Bassma Kodmani

Bassma Kodmani is former Director of the Arab Reform Initiative, a think tank promoting Arab thinking and homegrown options for change. Currently, she is a senior researcher with Institut Montaigne. She is Associate Professor of International Relations at Paris University currently on leave. She served as a senior adviser at the French National Research Council, Senior Research Fellow at CERI-Sciences Po, adviser to the Académie Diplomatique Internationale and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Collège de France. Before that she worked at the Ford Foundation office for the Middle East. From 1998 to 2005 and established the Middle East Program at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris. She was an active member of several regional track 2 negotiations for the Middle East conflict and in several cases the initiator of such talks.
 
In 2011 she was a part of one of the groups that founded the Syrian National Council (SNC), the first coalition of the Syrian opposition. Lately she joined the High Negotiations Commission (later expanded to become the Syrian Negotiations Commission) and is a member of the Constitutional Committee negotiating a new constitution for Syria. She was a founding member of the Syrian Women’s Political Movement and launched GLOBAL SYRIA in partnership with the Asfari Foundation, a new initiative to gather the Syrian diaspora.

Hrair Balian

Hrair Balian is Director of the Conflict Resolution Program at The Carter Center. Since 1991, Balian has worked in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the independent states emerging from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Africa, serving in intergovernmental organizations (the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and nongovernmental organizations (International Crisis Group and others). He has worked on elections, human rights, and conflict resolution.

Dr. Lina Khatib

Dr. Lina Khatib is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. She was formerly director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Her research focuses on the international relations of the Middle East, Islamist groups and security, political transitions and foreign policy, with special attention to the Syrian conflict. She is a research associate at SOAS, was a senior research associate at the Arab Reform Initiative and lectured at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published seven books and also written widely on public diplomacy, political communication and political participation in the Middle East. She is a frequent commentator on politics and security in the Middle East and North Africa at events around the world and in the media.

Mozn Hassan

Mozn Hassan is an Egyptian feminist activist and founder of ‘Nazra for Feminist Studies’. She has received many awards, amongst them the Global Fund for Women’s inaugural Charlotte Bunch Human Rights Award in 2013. Hassan and Nazra were jointly awarded one of the Right Livelihood Awards, often called the "Alternative Nobel Peace Prize", in 2016 "for asserting the equality and rights of women in circumstances where they are subject to ongoing violence, abuse and discrimination”. In 20209, Hassan received the Hrant Dink Award for peace , rights and equality. In her work through Nazra, Hassan has been involved in a range of different activities and campaigns to address gender-based inequalities and forms of injustices while also strengthening feminist mobilization and women’s participation in politics. Nazra has played a particularly important role in documenting human rights abuses and sexual violence during and after the revolution of 2011, and has been supporting and advocating for the survivors of sexual assault. On March 2021, Hassan founded “Doria Feminist Fund” MENA feminist fund, a first MENA fund for new feminist groups from the region. Hassan dedicated RLA to establish the fund.