20 years experience in translation and knowledge in migration and displacement, 4 years ECOSOC representative for NGO at the human right council at UN-GENEVE and 10 years experience with humanitarian agencies and the world bank
Mayilvaganan, M., PhD is an Independent Analyst and Director of Center for Human Security and International Affairs (CHSIA). His research interests focus on political, strategic and security issues concerning South and Southeast Asia, Indo-Pacific region, Borderlands and the Non-Traditional Security Issues.
Prior to this, Dr. Mayil was an Associate Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, India, where he oversaw research projects on the Indo-Pacific, Borderland studies, Non-Traditional Security Challenges (such as Migration, Refugees, Climate Change, & Public Health, etc.), Human Rights & Humanitarian Issues, and World Politics in general. He was also a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, India, where he taught South Asia in International Relations, Modern Warfare, and International Politics. Other positions he held included Associate Fellow at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), New Delhi, India, with a focus on Sri Lanka, and Research Associate at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi, India, with an emphasis on Kashmir. Additionally, he spent sometime as a researcher in Canada and the U.S..
He holds a PhD degree from the School of… Read more
Mayilvaganan, M., PhD is an Independent Analyst and Director of Center for Human Security and International Affairs (CHSIA). His research interests focus on political, strategic and security issues concerning South and Southeast Asia, Indo-Pacific region, Borderlands and the Non-Traditional Security Issues.
Prior to this, Dr. Mayil was an Associate Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, India, where he oversaw research projects on the Indo-Pacific, Borderland studies, Non-Traditional Security Challenges (such as Migration, Refugees, Climate Change, & Public Health, etc.), Human Rights & Humanitarian Issues, and World Politics in general. He was also a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, India, where he taught South Asia in International Relations, Modern Warfare, and International Politics. Other positions he held included Associate Fellow at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), New Delhi, India, with a focus on Sri Lanka, and Research Associate at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi, India, with an emphasis on Kashmir. Additionally, he spent sometime as a researcher in Canada and the U.S..
He holds a PhD degree from the School of… Read more
Anastasiia Mykolenko is a Ukrainian anthropologist and legal professional specializing in forced displacement, refugee reception, and protection in Eastern Europe. Based in Montréal, she is completing a PhD in Anthropology at the Université de Montréal and holds advanced degrees in European and international law. Her research and consulting work focus on how people navigate war, borders, and bureaucratic systems, with extensive fieldwork along the Polish–Ukrainian border and engagement in Poland, Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. She has worked as a Senior Analyst & Fieldwork Coordinator on multi-country projects related to displacement and gender-based violence, and as a Protection Assistant with an international NGO at the Polish–Ukrainian border.
Anastasiia combines country-of-origin knowledge with strong analytical and writing skills, producing clear, evidence-based reports for NGOs, donors, and institutional partners. She has hands-on experience with refugee and asylum issues, including community-based legal support in Montréal, and in-depth expertise on vulnerable and marginalized groups such as Roma/Romani communities, women at risk, LGBTQI+ persons, and human rights defenders. She works in English, French, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish (and… Read more
Sayana Namsaraeva is a senior research associate at the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge. After graduating in China Studies at the University of Saint Petersburg, she did her MA degree in Comparative Ethnography at National Chengchi University (Taipei). She was awarded a PhD degree in Political and Cultural History of Pre-modern China at the Institute of Oriental Studies (Moscow, RAS), held research positions at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany) and taught as a lecturer at the Institute for Studies of Religions and the Central Asia at the University of Bern (Switzerland). Throughout her academic career spanning over twenty five years, her research interests embrace a wide range of topics in Mongolian and China studies, Siberian Studies, Buryat Diasporas and Kinship, Migration and Border Studies, with a particular attention to North Asian borderlands. She teaches a course on ‘Borders and Borderlands in North Asia’ for Inner Asia Paper at the Department of Social Anthropology.
She has served as a COI expert since 2018, responding to cases from Mongolian and Russian citizens. Based on more than twenty cases she reviewed, Sayana analytically summarized … Read more
CEO and founder at Xsolutions Ltd, is an experienced advocate in the appellate court of Egypt. With over 12 years of practice, they specialize in various legal areas, including Egyptian Civil Law, human rights, domestic abuse, trade regulations, criminal law, and Sharea (Islamic Law). They collaborate closely with lawyers, judges, and the Ministry of Interior on national security and civil registration cases. Additionally, they provide reports related to human rights, asylum, gender violence, and political persecution.
Dr. Josephine Ndagire is an accomplished academic and human rights activist with over 18 years of dedicated service at grassroots, national, and international levels. She has served as an Expert Member on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Committee on the Prevention of Torture in Africa and currently chairs the Board of Directors at the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (Uganda). She also serves on the Councils of Penal Reform International (United Kingdom) and the International Society for Human Rights (Germany). Renowned for her incisive legal insight and leadership, Dr. Ndagire has featured on BBC Newsday to discuss pressing global justice issues, including migrant deportations and the ICJ reparations case DRC vs. Uganda. Her work has significantly influenced human rights advocacy, legal reform, and justice systems across Africa.
Dr. Ndagire has provided expert consultation to leading international organizations, including UN Women, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, IGAD, and the International Development Law Organization. She lectures at the School of Law, Makerere University, and has previously held senior roles at the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, the Foundation for Human Rights… Read more
Dr. Andrew Nelson is an applied cultural anthropologist with a focus on urban and migration studies. While the bulk of his ethnographic fieldwork has been conducted in Nepal, he also has experience doing research in India, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and the United States. With Rob Curran, he co-wrote Journey without End: Migration from the Global South through the Americas (Vanderbilt Press, 2022), and with Roos Willems and Alex Rödlach, he co-edited The Crux of Resettlement: Rebuilding Social Networks (Lexington Press, 2018). He has also published academic articles on Nepali-speaking refugees from Bhutan, and Nepali migrants in South and North America. Currently, he is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Texas.
The Expert is a social anthropologist with special interest on Anthropology and ethnography in Africa.
The Expert is a columnist, writing on Vietnam. He has focused on producing expert reports in relation to Vietnam issues. He has good experience in providing country expert reports for immigration solicitors representing Vietnamese clients. He also attended several conferences and expert group meetings like The Global Organized Crime Index in the past. He is a graduate of the The University of West London with a 2:1 degree. His research and publications have focused on economic, financial, social, political developments human trafficking, political dissent, religious freedom, human trafficking and the Vietnam state security system cracking down on dissidents so on.
Dr. Gospel Obele – Research and Development Economist with 11+ years of senior-level experience in economic strategy, market intelligence, and policy innovation.
Write over 25 articles, reports and publication, advising 50+ high-profile institutions with combined $850m in earnings, across 30+ sectors and 10+ countries.
Delivered 350+ expert media appearances (BBC, Al Jazeera, CGTN, Arise TV, Africa News) as a recognized voice on markets, economy, and social development.
Dr. Imdat Oner is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Jack D. Gordon Institute and a former diplomat with over two years of service in Venezuela. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Florida International University, specializing in Latin American politics.
Dr. Oner is an expert in Venezuelan political affairs, with a focus on government repression, opposition persecution, and human rights violations. His work provides critical insights into state-controlled security forces, judicial persecution, and extrajudicial threats against dissidents. Leveraging his diplomatic experience and extensive research, he offers expert reports for asylum cases, analyzing the risks faced by opposition members through firsthand knowledge, international human rights documentation, and regional political analysis.
Dr. Onuoha is a HIPAA Certified expert witness who has written several expert witness reports and opinions, and testified in immigration evaluation and immigration detention hearings over the years. His expertise spans asylum, human rights and human security claims, persecution and discrimination based on political associations (including party politics, social and environmental activism), religion, ethnicity, identity, customs and culture (gender-based persecution ranging from forced marriage, child marriage, polygamy and to FGM, among other gender-related cases), and self-determination cases of people fleeing violence and conflict from West African countries with similar dynamics.
As an African social anthropologist, he has taught and designed courses in American universities bordering on Female genital cutting, Gang-related violence, General country knowledge, LGBTQ+ issues, Political associations, Race/ethnicity, Religion, Trafficking, Violence against children, Violence against women. He has extensive experience on a variety of theorical, epistemological and practical cultural problems in African societies.
Emir Onur Romano Cilek is a human-rights practitioner and country-conditions specialist on Turkey, with fifteen years documenting and contesting the persecution of non-believers, apostates (ex-Muslims), converts, secular activists, and LGBTQ+ people. He founded and leads Ateizm Derneği — the first legally recognised atheist organisation in a Muslim-majority country — and in March 2026 delivered an oral statement at the 61st Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, on behalf of Humanists International and Ateizm Derneği, addressing Turkey's Penal Code Article 216(3). Through the Atheist Refugee Assistance Program, the Atheist Support Network, and the Secular Rescue Program, he has assessed and documented many hundreds of protection cases originating from Turkey and the surrounding region, including evidentiary documentation relied on in UNHCR and immigration proceedings. His expertise covers the legal framework criminalising religious dissent (Penal Code Articles 216 and 301), state and societal treatment of the non-religious and apostates, family- and community-based ("honour") risk, surveillance and prosecution of activists, and the situation of LGBTQ+ individuals and women at risk.
Academic and international development consultant with expertise around the cross-cutting themes of violence, extremism, anti-corruption, human rights, elections natural resources, poverty, community development, and risks.
Kefa M. Otiso is a Professor of Geography at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, USA. His research interests are in urbanization, globalization, international migration, development, environment, governance, and cultural change in the context of Africa and North America. He teaches a variety of courses in urban, economic, population, and cultural geography, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications. He was the founding president of the US-based Kenya Scholars and Studies Association (KESSA) and is a former Commissioner on Ohio’s New African Immigrants Commission. He is a past editor of the African Geographical Review and has presented papers at many national and international conferences including those organized by the Kenya Scholars and Studies Association, American Association of Geographers, African Studies Association, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. He is a frequent media commentator on US, Kenyan, and other international news outlets. He is also the author of Culture and Customs of Tanzania (Greenwood Press, 2013) and Culture and Customs of Uganda (Greenwood Press, 2006), co-author of Population Geography: Problems, Concepts, and Prospects (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2013), co-editor of African Immigrants and the… Read more
Jessica Ott is an anthropologist and policy fellow whose research and publications have focused on gender, civil society, human rights, health equity, domestic work, and Islam. She has extensive research experience in Zanzibar and has also studied and worked for several years in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Dr. Ott most recently completed a Science & Technology Policy Fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, during which she worked as a Human Rights Policy/Research Fellow in the State Department’s human rights bureau and as a Center for Global Health Studies Research Fellow at the NIH. Prior to that, she worked as an international health systems research scientist, specializing in gender and qualitative methods, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Karen O’Reilly is a country expert who has produced over 300 reports for asylum, criminal, deportation, high profile and country guidance cases in the UK, US, and Canada. Her expertise derives in large part from her extensive experience as a Refugee Resettlement Expert and Protection Officer for UNHCR, beginning in 2006. She is also a writer who has published extensively on refugee-related issues.
Dr. Pacifico has been an international lawyer since 1993, with expertise in International Human Rights Law, particularly human rights of refugees and forced migrants, since 1997. She has been an associate professor for Law and International Relations at Maceio, Brasilia, and Joao Pessoa universities since 1997. She has taught International Law/Relations, Human Rights, and Refugee and Migration Issues for more than two decades. Dr. Pacifico has also presented seminars, given lectures and interviews, published papers, supervised theses and dissertations on these issues, and my own research principally focuses on human rights of legal minorities and human rights protections of refugees and legal minorities in Brazil and abroad.
Currently, Dr. Pacifico is a full-time associate professor in International Relations at Paraiba State University and a full-time collaborator/researcher at the Post-Graduate Program in Comparative Studies on the Americas, at University of Brasilia, both in Brazil, in addition to being a Senior Research Associate at the Refugee Law Initiative at University of London, UK. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the York University Centre for Refugee Studies, Canada (2009 to 2010), visiting research fellow at the Refugee Studies… Read more
Dr Imranali Panjwani has lived, studied and worked in the UK, Middle East, East-Africa and Australia as an academic, lawyer, chaplain and community worker. He has written 200+ country experts reports for asylum seekers under the instructions of UK and international law firms. His reports have been commented upon by judges and lawyers and draw upon his diverse legal, cultural and religious experiences.
For his access to justice work in immigration and asylum he received the national Spirit in the Community award at the GG2 Leadership & Diversity Awards in 2025 and Highly Commended Access to Justice award at the UK Diversity Legal Awards in 2021.