Experts on countries of origin by country

Bjawi-Levine is a sociocultural anthropologist who holds a PhD from CUNY Graduate Center. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has taught courses on the Middle East and the Arab World at several colleges including George Washington University ad Santa Clara University. She has published articles on various topics surrounding human rights, Palestinian refugee children, and Iraqi refugees. Bjawi-Levine was born in Tunisia and grew up between Tunisia and France, and has lived, studied, worked and traveled extensively overseas. Her anthropological research focused mainly on North Africa and the Middle East where she conducted fieldwork among Palestinian children and families living in refugee camps.

Dr. Daanish Faruqi is a Visiting Researcher at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.  A scholar of migration and mobility in the Middle East and North Africa, he has leveraged his expertise both in academia and in international development. At Georgetown he researches democracy promotion and conflict resolution through transnational religious humanitarianism. Relying on fieldwork with transnational humanitarian NGOS immediately following the 2023 Syrian/Turkish earthquake, his latest writing deals with the viability of religious humanitarianism in effectively managing refugee crises. He has a forthcoming interview with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on this project and its potential for peace building.

He completed his Ph.D. from Duke University, where he wrote his dissertation on the role of Syrian Sufi religious scholars in joining the 2011 uprising against Bashar al-Assad. Through several years of ethnographic and historical fieldwork in Morocco, Turkey, and Jordan, conducting hundreds of Arabic-language interviews, his work revealed the role of 19th century migration from North Africa to Damascus in informing contemporary Syrian… Read more

The Expert has worked as an expert witness on the Middle East, producing Country Expert Reports (CER) for the past 20 years.

The Expert has produced on average between 200-300 reports each year on the MENA region for British, European, and US courts.

The Expert’s areas of expertise include tribal issues, gender-based violence, security issues, extremist groups and militias, human rights law and violations, the situation for minorities, trafficking, and the availability of medical services. In addition to CERs,

The Expert also authenticates documents from the region, and conducts nationality and ethnicity reports in order to assess the likely origin of an individual within MENA.

The Expert is able to conduct nationality assessments in Arabic, Farsi, Sorani, and Bahdini/Kurmanji.

Academic with expertise on many countries in the Middle East

The Expert is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics and International Relations of the Middle East. 

Extensive experience in expert reports on all the countries listed, and also in particular, Kurds in country of origin and diaspora

Dr. Imranali Panjwani is the Head of Diverse Legal Consulting, UK (www.diverselegal.com) and a Lecturer in Law at Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, Essex. He has the unique combination of being a lawyer and academic having lived and worked in the UK, Middle East and Australia. His country expert reports draw upon primary country and theological sources with stringent analysis of evidence, law and language. He resides in the UK.

BBC journalist, film-maker and broadcaster with extensive experience of travelling to and investigating human rights abuses in Russia, including Chechnya, Belarus and other parts of the former USSR. Also considerable experience working with victims of human rights abuses in location in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Israel / Palestine, China, Turkey and Cuba.

The Expert earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge University and currently holds the position of Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Social Science at Qatar University. Prior to this, he has undertaken a series of significant roles, including:

Head of Research Unit and Associate Professor of Social Sciences at CAS, Dhofar University, Salalah, Oman, from 2019 to 2022. Director of the Language Centre & International Relations at Madaba University from 2018 to 2019. Visiting Faculty and Head of Future Forum at Ajman University, UAE, during 2017-2018. Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at AUC, Cairo, Egypt, from 2010 to 2017. Assistant Professor at United Arab Emirates University, UAE, spanning from 2004 to 2010. Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Dickinson College, PA, during 2003-2004. Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Arabic at NYU, NYC, from 2002 to 2003. Adjunct Professor of Arabic at Columbia University in NYC in 1999-2000.

The Expert is a Barrister-at-Law of England and Wales. The Expert is a practicing Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. He holds the position of Head of Chambers at "Justice for All', with nearly a decade's experience in legal practice. The expert regularly moves before the Supreme Court of Bangladesh for various matters including Writ (Judicial Review), Criminal and Civil Appeal and Revision, Bail Petition, Intellectual Property, Company Matter, Inheritance, Public Interest Litigation, Muslim Personal Law,  Succession Law,  Hindu Law, etc.

Parallel to his legal pursuits, the expert is the Legal Affairs and Political Editor of The Daily Campus and columnist. Accumulatively, he possesses over 18 years of sustained experience as a Journalist in Bangladesh, having written extensively on a broad range of issues, including human rights, the criminal justice system, politics, education, health, mental health, and international laws.

The Expert is an academic specialist in the politics and international relations of South Asia, & the Middle East with almost two decades of experience studying the region. The Expert has conducted research, advisory, and consultancy work in Bangladesh on the formal and informal justice systems, freedom of speech and other… Read more