Aziza Abemba
Dr. Abemba is the Executive Director of the Women’s Self-Promotion Movement (WSPM) in Zimbabwe. WSPM provides training and education for Zimbabwean women and girls and for refugee women from African countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi. Their programs promote women’s leadership, micro-enterprise, and political participation, as well as provide training in conflict resolution skills and domestic violence prevention.
Contact her through wlp [at] learningpartnership [dot] org
Abdullahi A. An-Na’im
Abdullahi An-Naim (from Sudan), the Director of the Fellowship Program in Islam and Human Rights, is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law School. An internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights, and human rights in cross-cultural perspectives, Professor An-Na’im teaches courses in human rights, religion and human rights, Islamic law, and criminal law. His research interests also include constitutionalism in Islamic and African countries, and Islam and politics. He is the Director of the Religion and Human Rights Program of the Law and Religion Program at Emory University School of Law. He directs several research projects which focus on advocacy strategies for reform through internal cultural transformation.
For more information, visit http://www.law.emory.edu/aannaim
Mashood A. Baderin
Dr. Baderin is a Reader in Law at the School of Law, University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. He teaches Public International Law, International Law and Institutions, Collective Security Law, International Human Rights and Islamic Law, with particular research interest on the interaction of International law with Islamic law in Muslim States. His publications include International Human Rights and Islamic Law (OUP, 2003), �Towards Effective Collective Security and Human Rights Protection in Africa: An Assessment of the Constitutive Act of the New African Union (2002) 49 Netherlands International Law Review, No.1, pp.1-41, �A Macroscopic Analysis of the Practice of Muslim State Parties to International Human Rights Treaties: Conflict or Congruence?� (2001) 1 Human Rights Law Review, No.2, pp.265-303, and �The Evolution of Islamic Law of Nations and the Modern International Order: Universal Peace through Mutuality and Co-operation� (2000) The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, No.2, pp.57-80. He is a co-editor of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights.
Contact him at Mashood [dot] baderin [at] uwe [dot] ac [dot] uk or mashooduk [at] hotmail [dot] com
Lucie Coulibaly
Dr. Coulibaly is a Program Coordinator at the Ivorian League for Human Rights (la Ligue Ivoirienne des Droits de l’Homme – LIDHO). From 1990 to 1999, Coulibaly acted as Secretary of External Relations for LIDHO. In this capacity, she initiated a number of training projects, seminars, conferences, and roundtable discussions on such topics as human rights, women’s rights, religious tolerance, and planning and managing nongovernmental organizations. She also coordinated and participated in a number of conferences that instructed on methods for investigating, researching, and reporting human rights violations.
Email her at: luciecool [at] caramail [dot] com
Francis M. Deng
Professor Deng is the Co-Director of the Brookings-SAIS (School of Advanced International Studies) Project on Internal Displacement, Washington, DC. He has been the Sudanese Ambassador to the United States Scandinavia and Canada and a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations. His areas of expertise include internal displacement, Sudan, human rights, and US-Africa relations.
Visit the Brookings Institution website at http://www.brook.edu/default.htm to learn more.
Alan Godlas
Dr. Godlas is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia. His award-winning website on Islam, Islamic studies, and religion is acclaimed for its comprehensive collection of links and resources documenting Islam’s history and scripture, information on Islam’s place in the modern world, its stance on women’s rights, Islamic art and architecture, and its history of mysticism. He has conducted extensive research in manuscript libraries in Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. His areas of research include Qur’anic commentary (tafsir), hadith, Islamic mysticism (also known as Sufism) and consciousness transformation, and the relationship between Islam, modernism, and postmodernism.
For more information, visit http://www.uga.edu/islam/profbio.html
Email Dr Godlas at godlas [at] uga [dot] edu
Jeff Haynes
Dr. Haynes is Professor of Politics and co-developer of the International Relations Program at London Guildhall University. His areas of specialization are politics of developing countries and international relations. He has examined the continuing importance of religion as an important factor in politics using examples drawn from a range of religious groups around the world, including Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States.
Contact him at jeff [dot] haynes [at] londonmet [dot] ac [dot] uk
Jibrin Ibrahim
Dr. Ibrahim is the Nigeria Program Director at the International Human Rights Law Group in Washington, DC. His research interests are democratization and the politics of transition, comparative federalism, religious and ethnic identities, and the crisis in social provisioning in Africa.
Contact him at jibo72 [at] yahoo [dot] com
Ayesha Imam
Ayesha Imam has been a woman’s rights activist for over two decades.� She is founding director of BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights in Nigeria.� BAOBAB was formally established in 1996 as an organization focusing on women’s legal rights issues under customary, statutory and religious laws.� Dr. Imam is a core group member of the international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Africa and the Middle East.� She has also worked on gender training, evaluation and research for activists in NGOs, for mid-level planners and functionaries in government, and for researchers.� She is currently Chief of the Culture, Gender and Human Rights Branch of UNFPA.
Dr. Imam has lectured and carried out research in women’s studies and gender analysis at universities and research institutes in Nigeria, the U.K., Canada and Senegal.� She has published widely for both academic and activist uses.�� Her work on women�s rights in Muslim laws and practices include the widely reprinted articles “The Muslim Religious Right (�Fundamentalists�) and Sexuality,” and� “Women�s Rights in Muslim Laws (Sharia),” as well as contributing to the introduction and chapter on “Legal Systems and Change” and conceptual editing of Knowing Our Rights: Women, Family, Laws and Customs in the Muslim World (WLUML 2003).� Her formal publications include editing and writing chapters for Engendering African Social Sciences (CODESRIA 1994, also published in French 2002) and two special issues of Africa Development, Re-Visiting Gender I and II, as well as numerous journal articles, training modules and research reports.
Contact her at AyeshaImam [at] earthlink [dot] net
J. Paul Martin
Dr. Martin is the Director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, New York. His current research focuses on Africa and includes human rights education, religious proselytization, cooperative training programs in human rights with and for African NGOs. He has been working with human rights NGO coalitions in Africa to develop their own research and training programs.
E-mail him at jpm2 [at] columbia [dot] edu.
Ann Elizabeth Mayer
Dr. Mayer is Associate Professor of Legal Studies at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include Islamic law in the contemporary Middle East, international human rights law, women�s rights, globalization and human rights, and comparative law. She has examined various dimensions of the controversies about the universality of human rights and has compared how particularisms have been used in Middle Eastern countries and the United States to rationalize non-compliance with international human rights law. She has published extensively, and her book Islam and Human Rights is in its third edition.
Find out more at: http://lgst.wharton.upenn.edu/mayera
Email: mayera [at] wharton [dot] upenn [dot] edu
Ali A. Mazrui
Dr. Mazrui is Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is also the Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large in the Humanities and Development Studies at the University of Jos in Nigeria. The Chair of the Board of Directors for the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), Dr. Mazrui has been involved in a number of UN projects on matters which have ranged from human rights to nuclear proliferation. He is also internationally consulted on Islamic culture and Muslim history. His research interests include African politics, international political culture, political Islam, and North-South Relations.
Contact him at amazrui [at] binghamton [dot] edu.
Sindi Medar-Gould
Sindi Medar-Gould is Executive Director of the Nigeria-based organization BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, a non-profit organization working for women’s human rights and legal rights under customary and religious law in Africa. BAOBAB also coordinates programs for Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Africa and the Middle East. Ms. Medar-Gould has been a women’s human rights activist for over 20 years, and is an experienced teacher, trainer, and researcher.
Contact her at sindi [at] baobab [dot] com [dot] ng.
Sulayman Nyang
Professor Nyang teaches in the department of African Studies, Howard University in Washington, DC. He has been the Deputy Ambassador of the Gambian Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and is currently a member of the Academic Council of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Dr. Nyang also co-directs Muslims in the American Public Square (MAPS), a study that examines Muslim, Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical Christian, African American Christian, Hispanic Christian and Jewish communities. Dr. Nyang has written extensively on Islamic, African, and Middle Eastern affairs.
Visit the MAPS website at to learn more.
Contact Dr. Nyang via email. at snyang [at] fac [dot] howard [dot] edu
Ayo Obe
Ayo Obe is the second President of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO). In October 1998, Obe was one of eight African human rights activists at a roundtable discussion in Dakar, Senegal, with President and Mrs. Clinton. Obe is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association and the International Bar Association.
Email her at Amoo [at] alpha [dot] linkserve [dot] com or clo [at] gacom [dot] net.
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
Dr. Odinkalu is an International Fellow at the Centre for Justice, Ethics and Public Life at the Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He is also a Doctoral Candidate at the Law Department of the London School of Economics. He holds membership in the UK Foreign Secretary’s Advisory Panel on the Death Penalty and sits on the Human Rights Advisory Panel of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. He is widely published on issues of law, human rights, and public policy in Africa.
For more information, visit, http://www.africaexpert.org/people/data/person11905.html
Ali A. Mazrui
Dr. Mazrui is Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is also the Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large in the Humanities and Development Studies at the University of Jos in Nigeria. The Chair of the Board of Directors for the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), Dr. Mazrui has been involved in a number of UN projects on matters which have ranged from human rights to nuclear proliferation. He is also internationally consulted on Islamic culture and Muslim history. His research interests include African politics, international political culture, political Islam, and North-South Relations.
Contact him at amazrui [at] binghamton [dot] edu.
Sindi Medar-Gould
Sindi Medar-Gould is Executive Director of the Nigeria-based organization BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, a non-profit organization working for women’s human rights and legal rights under customary and religious law in Africa. BAOBAB also coordinates programs for Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Africa and the Middle East. Ms. Medar-Gould has been a women’s human rights activist for over 20 years, and is an experienced teacher, trainer, and researcher.
Contact her at sindi [at] baobab [dot] com [dot] ng.
Sulayman Nyang
Professor Nyang teaches in the department of African Studies, Howard University in Washington, DC. He has been the Deputy Ambassador of the Gambian Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and is currently a member of the Academic Council of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Dr. Nyang also co-directs Muslims in the American Public Square (MAPS), a study that examines Muslim, Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical Christian, African American Christian, Hispanic Christian and Jewish communities. Dr. Nyang has written extensively on Islamic, African, and Middle Eastern affairs.
Visit the MAPS website at to learn more.
Contact Dr. Nyang via email. at snyang [at] fac [dot] howard [dot] edu
Ayo Obe
Ayo Obe is the second President of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO). In October 1998, Obe was one of eight African human rights activists at a roundtable discussion in Dakar, Senegal, with President and Mrs. Clinton. Obe is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association and the International Bar Association.
Email her at Amoo [at] alpha [dot] linkserve [dot] com or clo [at] gacom [dot] net.
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
Dr. Odinkalu is an International Fellow at the Centre for Justice, Ethics and Public Life at the Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He is also a Doctoral Candidate at the Law Department of the London School of Economics. He holds membership in the UK Foreign Secretary’s Advisory Panel on the Death Penalty and sits on the Human Rights Advisory Panel of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. He is widely published on issues of law, human rights, and public policy in Africa.
For more information, visit, http://www.africaexpert.org/people/data/person11905.html