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When using technology to document mass atrocity crimes, ease of use as well as guaranteed evidentiary value of the collected footage is crucial. Through a participatory design approach we engage closely with the intended users of the eyeWitness technology – both the documentation teams recording footage and the investigators and lawyers using the footage for justice – to ensure our system meets their needs. We believe designing our technology with practitioner and legal input will result in the incorporation of more frontline footage into investigations. As a result, perpetrators of the worst international crimes will be held accountable for their actions, cultures of impunity will be challenged, and justice will prevail.
Registered in the United Kingdom, eyeWitness to Atrocities is an organisation initiated by the International Bar Association.
eyeWitness is generously supported through financial or pro bono support from
Anna joined the eyeWitness team at the beginning of 2019. As eyeWitness' Associate Legal Advisor, she oversees the review and analysis of footage submitted through the app, manages and trains a roster of pro bono lawyers from three top international firms to review said submissions, and assists with the preparation of dossiers and cases addressed to different accountability mechanisms. Prior to this position Anna completed her 18-month-pupillage with a criminal law firm in Italy and is currently in the process of qualifying as a barrister. Other previous employers include the International Criminal Court and the Criminal Court of Bologna. She has a full law degree from the University of Bologna and an advanced LL.M. in Public International Law from the University of Leiden.
Julianne Romy has ten years of experience in international criminal law, transitional justice, and human rights in or in relation to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North America, West Africa, and Europe. As a Legal Advisor, Julianne advises on and implements a strategy for pursuing accountability using submissions received from the eyeWitness to Atrocities app. She holds a Master’s in International Humanitarian Law from Aix-Marseille University and an LL.M. in US Law from the University of Fordham School of Law. Julianne is a qualified lawyer in New York and France. She is fluent in English and French, and is currently learning Arabic.
With a strong interest in international relations, current affairs, and human rights issues, Valmira is responsible for coordinating eyeWitness to Atrocities’ communications strategy. This includes managing eyeWitness’ website and social media channels, supporting the development of outreach materials, and ensuring effective communication with eyeWitness’ stakeholders. Prior to this role, Valmira worked in one of the EU bodies, NGOs, film festivals and cross-border cultural events, where she gained experience in creating communication materials for brand awareness, supporting the implementation of social media strategy, and assisting with organizing public events and liaising with international internal or external stakeholders. Valmira also holds a BA in Broadcasting Journalism from the University of Wolverhampton and a Master’s in Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Southern Denmark.
She has lived in Albania, Greece, Denmark, Jordan, and Turkey. She has developed a deep appreciation for the value that different cultures and backgrounds bring to the table, enabling her to work together across cultures with ease and understanding.
After joining eyeWitness to Atrocities in 2022 as a Project Administrator, Christina is now a Data Administrator. In this role, Christina oversees the processing and cataloguing of footage submitted through the eyeWitness app. She manages and trains a roster of pro bono lawyers from three top international firms to review the footage. Previously, Christina has worked for international development and humanitarian organisations both overseas and in the UK. This has included working for the British Red Cross, supporting the roll-out of their Cash Based Assistance Scheme for Ukrainian refugees. Christina also holds an MSc in International Development: Conflict and Reconstruction (Distinction) from the University of Manchester and an MA (Hons) in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh.
Oriol Galobart joined the eyeWitness to Atrocities team in 2023. In his role as eyeWitness' Programme Administrator, he provides logistical and administrative support, assists members in developing their projects, and serves as eyeWitness' first point of contact for the general inquiries. Previously, Oriol worked as an intern and volunteer for a Barcelona-based foundation that championed the rights of national and ethnic minorities. In addition to his Bachelor's degree in International Relations from Ramon Llull-Blanquerna University, he also earned a Master's degree in International Law from SOAS, University of London with distinction as well as a specialism prize. Oriol received an International Studies Scholarship by the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia.
As Executive Director of the International Bar Association (IBA) Mark S. Ellis leads the foremost international organisation of bar associations, law firms and individual lawyers in the world. Prior to joining the IBA, Dr Ellis spent ten years as the first Executive Director of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI), a project of the American Bar Association (ABA), providing technical legal assistance to twenty-eight countries in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague. He served as Legal Advisor to the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, chaired by Justice Richard J. Goldstone and was appointed by OSCE to advise on the creation of Serbia’s War Crimes Tribunal. He was actively involved with the Iraqi High Tribunal and also acted as legal advisor to the defense team of Nuon Chea at the Cambodian War Crimes Tribunal (ECCC). In 2013, Dr Ellis was admitted to the List of Assistants to Counsel of the International Criminal Court.
A frequent speaker and media commentator on international legal issues, Dr Ellis appears regularly on CNN International, Al Jazeera and the BBC. He has published extensively in the areas of international humanitarian law, war crimes tribunals, and the development of the rule of law. His op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Huffington Post and The London Times. His latest publication – Sovereignty and Justice: Creating Domestic War Crimes Courts within the Principle of Complementarity – was published by Cambridge University Press. Twice a Fulbright Scholar at the Economic Institute in Zagreb, Croatia, he earned his J.D. and B.S. (Economics) degrees from Florida State University and his PhD in Law from King’s College, London. He is the recipient of two research grants to the European Union and the Institut d’Études Européennes in Brussels, Belgium focusing on the law and institutions of the European Union.
Richard J. Goldstone was a judge in South Africa for 23 years, the last nine as a Justice of the Constitutional Court. From August 1994 to September 1996 he was the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Since retiring from the bench he has taught as a visiting professor in a number of United States Law Schools. Most recently, he has been teaching at the Central European University in Budapest. Justice Richard J. Goldstone is an honorary member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple, London and an Honorary Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. In addition, he is an honorary life member of the International Bar Association and Honorary President of its Human Rights Institute.
Tim Hughes has been Deputy Executive Director of the International Bar Association for over a decade, working on its rule of law, human rights and other international legal programmes and objectives. Prior to this he held senior management positions in several multinational FTSE 100 companies, and also acted as an adviser in post-war Croatia. He is a published author on themes of culture and heritage.
Helena Kennedy QC has practised at the Bar for 40 years in the field of criminal law and has conducted many of the leading cases in those years, including the Balcombe Street Siege, the Brighton bombing trial, the Guildford Four Appeal, the Michael Bettany Espionage case, the Jihadist fertiliser bomb plot, and the transatlantic bomb plot. She has championed law reform for women, especially relating to sexual and domestic violence and developed the defence of Battered Women’s syndrome in the British courts. She authored a number of books on law reform, co-wrote the successful television series Blind Justice and became a well known broadcaster on law and ethics during the eighties, presenting the BBC’s Heart of the Matter. She has chaired the British Council for 6 years and the UK Human Genetics Commission for 8 years. She has been a member of the House of Lords for 20 years, where she sits on the Joint Committee of Human Rights, and is now chair of the European Union Sub Committee. She is chair of Justice, the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists and co-chair of the International Bar Association’s Institute of Human Rights. She is Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford.
Sternford is the Senior Partner and Chairman of Zimbabwean law firm Scanlen and Holderness. He is the former President of the Law Society of Zimbabwe and of the Southern African Development Community Lawyers Association (SADC LA) and previously sat on the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute’s (IBAHRI) Task Force on Illicit Financial Flows, Poverty and Human Rights. He is the current Chair of the International Bar Association’s African Regional Forum and also sits on the IBAHRI Council, as a former Co-Chair. Sternford’s area of practice is principally mining, commercial and corporate law, however, he regularly assists in cases involving constitutional issues.
Mr. Rivkin is a Past President of the International Bar Association, who is now an independent arbitrator affiliated with Arbitration Chambers in New York, London and Hong Kong. For more than 40 years, Mr. Rivkin practiced private and public international law at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where he served as Co-Chair of its International Dispute Resolution Group for more than 20 years and was a founder of its Business Integrity/ESG Group. He now serves as a full-time arbitrator and mediator focusing on complex international commercial arbitrations and investor-state disputes.
As IBA President in 2015-16. Mr. Rivkin focused on issues such as judicial integrity, business and human rights, climate justice, human trafficking, corruption, and the independence of the legal profession. In other positions, Mr. Rivkin has worked on initial government efforts to encourage alternative dispute resolution under NAFTA and advised on negotiations to create a worldwide judgments convention, US sanctions policy and nuclear deterrence. Currently, he is the Co-Chair of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre and on the Council of the International Council for Arbitration in Sport, as well as arbitration institutions in Mumbai and Mauritius. He is also a member of the Council of the American Law Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Climate Law Initiative, and of the Board of the Human Trafficking Legal Centre. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University.
Partner with the Spanish law firm Gómez-Acebo & Pombo.
Head of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Group. Her expertise is diverse, with an emphasis on corporate and she is highly experienced in the telecommunications, media and technology sectors.
Vice-President of the International Bar Association for the period 2021-2022. The IBA is the leading worldwide association of the legal sector, with more than 80,000 individual members from top law firms worldwide, and 190 bars spanning across more than 170 jurisdictions.
Member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish satellite company Hispasat; member of its executive commission and of its appointments and remunerations commission (2013–2018).
Secretary General of Círculo Fortuny (the Association of Spanish Luxury Brands) and a member of the Executive Board of the European Cultural and Creative Industries Alliance.
Member of the Executive Committee and of the Advisory Board of the Southwestern Institute for International and Comparative Law at the Centre for American and International Law.
Graduated in Law from ICADE (Institute of Business Administration). Master’s Degree in Community Law from the College of Europe in Bruges. PiL from Harvard Law School.
Joined Gómez-Acebo & Pombo in 1987, appointed partner in 1994.
Mr Zeidman is a former president of the International Bar Association (IBA) Foundation, an Honorary Life Member of the IBA and its Council, and has served in a number of other IBA positions. He is on the board of New Perimeter, DLA Piper’s non-profit affiliate established to provide pro bono legal support for projects of global concern. He is a Founding Member of Appleseed, established more than 20 years ago to create state and local Centres to effect systemic change and reform; 17 such Centres have now been established in the US and Mexico. Mr Zeidman now serves as its General Counsel.
Mr Zeidman devotes his practice to domestic and international distribution, licensing and franchising law. He was the first Chairman of the American Bar Association Antitrust Law Section’s Distribution and Franchising Committee. In 2013, Who’s Who Legal named Mr Zeidman the Global Franchise Lawyer of the Year at the Who’s Who Legal Awards for the ninth consecutive year.
Mr Zeidman graduated with honours from Yale College, where he was named Scholar of the First Rank. He received his law degree from Harvard University and also studied at the Harvard Business School. Mr Zeidman has also served as an advisor in several capacities at both Yale and Duke Universities, and as Special Assistant to the Vice President of the United States.
Javier Aguera is a young technologist and entrepreneur. At the age of 15, he started Geeksphone which became the first European smartphone-maker to launch Android to the market in 2009. His company evolved into Blackphone, recognized as one of the top 10 Technological Breakthroughs by MIT and Top Invention of the year 2014 by TIME Magazine, for pioneering privacy and security in consumer phones. After its acquisition by Silent Circle in 2015, he worked for the firm as Chief Scientist until 2016 when he joined the Artificial Intelligence start-up Snips as Vice President of Business Development. Javier also co-founded three other start-ups in the fields of media and telecom, and serves on the board of 2 virtual reality companies. He is a former advisor in digital agenda policy for the European Commission’s Vice President Neelie Kroes and a founding member of the Forum’s Global Shapers Madrid Hub. He has been featured twice in Forbes 30 Under 30 and MIT Innovators Under 35 lists, and has given talks at events such as Hello Tomorrow and Mobile World Congress.
Marcus Bleasdale is the winner of the 2015 Robert Capa gold Award and FotoEvidence Book Award for his long term work ‘The Unravelling: Central African Republic.’ He is dedicated to covering issues under reported and forgotten by today’s media. He uses his work to influence policy makers around the world. His work covering human rights abuses and conflict have been shown at the U.S. Senate, The U.S. House of Representatives, The United Nations and the Houses of Parliament in the UK.
Marcus has been awarded the UNICEF Photographer of the Year Award (2004), The OPC Olivier Rebbot Award for Best Foreign Reporting (2005), The Alexia Foundation Award for World Peace (2005), The World Press Awards (2006), Freedom of Expression Foundation Norway (2006 and 2011) and the Webby Award (2011) News and Politics, for his multimedia piece ‘Dear Obama,’ to name a few. In 2012 Marcus’ film for Medecins Sans Frontieres was nominated for an Emmy. In 2014 Marcus’ work for National Geographic Magazine won a World Press Photo Award and the Photography award at the Overseas Press Club of America. He was also awarded the Society of Environmental Journalists award for his work in DRC on Conflict minerals and the Amnesty International Award for Photography in 2015.
David M. Crane is a Professor of Practice at Syracuse University College of Law, where he is a member of the faculty of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism. Prior to that, he was the founding Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2002 to 2005. As Undersecretary General, his mandate was to prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international human rights committed during the civil war in the 1990s. Amongst those he indicted was former Liberian President, Charles Taylor, the first sitting African Head of State to be held accountable in history. Professor Crane served in the US federal government for over 30 years. He held numerous key managerial positions and was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 1997. He is a fellow of the American Bar Association where he is on the leadership council of its International Law Section, and he served as the Chairman of the Blue Ribbon Panel on the International Criminal Court’s 2010 Review Session. He is the founder of Impunity Watch and currently leads the Syrian Accountability Project. To bring awareness to this conflict, he helped found the ‘I am Syria’ campaign. Professor Crane is widely published in the area of international humanitarian law, amongst other topics. He holds a JD from Syracuse University, a MA in African Studies and a BGS in History from Ohio University. He also holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Case Western University.
Charles Chernor Jalloh is currently an Associate Professor of Law, at Florida International University. He was formerly an Assistant Professor of Criminal and International Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where he was selected as the Buchanan Ingersoll and Rooney Faculty Scholar 2013-2014. He studied law at McGill University and specialised in International Human Rights Law at Oxford University, where he was named a Chevening Scholar. A member of the Ontario Bar, his legal practice experience includes service as a Legal Counsel in the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Section of the Canadian Department of Justice. For three years, he was the Legal Advisor to the Office of the Principal Defender (OPD) in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In that capacity, he set up the Hague Office of the OPD and played a key role as Duty Counsel in the historic trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. He resigned for reasons of principle. He then joined the Chambers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda assisting the judges on important cases involving the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He was also a Visiting Professional at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Professor Jalloh is widely published and has also edited several notable works in the field of international criminal justice. He is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the referred African Journal of Legal Studies and the African Journal of International Criminal Justice. Since joining academia in 2009, Professor Jalloh has given numerous distinguished lectures and keynotes including at the UN General Assembly and the Assembly of States Parties of the ICC and holds various pro-bono positions.
Originally from Montreal, Canada, Cedric is a polyglot passionate about world affairs, technology, design, and personal development. He was involved at a young age in his family’s real estate enterprise having led various initiatives to grow the business and embraced technology to convert buildings into smarter and greener properties. He enjoyed building online businesses during his university studies and upon graduation in International Management from McGill University, Cedric was selected to join HSBC’s leadership development program. He then held various leading roles in strategy consulting, international affairs, and corporate development in the fields of recycling technology and solar energy. Subsequently, he partook in the launch of Kibo Ventures as Investment Manager of the $50 million early-stage venture capital fund, and co-founded Fools Fund, a seed-stage micro VC fund which invested in twenty companies, returned three times invested capital, and participated in the creation of more than 700 jobs. He then co-founded Future Lighthouse, a virtual reality company operating at the nexus of storytelling & innovation. Cedric is now developing an impact driven investment fund focused on empowering founders of early stage companies leveraging technology and science to solve global pressing issues such as healthcare, education, nutrition, energy, financial inclusion, and urban transformation. Named Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, Cedric is also an advisor to various technology startups and global institutions.
As founding partner of Oury Clark, a central London-based law firm, James Oury has spent over two and half decades promoting the rule of law. Mr Oury has represented indigent capital defendants globally, international criminal indictees and acted for the victims in the London bombings that took place on 7th July 2005. A member of the International Criminal Bar and former chair of the human rights committee of the International Bar Association, Mr Oury currently focuses on the use of technology to enable the protection of human rights. He has been the recipient of numerous pro bono human rights awards. His current project looks to use block chain technology as a basis to monitor slavery and human trafficking for global corporations.
John Owen is past chairman of the Frontline Journalism and Media Club in London. He was previously a professor of international journalism at City University in London, chief news editor for CBC Television News, and executive producer for Al Jazeera English TV. He was the founding director of the Freedom Forum’s European Centre and the founding executive producer of EBU’s NewsXchange. Mr Owen currently serves on various journalism and media boards and also is co-author and co-editor of ‘International News Reporting: Frontlines and Deadlines’, published by Wiley & Blackwell. He now resides in Bend, Oregon.
Kathy Roberts has spent more than a decade representing victims and survivors of human rights violations and international atrocity crimes in litigation. As Deputy Director of the Transitional Justice Clinic (TJC) in The Hague, she centers her practice on providing respectful support to local practitioners seeking accountability for international justice crimes in their own country’s courts. With support from UN Women, Justice Rapid Response, and the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), and in partnership with the Transitional Justice Clinic, Dr. Roberts has assisted local practitioners in international crimes investigation and prosecution in Chile, Guatemala, Kosovo, and Tunisia.
Dr. Roberts previously served as the Legal Director for the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) in San Francisco. CJA is a non-profit law firm dedicated to deterring torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other severe human rights abuses around the world through litigation, policy advocacy and outreach in pursuit of truth, justice and redress for victims and survivors. In this role she led or supervised investigation and litigation of impact cases on behalf of victims and survivors of atrocities from twelve countries spanning five continents. She led CJA’s trial teams in Yousuf v. Samantar, Ahmed v. Magan, and Jara v. Barrientos.
Dr. Roberts received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2001, and her JD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004.
Naomi Roht-Arriaza is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Professor Roht-Arriaza is the author of The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights (2005) and Impunity and Human Rights in International Law and Practice (1995), and co-editor of Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice (2006). She is a co-author of The International Legal System: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press 2010, 2015) and of numerous articles on international human rights and international criminal law. She earned a BA from UC Berkeley, a MA from the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, and a JD from the UC Berkeley School of Law. After graduating from law school, she clerked for Judge James Browning of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. In 2011 she was a Democracy Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and in 2012 she was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Botswana. She is the president of the Board of the Due Process of Law Foundation and a legal advisor to the Center for Justice and Accountability. Her work was featured in the film Granito.
Juliana Ruhfus is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker and interactive producer for Al Jazeera English specialised in human rights and investigative work. She has gone undercover in Cambodian orphanages, followed US arms supplies into Syria and produced the five part “Corporations on Trial” series. Her desire to find new audiences for investigative journalism resulted in the production of innovative digital storytelling projects including the multi-award winning "Pirate Fishing - Interactive Investigation" and a Google DNI funded open source newsroom tool.
In 2013 Juliana was named as one of the top 100 journalists covering armed violence by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV). Her work in areas of conflict led to a strong interest in journalism that deals responsibly with violence and tragedy and her work has been awarded with the Ochberg Fellowship and a scholarship for Harvard's Global Trauma Programme. She now serves on the European board of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma and on the board of trustees for the Environmental Justice Foundation.
Prior to Al Jazeera Juliana worked as a freelance reporter/ producer for Channel 4, BBC, WDR, NHK and other international broadcasters. She has also worked in an investigative capacity for NGO's and twice as a consultant to the UN as part of a Security Council monitoring group tasked with investigating breaches of the arms embargo on Somalia.
David Scheffer is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He was the US Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001) and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Expert for United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (2012-2018). He led the US delegation to the UN talks establishing the International Criminal Court during the 1990s. Professor Scheffer authored the award-winning book, All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals (2012) and The Sit Room: In the Theater of War and Peace (2019). He received the Berlin Prize in 2013 and the “Champion of Justice” award of the Center for Justice and Accountability in 2018, and was named one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s “Top Global Thinkers” in 2011.
Peter Stern is Director of Product Policy Stakeholder Engagement at Facebook in Menlo Park, California. Product Policy is responsible for writing and interpreting global policies governing what users can share on Facebook, and how advertisers and developers interact with the site. Peter leads a stakeholder engagement team that builds relationships with NGOs, academics, and other thought leaders, and that incorporates external feedback into Facebook’s product policy development process. Peter’s work puts him at the center of many current Internet policy issues -- including the scope of free expression, anti-bullying and -hate speech, countering violent extremism, and user trust. Prior to joining Facebook in 2014, Peter was a partner at the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster, where he specialized in international litigation and spent 11 years in his firm’s Tokyo office. His practice also included human rights litigation and counseling in the area of corporate social responsibility; from 2012-14 he served as Co-Chair of the International Bar Association's CSR Committee. He holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from Amherst College and an M.A. (History) and J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
