Nathaniel Msen Awuapila, fspsp, fiim, FIMC, CMC is Executive Facilitator at Civil Organisations Research Advocacy and Funding Initiatives Development (CORAFID) and Director, CORAFID Centre for Innovation and Research, a non-profit research and advocacy organisation. He has been active in the peacebuilding field since 2002. His involvement in the field covers peace and conflict research, advocacy, capacity building for peace practitioners and peacebuilding organisations, conflict sensitivity, organising gubernatorial debates, and election observation. He has worked mainly in Nigeria but with professional engagements extending to Tunisia, Senegal, Kenya, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire. Nathaniel Msen Awuapila has been a frontline actor in the humanitarian sector in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, since 2009. His activities include assessing the conditions of populations of concern, mobilising funds to address humanitarian concerns in communities affected by violent conflict and natural causes, and policy advocacy. He has consulted widely on humanitarian and peacebuilding issues and currently serves on the experts board and advisory teams of a number of organisations and initiatives in Nigeria.

Stuart Campo is a Data Responsibility Team Lead, Centre for Humanitarian Data, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. He leads the data responsibility team at OCHA’s Centre for Humanitarian Data. In this role, he oversees efforts to advance the safe, ethical, and effective management of data within OCHA and to promote data responsibility more broadly at the inter-agency level. Stuart Campo also serves as an advisor to a number of initiatives, including the International Committee of the Red Cross Handbook on Data Protection, the World Health Organization’s Expert Group on Data Sharing, and the World Economic Forum’s Advisory Board on the Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Prior to joining OCHA, he worked for the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He also worked with UNICEF in Madagascar, South Sudan, and Kenya, and in a global advisory role within the Office of Innovation that took him to over 35 different countries. Stuart Campo began his career with the UN as a Knowledge Management Specialist with UNICEF in Antananarivo. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Politics from Princeton University.

Cecilia Jimenez-Damary is a Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She has a LL.M. in Public International Law (King’s College London, UK), MDC in International Organizations-IOMBA programme (University of Geneva, Switzerland), LL.B. (Ateneo de Manila, Philippines) and B.Sc. in Foreign Service (University of the Philippines). Cecilia Jimenez-Damary is a human rights and IHL lawyer specialised in forced displacement and migration, who has over three decades of experience in NGO human rights advocacy for the Asia-Pacific region and teaching experience as an adjunct professor of international human rights and humanitarian law. She previously acted as Senior Legal Adviser and Trainer with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Geneva; as the National Director of the IDP Project of the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines; and as the government representative to the Philippine Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission for the Bangsamoro. Cecilia Jimenez-Damary was appointed Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons by the Human Rights Council in September 2016 and assumed the mandate on 1 November 2016.

David Deng is a Research Consultant and Human Rights Lawyer. He is a human rights lawyer who spent much of the last decade engaged in research and advocacy in South Sudan. David Deng’s research has touched on a range of issues, including the challenges and opportunities of large-scale land investment, customary law, and local dispute resolution mechanisms, citizen views on peace processes and people’s experiences with and perceptions of transitional justice.

Maya Sahli-Fadel is a Special Rapporteur on Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Internally Displaced Persons and Migrants in Africa, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. She joined the African Commission on Human Rights and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) in November 2011. Within the Commission Maya Sahli-Fadel is the Special Rapporteur on Refugees, Asylum seekers, displaced persons and migrants in Africa; and member of the Working Group on the Death Penalty in Africa and the Working Group on economic, social and cultural rights. An Algerian national, she teaches international humanitarian law and is responsible for the work of International Law at the Law Faculty of Algiers, as well as the tutorials within the School of Magistrates; she also lectures at the Institute of Diplomatic and International Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the preparations for professional examinations on the protection of human rights. She is a member of the Board of the Diplomatic Institute and International Relations, the Educational Council of the School of Magistrates and from January 2008 to 2013 she was a member of the Higher Judicial Council. Maya Sahli-Fadel was also a member of the Expert Working Group on People of African Descent of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, and is part of the United Nations Independent Fact-Finding Mission in Burundi (UNIIB).

Hassan Shire is a Executive Director, East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project Chairperson of the Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network. Under his leadership, DefendDefenders provides emergency protection, advocacy, awareness raising, capacity building, and technological support to human rights defenders. Hassan Shire founded and co-directed the Dr. Ismail Jumale Human Rights Centre (1996-2001) and was the Chairperson of Peace and Human Rights Network (1998-2001) in Mogadishu, Somalia, before he was forced to flee Somalia by extremist groups. While in asylum in Canada, he worked with the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University and Amnesty International Canada to create the African Human Rights Defenders Project. This led to his return to the continent in 2005 and the founding of DefendDefenders in Uganda. He later co-founded the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network and the Pan African Human Rights Defenders network. Hassan Shire was also actively involved in building coalitions for the protection of human rights defenders in the east and Horn of Africa namely in Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Somalia/Somaliland. He regularly engages with African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, UN Human Rights Council, the Community of Democracies, government authorities, and African and foreign diplomatic missions for the advancement of human rights in Africa. He is currently Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Civil and Political Rights (Geneva, Switzerland), board member of the Institute of Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (Banjul, The Gambia), and Board Chair of the African Center for Justice and Peace and Studies (Kampala, Uganda). Hassan Shire has received numerous awards from the international community including the U.S. State Department’s 2011 Human Rights Defender Award, the Leadership Awards of the Pan African Human Rights Defenders Network in 2015, and the Richard C. Holbrooke Leadership Award by Refugees International in 2017.

Wan Sophonpanich is a Global CCM Cluster Coordinator, International Organization for Migration. Trained as an architect, she worked in community-based participatory design projects in Thailand before joining the humanitarian sector over 12 years ago during Cyclone Nargis response. Since then Wan Sophonpanich has coordinated and managed emergency responses in Haiti, Nepal, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iraq, the Philippines and Ethiopia amongst others, working with IFRC, CARE, Save the Children and IOM. Her expertise spans over emergency preparedness, response and recovery, with particular focus on shelter, settlement and Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM). In 2017 she took on the role of the Global CCCM Cluster Coordinator with International Organization for Migration in Geneva.