Members

Sultana Kamal is a lawyer, former Advisor to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh and human rights activist for over 35 years. Worked with UNHCR as a Legal Consultant for the Vietnamese boatpeople in Hong Kong from 1989 to 1990. Recipient of John Humphrey Freedom Award in 1996 from HRD, Canada for her role as a human rights defender. A published author on human rights issues, widely contributes to national newspapers and lectures on human rights, women’s rights, development and law, nationally and internationally.

Lord Eric Avebury was an MP from 1962 to 1970, and has sat in the Lords since 1971. He was chair of the Parliamentary Civil Liberties Group, concerned with UK domestic human rights, from 1964 to 1970.  In 1976 he founded the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, and served as Chair of the Group until 1997. Since then he has been Vice-Chair of the Group. Lord Avebury is Chair of the International Bangladesh Foundation.

Ida Nicolaisen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen University, and an acclaimed expert in cultural studies and socio-economic development. She has served as the vice-chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and on various boards, including DANIDA, WWF, WDF, Asia House Foundation, Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies, Humanity in Action and H.R.H: Crownprince Frederik’s Foundation. She has published several books and edited 14 volumes on pastoral peoples in Asia and Africa and is currently engaged in research among indigenous peoples in Malaysia. Ida Nicolaisen is a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. She has received various awards and is Knight of Dannebrog.

Sara Hossain is a lawyer practicing in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and a Senior Associate at the law firm of Dr. Kamal Hossain and Associates. She is a Board Member of Ain o Salish Kendra, a national human rights and legal organisation. She formerly ran the South Asia Programme at INTERIGHTS, the International Centre for the Protection of Human Rights, based in London. She has written and lectured on human rights, public interest litigation, access to justice and women’s human rights. She was a member of the National Committee for Protection of Fundamental Rights in the CHT, a forum of Bangladeshi activists established and active through the 1990s, and has been involved in fact-finding, documentation and advocacy – both in and outside the courts – on the protection of fundamental rights in the CHT.

Shapan Adnan was educated at the universities of Sussex and Cambridge and currently teaches in the South Asian Studies Programme of the National University of Singapore. He has held appointments at various institutions including Queen Elizabeth House of the University of Oxford, the University of Dhaka, and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. His research interests include peasant economy and capitalist development, strategies of domination and resistance among the peasantry, ethnic conflict and land rights of indigenous peoples, critiques of flood control structures, determinants of fertility and forced migration, and critiques of the development business. He has recently published a book entitled Migration, Land Alienation and Ethnic Conflict: Causes of Poverty in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh (2004).

Lee Swepston is the former Senior Advisor of Human Rights of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and is now a teacher and consultant. He worked in a wide variety of standards-related posts in the ILO before taking up his responsibilities as Chief of the Equality and Employment Branch, and later Director of the Department of the Fundamental Principles and Rights and Senior Advisor on Human Rights. He has written numerous books and articles on various aspects of human rights and ILO standards, discrimination, child labour, freedom of association, migrant workers and indigenous and tribal peoples.

Lars-Anders Baer studied law at Uppsala University. He is the president of the Sámi Parliament in Sweden.  Baer has been engaged in the Sámi and the international indigenous movement since the early 1970s. Since 2002 he has served as member of the board of the UN Voluntary Fund of indigenous peoples. Since 1983 he has been deeply involved in the UN working group of indigenous populations and in the mid-1980s he served as vice president of the World Council of Indigenous peoples.   Over the years he has served as expert and Sámi representative in Swedish official delegations in different UN, European Union and other regional and international events.  He has been the president of the Sámi Parliamentary Council (the highest body in co-operation between the Sámi Parliaments in Finland, Norway and Sweden) and is at present time the vice president of the Council.  Since the beginning of the 1980s he has also been engaged in the Union of the Swedish Sámi (the main Sámi organisation in Sweden) of which he served as chairman from 1993 to 2001. Baer has published several articles about indigenous rights. Together with his family, he also spends time with traditional reindeer herding.

Professor Muhammed Zafar Iqbal, has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington, USA. He had served as a research scientist at Caltech and Bell Communications and Research in the United States before returning to Bangladesh in 1994 and becoming a Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) in Sylhet, Bangladesh. He is a distinguished writer and author of more than 100 books of fiction, science fiction, popular science and contemporary issues in Bengali. Professor Iqbal has been honoured with various national awards for his contribution to literature, science and education

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is an indigenous person (Kankana-ey Igorot from the Philippines) who is an expert on human rights and development and she focuses on indigenous peoples’ rights, women’s rights and the right to development. She is the Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues from 2005 to 2008. She is the founder and the Executive Director of Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education) which is an indigenous peoples’ organization doing research, policy advocacy, training and education to enhance capacities of indigenous peoples to assert and claim their rights. She is the Convenor of the Asian Indigenous Women’s Network and she presently occupies other positions such as Eminent Persons Group of the International Fund for Agricultural Development Rural Poverty Report for 2009; co-President of the International Forum on Globalization; Member of Civil Society Advisory Committee of the UNDP and the Indigenous Peoples’ Assistance Facility, among others.

Hideaki Uemura established Shimin Gaikou Centre in 1982. The Centre started to support the Ainu people’s and the Okinawan people’s participation in the UN Human Rights Bodies in 1987 and in 1997 respectively. The SGC obtained the ECOSOC NGO status (special concultative status) in 1999. He became a Professor at Keisen University in Tokyo in 2002 and his specialities are international human rights law and peace studies.

Robert Evans MEP has for many years, been a friend of and active campaigner for Bangladesh. He has visited Bangladesh many times, campaigns on behalf of Bangladeshi restaurant workers in the UK, and at present, amongst other issues, is working on improving conditions in the South Asian shipbreaking industry.