has been engaged in international justice, rule of law, environmental law, and human rights for the past 30 years. He previously served as the Secretary-General of the Hague Appeal for Peace, the Director of the Center for the Development of International Law, and the Director of Section Relations of the Concerts for Human Rights Foundation at Amnesty International, among other positions. He is the President of the Board of the Center for United Nations Reform Education and an Advisory Board member of the One Earth Foundation, as well as the co-founder of the NGO Steering Committee for the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and the NGO Working Group on the United Nations Security Council. He is the recipient of the William J. Butler Human Rights Medal from the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights and currently serves as an Ashoka Foundation Fellow. Mr. Pace has authored numerous articles and reports on international justice, international affairs and UN issues, multilateral treaty processes, and civil society participation in international decision-making.

Darryl Robinson is a professor of international law, international criminal law and international human rights law at Queen's University in Canada. From 1997-2004, he served as a Legal Officer at Foreign Affairs Canada, where his work in the negotiation of the International Criminal Court Statute and in the development of Canada's new war crimes legislation earned him a Minister's Citation and a Minister's Award for Foreign Policy Excellence. From 2004 to 2006, he was an adviser to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, helping to shape the first policies and strategies of the new institution.  From 2006 to 2008, he was a Fellow, Adjunct Professor and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.  He joined Queen's University Faculty of Law in July 2008.  Professor Robinson was a Hauser Scholar at New York University School of Law (LL.M International Legal Studies), and a President's Scholar and Gold Medalist at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law.

Thorvald Stoltenberg, prominent Norwegian politician and diplomat, was Foreign Minister of Norway 1987-1989 and 1990-1993, and Minister of Defense 1979-1981. He served as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1990 and United Nations Special Representative and Co-Chairman of the Steering Committee of the International Conference for the Former Yugoslavia 1992-1995. Following studies in Norway, Austria, Switzerland, the USA and Finland, he served the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1958, inter alia, in San Francisco, Belgrade, Lagos and Copenhagen. He was President of the Norwegian Red Cross 1999-2008.

Mr. Strohmeyer is the Chief of the Policy Development and Studies Branch at the UN Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). As such he is the principal policy advisor to the Emergency Relief Coordinator. Until December 2008 he also served as the Head of the Food Policy Support Team of the Secretary-General's High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Crisis and oversaw the development of the Comprehensive Framework for Action and its political support by member states, including the G8 and other OECD countries. [more...]