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 […]
M. Cherif Bassiouni is Emeritus Professor of Law at DePaul University where he taught from 1964 – 2012. He was a founding member, and later President and President Emeritus of the International Human Rights Law Institute. In 1972 he was one of the founders of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in […]
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 […]
Stay connected
This essay builds on Kyle Orton’s recent article for BICOM’s series on “The Day After ISIS,” which comprehensively lays out the political, social, and military conditions that will determine whether the Islamic State (IS) will survive the current efforts to defeat it in Syria and Iraq. I want to focus on some of the interesting aspects of […]
Over the past year, the fortunes of so-called Islamic State (or Daesh, al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fil Iraq wa al-Sham) have turned in Syria and Iraq. As the Caliphate has begun to contract, the seemingly intractable flow of foreign fighters has started to slow, down from a high of 2000 a month crossing the border from Turkey to […]
The scenes of a victorious Iraqi military securing the last bit of occupied Mosul are a relief for a world that has watched in horror the so-called Islamic State’s (IS) rise in Syria and Iraq and the spread of its terror around the world. The Iraqi government was quick to strike on the all-important propaganda […]