Experts on countries of origin by surname

Goal-focused, strategic planner, and passionate leader with extensive experience implementing effective, global strategies to stabilize communities through capacity building, promoting human rights and democratization, and amplifying the value of communication. Skilled in collaborating with all members of the organization to build bridges across ideological divides, trusted to tailor language, tone, style, and format to match the audience. Passionate educator with two years’ experience as a High School Principal. Proactively pursues the development and execution of ethical leadership, personnel management, and clear research/discovery goals with comprehensive plans delivering measurable impact to in-house operations. 

An accomplished expert in Lebanese, Levantine, and MENA law, politics, and culture, Dr. Isaac Andakian brings extensive experience and a proven track record in political advisory roles. From 2001 to 2009, Dr. Andakian served as a trusted senior political adviser to two members of the Lebanese Parliament and a minister in the Lebanese cabinet. Over nine years, he counseled the Armenian Orthodox Community Court of Lebanon and the Municipality of the City of Anjar, Lebanon, from 2003 to 2012.

During Dr. Andakian’s… Read more

Danielle Annoni is an associate professor of International Law and Human Rights at the Federal University of Parana (UFPR-Brazil), where she coordinates the Human Rights Observatory and Legal Practice in Human Rights and Migration. She has been conducting human rights research for 18 years. She is an educator, a mother and an active human rights defender, with a focus on migration, gender and the Latin American human rights protection system. Because of her work developed with vulnerable groups regarding the education of labor rights, the empowering of women through handicraft and gastronomy fairs, advocacy in the mediation of cultural conflicts, and access to justice and education, she has received several awards.

PhD in Social Science, sociologist and human rights expert specialising in country conditions analysis related to political violence, forced displacement, and asylum claims in Latin America. 

Dr Sara Arapiles is a Postdoctoral Fellow in international human rights law and refugee law at the Faculty of Law of Lund University. She completed her PhD research on ‘Slavery in Refugee Status Determination Procedures in Europe: A Comparative Socio-Legal Study of Approaches to Eritrean Protection Claims’ at the University of Nottingham. Dr Arapiles has extensive knowledge of and experience in researching and writing about refugee rights, with an emphasis on the human rights situation in Eritrea and matters relating to the persecution of Eritreans and their international protection needs. She is also engaged with exiled Eritrean human rights organisations and supports their capacity building. Dr Arapiles earned her PhD and MA in Socio-Legal Studies from the University of Nottingham, her LLM in International and European Law from the Institute for European Studies of the Free University of Brussels, and her Law Degree from the University of Salamanca, and is a member of the Spanish Bar Association.

Sergen Bahceci is a political anthropologist who examines violence and its role in constituting everyday life and lived experiences. He completed a PhD in Anthropology at LSE in 2023. For his doctoral research, he conducted 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork in northern Cyprus among elderly war veterans and younger generations of Cypriots who were born after the island’s civil war (1955 - 1974).

Following his PhD, he worked as a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology where he was employed to conduct digital ethnographic fieldwork in Macclesfield, England, on everyday experiences of crime-related insecurity. He previously taught anthropology at Goldsmiths and University College London, and also worked for the UN Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus in 2020. He has also provided a COI expert witness report for a deportation order appeal tribunal. 

Mr. Bahiss is a senior analyst with International Crisis Group’s Asia Program. He specialises on armed groups, security and governance in Afghanistan, and his work has been published by various international media and research organisations. 

Harina is an accomplished lawyer with an LL.M. in Criminal Law, graduating with first-class honours. Her academic journey includes a distinguished dissertation exploring the socio-legal dimensions of live-in relationships in India. With a strong foundation in law and a keen interest in addressing socio-legal complexities, Harina has built a diverse and impactful legal career.

Her professional experience spans multiple areas of law, including Indian Family Law and Society, Civil and Criminal Laws, Child Custody and Abduction, Indian Citizenship and Nationality Laws, and Indian Employment Law, among various others. She has worked on a diverse array of legal matters, showcasing her expertise in drafting legal documents, including agreements, employment contracts, and mandates, with a strong emphasis on ensuring compliance with applicable laws and addressing client-specific requirements. She also provided comprehensive legal opinions on a wide range of matters involving Indian Family Law, Contract Law, Indian Employment Law(s), etc., to foreign missions in India.  

Harina further prepared detailed Expert Reports and Expert Witness Statements on Indian law and Society, which were submitted in foreign courts that addressed… Read more

Dr. Baird is a Professor of Geography and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also the coordinator of the Hmong Studies Consortium at UW-Madison, and the PI for the Lao American Archive Project at UW-Madison. Dr Baird was previously the Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UW-Madison, and remains on the Center's Steering Committee. He is also affiliated with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison.

Dr. Baird has been living, working and conducting research in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia since the late 1980s. He’s lived in Laos for 15 years, and in Thailand for 10 years. He remains active in conducting research in all three countries. Dr. Baird’s areas of interest include, but are not limited to, environmental issues, Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities, politics, development studies, marginalization, poverty, cross-border issues, insurgency, social services, and immigration.

Beth Baker-Cristales is a cultural anthropologist with over thirty years of experience documenting the life conditions of people forced to flee Central America, particularly to the U.S .She taught anthropology and Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles for over 20 years and is currently a visiting instructor in the University of California Washington Program (UCDC). Dr. Baker-Cristales worked with immigrant rights organizations in Los Angeles, including El Rescate, CARECEN, and CHIRLA, and she continues immigrant rights work in the Washington metro area, volunteering with CASA and local immigrant mutual aid groups. She has worked in the legal departments of some of these nonprofit organizations, helping people complete applications for asylum and citizenship, and she has written expert testimony for asylum cases involving people forced to flee for their political work and for domestic or gender-based violence.

Ibrahim Bangura has worked extensively in the fields of Transitional Justice, Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants, Security Sector Reform, Sustainable Livelihoods, Gender and Conflict Resolution in Africa.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and History and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from University of Sierra Leone; another Master’s degree in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam; and a Doctorate degree in Economics from the Leipzig Graduate School of Management in Germany.

He currently lectures at the Peace and Conflict Studies Programme, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, and he is also a senior partner at Transition International, a consultancy firm based in the Netherlands.

Susan Banki studies the political, institutional, and social contexts that explain the roots of and solutions to human rights violations and social justice abuses. In particular, she is interested in the ways that questions of sovereignty, transnationalism, and citizenship/membership have shaped our responses to conflict and injustice, particularly examining institutions such as the international refugee regime, diasporas, and the humanitarian system. Susan's focus is in the Asia-Pacific region, where she has conducted extensive field research in Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, Cambodia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Japan on refugee/migrant protection, statelessness and border control. Her current projects include: the work of diasporas in responding to acute crises at home; humanitarian responses to complex displacement contexts; and the role of creative arts in transnational activism.

Freelance Horn of Africa advisor/consultant.  Produced over 100 country reports (on Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, The Sudan) for various organisations and legal firms.

Specializing in US and Canadian cases, Owen Bennett-Jones has world-respected knowledge of Pakistan's militants, military, intelligence services, ethnic groups, political parties, Shias and honor killings  He has worked for the BBC and was a visiting Professor at Princeton University and USC.

The expert is Full Professor of Social and Political Anthropology at the University of Konstanz (Germany). She has served as an expert since 2014.

The Expert reads all relevant papers relating to a client free of charge and produces a short report on the case details. He relates these to the evidence already given and how he considers the subsequent hearing will be influenced by these. He rejects requests, if he feels there is very little chance of the client being offered permission to remain. He accepts payment in instalments.

Jelke Boesten is an interdisciplinary social scientist trained as a historian. She has 25 years of research experience in Peru, focusing on gender-based violence, women and the state/state policy, conflict-related sexual violence, and the internal armed conflict of the 1980s and 1990s.

I am a Latin Americanist geographer and an expert on Honduras, where I have lived and worked off and on since 1991. My PhD is from Louisiana State University (2001), Master's from University of Texas, and B.A. from Penn State. I have taught in several universities in the US and China, and am currently an independent consultant. I am an an author on over 50 professional publications and have given around 100 presentations, many related to Honduras. My main contributions to the academic literature include the historical and spatial dimensions of land- and identity-based conflicts in Honduras, relationships between people and the environment (particularly ethno-ornithology and ethnobotany), and the development of theory for applying the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to research in the social sciences. In addition to publishing, I consult to community groups in Honduras and Mexico on a range of topics related to environmental and social struggles.

I have served as a country of origin expert for Honduras since 2001 in a total of 13 cases, for all of which I have prepared reports based on original ethnographic research. All of the cases I have worked on involved Hondurans in the US seeking asylum, withholding of removal, or relief under the Convention Against Torture.… Read more

Barrister and academic, with extensive research, publishing and advisory experience in former Soviet Union and other countries, fluent in Russian