Board of Advisors
Mike Smith was until July 2013, Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, a position he held for more than 5 years. Prior to that he was Australia’s Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism. From 2002 to 2006, Mike Smith was Australia’s Permanent Representative to the UN and the Conference on Disarmament in […]
Martin Scheinin is a Finnish professor of International Law and Human Rights at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism (2005 – 2011). Furthermore, he is President of the International Association of Constitutional Law. He is a former member […]
Joanne Mariner is the Interim Director of Law and Policy at Amnesty International. Before taking up this role, she was the Human Rights Program Director at Hunter College, City University of New York. Previously, she was the Director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch, where she has worked inter alia on documenting war crimes […]
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer currently holds the Pieter Kooijmans chair in peace, justice and security at Leiden University, teaching courses in international politics and contemporary diplomacy. He has a long career in Dutch politics and was Minister for Foreign Affairs in the first and second Balkenende Cabinet. In 2003, He was also the Chairman-in-Office of […]
Rohan Gunaratna is an international terrorism expert and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He served as counter terrorism instructor for GIGN, CTSO, D88, US NAVY SEALS, Swiss Federal Police, NYPD, and the Australian Federal Police, and conducted field research in conflict zones […]
Richard Barrett CMG OBE is a Senior VP at the Soufan Group, a New York-based consulting firm. He is also a fellow of the Royal United Services Institute in London, the New America Foundation in Washington and the Centre for Research and Strategic Studies in Islamabad. From March 2004 to December 2012, Richard was the […]
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The notion of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) is typically associated with the global obligation of states to protect populations from mass atrocities; a principle which was endorsed by the United Nations in 2005. Two decades earlier, Abdullah Azzam’s fatwa Defense of Muslim Lands: The First Obligation After Iman (1984) established what could be described as […]
On 17 February 2015, Shamima Begum (15), Kadiza Sultana (17), and Amira Abase (17), boarded a flight from London’s Gatwick Airport to Istanbul. After an in Bayrampasa, Turkey, they got on a bus to Urfa – a town close to the Syrian border. It is thought that they crossed the Turkish-Syrian border and travelled towards […]
As Islamic State (IS) loses control of its so-called Caliphate, the question on what to do with foreign fighters and their families has become more pertinent. The announcement of the US withdrawal from Syria in December, as well as Trump’s tweets mid-February that the US would release 800 fighters captured in Syria if its allies […]