Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program
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2013 - 2014 Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows
2013 - 2014 Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows
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Suhail Ahmed – Pakistan
ahmed499@umn.eduMr. Ahmed is a Project Manager with DevCon: An Association of Rural Development in Pakistan. His duties include advocacy work with government agencies, providing services to child victims of violence, conducting fact-finding investigations, and training teachers on child-friendly schooling. Mr. Ahmed received a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Master’s degrees in both English Literature and Sociology from Shah Abdul Latif University. He is a founding member of three non-governmental organizations focused on human rights and development. As a Humphrey Fellow, Mr. Ahmed hopes to learn new and effective approaches for sensitizing healthcare providers to human rights issues. He plans to undertake a project incorporating human rights advocacy into graduate degree programs for healthcare providers in his home country of Pakistan.
Ehtasham Anwar – Pakistan
anwar017@umn.eduMr. Anwar is a member of the Pakistan Administrative Service. He has held senior-level positions in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, including serving as the Additional Deputy Commissioner. Besides being a medical graduate, he holds an LL.B. and a Master’s degree in History. Mr. Anwar is a qualified barrister and a member of Lincoln’s Inn in London, one of the four Inns of Court for barristers. He has done various consultancies with national and international NGOs on issues related to law and human rights. He is a visiting faculty member at a police training school and other institutes in Islamabad. He has contributed numerous articles on legal and administrative issues to major English daily newspapers of Pakistan. As a Humphrey Fellow, Mr. Anwar hopes to focus on the response of the U.S. criminal justice system to violence against women and other related issues.
Gilles Kassarate – Côte d’Ivoire
kassa025@umn.eduMr. Kassarate is a Lieutenant in the National Gendarmerie and a Squadron Commander and Instructor at the Military Police Academy in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. As a Squadron Commander, Mr. Kassarate is involved in administrative management and the training and monitoring of new recruits. He instructs recruits on basic laws and law enforcement, as well as criminal investigation techniques. Mr. Kassarate received his Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Abidjan and went on to achieve additional degrees from the National Academy of Officers and the National Academy of the Gendarmerie of Porto Novo (Benin). As a Humphrey Fellow, Mr. Kassarate hopes to enhance his knowledge of human rights standards and use that knowledge to incorporate human rights trainings into his work in the Military Police Academy. More specifically, Mr. Kassarate is interested in increasing military awareness of human rights and creating a stable system of human rights practices in Côte d’Ivoire.
Alice Wangui Kimani – Kenya
kiman003@umn.eduMs. Kimani is the Regional Policy, Liaison and Reporting Officer at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Regional Office in Nairobi, Kenya. Prior to that, Ms. Kimani worked as a Counter Trafficking Program Officer in the IOM offices in Kenya and Tanzania and was also instrumental in providing support to several initiatives in the region, notably in Uganda, Rwanda, and Somalia. Through her work at IOM, she has worked directly with victims and provided training and education about human trafficking to community members, government officials, journalists, civil society organizations, and foreign diplomats. In collaboration with other members of the National Task Force on Human Trafficking in Kenya, her role at IOM was instrumental in pushing for the enactment of the first comprehensive legislation addressing human trafficking. Ms. Kimani is a graduate of Kenyatta University with a Master’s in Education and is an alumni of the Refugee Service Centre in the Department of International Development, at the University of Oxford, England. During her Humphrey year, she hopes to expand her knowledge on the protection of victims and develop new tactics of combatting human trafficking by addressing demand factors.
Nawarathne Marasinghe – Sri Lanka
mudiy001@umn.eduMr. Nawarathne Marasinghe is a Senior State Counsel in the Attorney General’s Department of Sri Lanka, as well as an attorney-at-law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. As a Senior Public Prosecutor, he is responsible for the prosecution of major crimes, such as all forms of child abuse, rape, murder, offences related to narcotics and dangerous drugs, and white collar crimes. He also provides legal advice to the State, mainly to the police and the Criminal Investigation Department of Sri Lanka. Mr. Marasinghe received his LL.B. and LL.M. degrees with concentrations on Human Rights from the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka. He has completed multiple human rights fellowships locally and abroad. He has published many articles on children’s rights, women’s rights, and general human rights topics, as well as presented papers at various national and international conferences related to law and human rights. As a Humphrey Fellow, Mr. Marasinghe hopes to learn effective practices for the prosecution of crimes against children. He then hopes to implement more effective and child-friendly protection mechanisms for child crime victims in the Sri Lankan justice system.
Anh Nguyen – Viet Nam
nguy2308@umn.eduMr. Nguyen is currently the National Project Coordinator for the Viet Nam Office of the United Nations Inter-agency Project on Counter Human Trafficking. He serves as the Secretariat to the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative on Human Trafficking (COMMIT), engages with various government ministries, UN agencies, NGOs, and other stake holders to implement counter trafficking interventions, and manages the counter-trafficking network. Prior to that, he served as a practitioner, designer, and activist in child safety, child protection, and children’s rights. Mr. Nguyen received his undergraduate degrees in English and Sociology from the Viet Nam National University. He then went on to obtain a Master’s in Social Administration from the School of Social Work and Social Policy, the University of Queensland in Australia. During his Humphrey year, Mr. Nguyen wishes to improve his leadership and management skills and to expand his knowledge of anti-trafficking efforts, including good practices to address labor trafficking and forced labor. Ultimately, he hopes to duplicate and expand these practices to end labor trafficking and forced labor in Viet Nam.
Ghada Sabbagh – Lebanon
sabba009@umn.eduMs. Sabbagh is an attorney with the Levant Law Practice in Beirut, Lebanon. Her responsibilities include serving on the legal team that represents victims before the Special Tribunal of Lebanon and working on cases related to international arbitration and trade. Ms. Sabbagh graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Private Law from the University of Holy Spirit in Lebanon, and went on to receive her DEA in Public Law from the same institution. She is a member of the Beirut Bar Association and has organized numerous training sessions and workshops on topics such as human trafficking and cases of sexual and gender-based violence. As a Humphrey Fellow, Ms. Sabbagh hopes to gain an in-depth knowledge of international human rights law, international business transactions, drafting contracts, and mergers and acquisitions. Upon returning to Lebanon, she plans to establish legal clinics for refugees, migrant workers, and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.
Sandhya Basini Sitoula – Nepal
sitou001@umn.eduMs. Sitoula is a Program Coordinator at the Center for Legal Research and Resource Development, a national level NGO in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her responsibilities include providing capacity building training to human trafficking protection actors and encouraging stakeholders to adopt a victim-centered approach to trafficking cases. She conducts research on trafficking issues, trains organizational field staff and other concerned stakeholders, and supervises Trafficking in Person (TIP) cases. Ms. Sitoula received her LL.B in Jurisprudence and Human Rights Law from the Kathmandu School of Law and went on to receive a Master of Laws in Human Rights and Gender Justice from the same institution. She is an Executive Member of the Human Rights Committee of the Kathmandu District Court Bar Association. As a Humphrey Fellow, Ms. Sitoula hopes to explore best practices for combatting human trafficking with particular attention to the areas of advocacy, law enforcement, and prosecution, as well as strategies and mechanisms for victim and witness protection.
Liva Sreedharan – Malaysia
sreed002@umn.eduMs. Sreedharan is currently a Program Officer on the Anti-Trafficking Team at the non-governmental organization, Tenaganita, in Selangor, Malaysia. Her primary area of work is managing a hotline for trafficked victims, rescuing victims who have been trafficked for sex work, domestic work, and the fishing industry, and facilitating legal aid for survivors of trafficking. Ms. Sreedharan received a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Mass Communication from Upper Iowa University and then went on to obtain her Master’s degree in Criminology and Forensic Psychology from Middlesex University in London. She was selected to present a paper on Cultural Cleansing of the Baha’i Community in Iran at the International Critical Criminology Conference in 2009. As a Humphrey Fellow, Ms. Sreedharan hopes to design a multi-dimensional program to advocate for policy changes at the national and regional levels to prevent the trafficking of persons, as well as to protect the rights of those who have been trafficked.
Olushegun Tidjani Serpos – Benin
serpo004@umn.eduJudge Tidjani-Serpos is an Examining Magistrate for the Ministry of Justice in the Tribunal division in Abomey-Calavi, Benin. His primary areas of responsibility include the investigation of criminal cases, managing the pretrial affairs, and working in coordination with the prosecutor and the police in order to solve cases efficiently. Judge Tidjani-Serpos received a Master’s degree in International Relations from the Jean Moulin University in Lyons, France, prior to which he received three degrees from universities in Benin in the fields of law and international relations. Judge Tidjani-Serpos has written multiple honors theses on the subjects of criminal deterrence and international crimes. During his Humphrey year, he plans to research justice mechanisms that deter crime while increasing respect for human rights. Judge Tidjani-Serpos hopes to apply what he learns to his work as a Magistrate in Benin to assist in deterring cyber-crimes, the drug trade, weapons trafficking, and murder.
Wangdi – Bhutan
wangd002@umn.eduCaptain Wangdi is the Officer in Charge of the Women and Child Protection Unit (WCPU) of the Royal Bhutan Police based in the capital city of Thimphu. In his position with the WCPU, he works closely with the National Commission for Women and Children, as well as the local NGO, Respect Educate Nurture Empower Women. He focuses on crimes against women and children, including domestic violence, and trafficking in persons, overseeing more than 600 cases each year. He was involved in the drafting of the Bhutanese Domestic Violence Prevention Bill and was a member of the core working group of the Child Mapping Assessment carried out by the United Nations Children’s Fund and the National Commission for Women and Children. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Social Science from the Indian National Defense Academy and a Diploma in Military Studies from the Indian Military Academy. During his Humphrey year, he hopes to focus on the prevention of trafficking in persons, an emerging issue in Bhutan, as well as on women’s and children’s rights. Upon returning to Bhutan, he plans to use this knowledge to spearhead the creation of additional Women and Child Protection Units within the Royal Bhutan Police.
