Eduardo Cifuentes is President of the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace. He previously served as Director of the Human Rights Division of UNESCO (2003-2005) and has, since 2013, served as a member of the national group of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Dr. Cifuentes is also an Associate professor at the Universidad de los Andes.
Richard English is Professor of Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, where he is also Director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. His research focuses on the history of political violence, terrorism, and nationalism, with a particular focus on Ireland and Britain. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, an Honorary Fellow of Keble College Oxford, a Faculty Affiliate at the University of Chicago, and an Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews.
Jessica Faieta is a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University. She served as both the Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations System in Colombia. Prior to this, Faieta was the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Deputy Head of the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia. Since 2014, she was UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Martin Flaherty is Leitner Family Professor of Law and Founding Co-Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and at Colombia University School of Law. Professor Flaherty has led or participated in human rights missions to Northern Ireland, Turkey, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia, Kenya, Romania and China.
Pablo de Greiff directs the Transitional Justice Program and the Prevention Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU’s School of Law. He served as the first UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence from 2012 to 2018, as a member of the UN Independent Investigation on Burundi (UNIIB) in 2015-16, and since 2019 serves in the UN Secretary General’s Civilian Advisory Board. From 2001 to 2014, de Greiff was the Director of Research at the International Center for Transitional Justice. Born in Colombia, he graduated from Yale University (BA) and from Northwestern University (PhD). De Greiff is the editor or co-editor of ten books, including Jürgen Habermas’s The Inclusion of the Other and The Handbook of Reparations.
Claire Hajaj is policy director at Inter Mediate and a specialist in conflict and post-conflict dynamics. For 17 years, she has contributed to humanitarian, political and security strategies to mitigate conflicts in some of the world’s most complex settings. Previously, Hajaj worked for the United Nations in Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan. Sharing Palestinian and Jewish heritage, Claire’s writing on conflict has appeared in Newsweek, the Sunday Times, the New Statesman, the Economist, Granta, and as the author of two novels. Her policy writing has appeared in Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Global Journal of Health Governance and the UN Centre for Policy Research, where she is an Inaugural Fellow.
Hira Jafri is Founding Program Director of the Program on Peace and Development at Yale as well as the Director of Global Programs at the MacMillan Center. She holds an M.A. degree from Wesleyan University in Cultural Psychology, with focal points in South Asian and Middle East Studies. As a cultural psychologist, her work involves the creation of greater intercultural understanding through deep analysis of behavior and cultural trends. Her research interests extend into peacebuilding, conflict, and education.
Sergio Jaramillo Caro served as High Commissioner for Peace (2012-2016) and National Security Advisor (2010-2012) to the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos. In that capacity he first led the secret negotiations with the FARC guerrillas, which ended with the signing of the General Agreement of 2012, and then together with Humberto de la Calle led the public negotiations that ended with the signing of the Final Agreement in November of 2016. As Peace Commissioner he also had to oversee the disarmament of the FARC in 2017. He was then appointed Ambassador to the EU and Belgium (2017-2018). Currently, Ambassador Jaramillo is a Senior Advisor at the European Institute of Peace (EIP).
Avila Kilmurray is a Visiting Professor with the Transitional Justice Institute (Ulster University), the Migration and Peacebuilding Executive at The Social Change Initiative, and a Board member of the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) and other peacebuilding entities. She was a founding member of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and from 1994-2014 served as Director of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland.
Rory Montgomery is a former Irish diplomat who served as Permanent Representative to the EU, Ambassador to France and Second Secretary General at the Departments of the Taoiseach and Foreign Affairs with particular responsibility for Brexit. He has been principal EU adviser to Enda Kenny and Simon Coveney and has worked extensively with Irish, Northern Irish, British and European politicians and officials. He was part of the Irish team which negotiated the Good Friday Agreement. He is also a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Honorary Professor at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast.
Fergal Mythen is a serving Irish diplomat, currently based at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin with lead responsibility for the Northern Ireland Peace Process, British-Irish relations, and Irish relations with the United States and Canada, as well as with Latin America and the Caribbean region. He is also Irish Ambassador to the UN (designate.)
Niall O’Dowd is the founder of IrishCentral, Irish America Magazine, and the Irish Voice newspaper. O’Dowd was deeply involved in the peace process in Northern Ireland, specifically playing a key role in advising the Clinton administration during that time. He has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, Huffington Post, and the Irish Times.
Jonathan Powell was Chief of Staff to Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007 and the chief British government negotiator on Northern Ireland during that time in office. Jonathan was a British diplomat from 1979 to 1996 working on the negotiations to return Hong Kong to China in the early 1980s, the CSCE human rights talks, CDE arms control talks with the Soviet Union in the mid 1980s, and the ‘Two plus Four’’ talks on German reunification in the late 1980s. Since leaving government Jonathan has written, Great Hatred Little Room: Negotiating Peace in Northern Ireland and The New Machiavelli: How to wield power in the modern world. Powell is also an Honorary Professor at the Mitchell Institute at Queen’s University Belfast.
Carlos Ruiz Massieu is Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Colombia and Head of the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia. Ruiz Massieu has spent 25 years in public service and diplomacy, in both bilateral and multilateral contexts. Most recently, he has been deeply involved in the establishment and support of United Nations peace operations, as well as in reforms to the Organization in the areas of Peace and Security, Development and Management, through his service as Chairperson, at the Under-Secretary-General level, of the General Assembly’s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) since 2013, and as a member since 2011. A distinguished career diplomat since 1999, he served as Alternate Representative of Mexico to the United Nations Security Council from 2009 to 2010. Prior to that, he represented Mexico before the United Nations Economic and Social Council, at governing bodies of United Nations Funds and Programmes, and at the Main Committees of the General Assembly dealing with management and development issues.
Emma Sky is the founding Director of Yale’s International Leadership Center. She is a lecturer at the Jackson Institute where she teaches great power competition, global affairs and Middle East politics. She is a member of the Wilton Park Advisory Council and a trustee of the HALO Trust. She is the author of the highly acclaimed The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq (2015) and In a Time of Monsters: Travelling in a Middle East in Revolt (2019). Emma served as political advisor to the Commanding General of US Forces in Iraq; as development advisor to the Commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan; as political advisor to the US Security Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process; and as Governorate Coordinator of Kirkuk for the Coalition Provisional Authority. She has worked extensively on poverty elimination, human rights, justice public administration reform, security sector reform, and conflict resolution in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
William Ury is one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation and mediation. As the co-founder of the Program on Negotiation, he is a driving force behind many new negotiation theories and practices. Ury is the co-author with Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton of Getting to Yes, a 15-million-copy bestseller translated into more than 35 languages, and the author of several other books including the award-winning Getting to Yes with Yourself. Over the last four decades, Ury has served as a negotiation advisor and mediator in conflicts ranging from the Cold War to ethnic and civil wars in the Middle East, Chechnya, Yugoslavia, and most recently in Colombia, where he serves as a senior advisor to President Juan Manuel Santos. In addition to teaching negotiation and mediation to tens of thousands of executives, Ury is the founder of the Abraham Path Initiative, which seeks to bring people together across cultures by opening a long-distance walking route in the Middle East that retraces the footsteps of Abraham and his family. In recognition of his work, he has received the Cloke-Millen Peacemaker Award, the Whitney North Seymour Award from the American Arbitration Association, and the Distinguished Service Medal from the Russian Parliament.
Bonnie Weir is a senior lecturer in political science, research associate of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and founding co-Director of the Program on Peace and Development at Yale University. She also serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics. Her research and teaching focus on political violence and post-conflict politics with an empirical concentration on Northern Ireland.
Elisabeth Wood is Franklin Muzzy Crosby Professor of the Human Environment and Professor of Political Science, International and Area Studies at Yale University, is currently writing two books, one on sexual violence during war, drawing on field research in several countries, and a second on political violence in Colombia (with Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín). She is the author of Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador and Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador, and co-editor with Morten Bergsmo and Alf B. Skre of Understanding and Proving International Sex Crimes and with Ian Shapiro, Susan C. Stokes, and Alexander S. Kirshner of Political Representation. At Yale she serves as Co-Director of the Program in Agrarian Studies and teaches courses on comparative politics, political violence, social movements and community organizing, agrarian studies and qualitative research methods.