Alda Facio
Alda Facio is a feminist human rights activist, jurist and writer. She has lectured extensively around the world and written many articles on women’s human rights. In 2003 she was the 7th Dame Nita Barrow Distinguished Visitor at the University of Toronto where she founded the Women Human Rights Education Institute and now serves as Advisor, Legal Expert and Facilitator. She is a permanent advisor to several international NGOs including JASS (Just Associates and Ixpop, an indigenous women´s organization from Guatemala. She was one of the founders of CLADEM, the Latin American Committee for Women´s Rights and of the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1996, she was its first Director. In 2005 she was appointed to the UN Secretary General’s Task Force on Violence against Women. From 2014 – 2020 she was appointed to the Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls as one of five members of this Special Procedure of the UN Human Rights Council.
Alda has participated as a government delegate in many world conferences and working groups including the Rome Conference which adopted the Statute of the International Criminal Court and the working group which drafted the Optional Protocol to CEDAW. She was the director of the Women, Gender and Justice Program at the United Nations Latin American Institute for Crime Prevention from 1990 to 2018. She lectures at several universities and human rights institutions in the Americas and in Spain. She has been teaching a course on access to justice for women for the past five years at FLACSO, Argentina and is the President of the Fundación Justicia y Género, a CSO which centers its work on training legislators and judges on women´s human rights. She has written hundreds of articles for different journals and magazines and her book on a methodology for mainstreaming a gender perspective into the law is used in many law schools and Judiciary Schools in Latin America.
Angela Lytle
Angela Lytle is a women’s human rights defender and adult educator with extensive experience developing and facilitating workshops and capacity building programs in international settings. Involved in the WHRI since its inception in 2004, Angela acted as Executive Director and Educational Programs Coordinator between 2009 – 2021, and continues to support WHRI in an Advisory and Facilitator role. Under her leadership, the WHRI expanded to offer international programs, online learning and consultancy, new partnerships, and enhanced WHRI’s impact in the areas of advocacy and strategic knowledge mobilization for women’s human rights defenders. Angela served as a resource person with IWRAW-APs “Global to Local” program for NGO representatives at the CEDAW Committee and engaged in research and knowledge dissemination activities for the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls. Angela lived in South Korea where she engaged in educational and activist work with the Korean Women’s Associations United, and organizations supporting survivors of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery. She has a Masters in Adult Education and Community Development.
Bhavya Joshi
Bhavya Joshi (she/her) hails from India and is currently pursuing her Doctor of Public Health from University of California, Berkeley. As a Global Public Health Fellow, and a Fellow at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law, Bhavya’s research focuses on understanding the reproductive needs of refugee and internally displaced women and girls in compounded crisis settings.
Bhavya is a women’s human rights advocate and educator and manages programs to strengthen the capacity of women rights defenders from across the globe to use international human rights mechanisms for advocacy and activism at national, regional, and international levels. She has contributed to Special Procedures submissions on women’s reproductive health issues.
Prior to starting her doctorate, Bhavya worked in India and the subcontinent region for over 6 years where she managed, implemented, and evaluated public health, education, and WASH projects with a focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Bhavya received her MA in International Law and Human Rights from the United Nations mandated University for Peace, Costa Rica. Bhavya currently works as WHRI’s Educational Programs Coordinator.
Lakshya Dhungana
Lakshya is a documentary filmmaker and feminist social justice advocate based in Toronto. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Development from University of Toronto. She has worked with different projects related to women’s rights and gender in various capacities including communication, coordination, content production & media engagement. She explores issues of human rights, gender and sexuality through visual art, placing her own body, it’s experiences and social location at the centre. Lakshya is a WHRI alumna, and has been engaged with the institute since 2013. Her work can be found at www.lakshyafilms.com. Lakshya currently works as WHRI’s Communications Officer and Digital Solutions Coordinator.
Anya Victoria Delgado
Anya Victoria Delgado holds a Law degree from Universidad Panamericana in Mexico, and an LL.M. degree from the University of Notre Dame in the United States. She was Senior Protection Associate at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Project Assistant at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), both in Mexico City. She has been a fellow for the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights; lead researcher in the Latin American and Caribbean region for the Due Diligence Project and Coordinator of a project to develop a model to eliminate gender violence in indigenous communities, sponsored by the UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women. She founded L´um Creadoras to produce the documentary “Suelo Mirar al Cielo” (Borderless Sky). Anya is also an alumni of VVLead Program sponsored by Vital Voices and the Women in Public Service program, and worked with the Feminist Alliance for Rights (FAR) with the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL). She currently works with the Pan-American Development Foundation. Formerly WHRI’s Latin American Programs Director, she now acts as Advisor to WHRI.
Anna Arutshyan
Anna Arutshyan is an advocate for feminist international human rights law and a campaigner for long-lasting global peace. Over 25 years, she has introduced numerous projects and research aimed at gender education and has worked with leading women’s funds and networks. In 2001, she founded the grassroots women’s organisation ‘’Society Without Violence’’ in Armenia. She also initiated the formation of the Coalition ”To Stop Violence Against Women” in Armenia and promoted the establishment of the “Women In Black” Armenian Initiative, as part of the WIB global peacebuilders movement.
After relocation to the UK, she co-founded Oxford-based ‘Women’s Solidarity Fund’. Through the fund, Anna organises and co-facilitates the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute’s CEDAW for Change Oxford Programme hosting women CSO leaders, lawyers, and policy writers from Global South. Anna has a LLM in International Human Rights Law from Oxford Brookes University, having written her dissertation on protection mechanisms for sexual violence victims and witnesses under International Criminal Court. Anna is a key WHRI partner and Advisor.
Abiade Abiola
Abiade Olawanle Abiola is a human rights activist, lawyer, and law teacher with an active interest in women’s human rights, children’s rights, campaigns against sexual and gender-based violence, and alternative dispute resolution. She is a member of several professional associations in Nigeria, including the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT), and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). She is also a member of the Federacion International De Abogadas (FIDA) known as the International Federation of Women Lawyers, where she held an executive position.
She is a prolific writer and author. Abuse is not Justified: Reality of Change is one of her notable publications, which denounced gender-based violence and other forms of abusive behaviours. Abiade is the founder/President of the Human of Substance Empowerment Initiative, a non-governmental organization that provides programmes for the empowerment and rounded development of women and youths. She teaches law at the Faculty of Law, Lead City University, Ibadan. She is an alumna of the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute (2013) and co-founder of the Women and Youth Education Institute.
Moradeke Abiodun-Badru
Moradeke Abiodun-Badru (Abi) is a healthcare professional and a gender and industrial relations expert. She has two decades of experience as a staff and one of the principal officers of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives. She also served at the head office as the Gender and Equality officer. Currently, Abi works with Public Services International as a Project Coordinator for English-speaking West Africa. Having worked as a Nurse/midwife in a District Hospital, Abi is passionate about access to quality public healthcare services for women and children.
As a seasoned trade unionist, health worker and administrator with an in-depth knowledge of the WHO, ILO and UN procedures and implementation strategies, Abi has represented \ trade unions/NGOs at several levels of engagement in the United Nations, ILO, IOM and beyond. Abi has served as a board member of White Ribbon Alliance Nigeria. Abi participated in the Women’s Human Rights Institute at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 2013. Abi is also a graduate of the Global Labour University in Germany. She is the co-founder of the Women and Youth Education Institute.