Accem

Since 1991, Accem has worked to improve the living conditions of people in vulnerable situations, defending their human rights and ensuring equal opportunities regardless of race, creed, religion, gender or opinions. Accem works in 12 regions in Spain and provides specialized integral assistance and counselling to refugees, stateless persons, migrants and other groups at risk of social exclusion in Spain, towards the achievement of their full social integration. Accem develops programs around the field of reception, direct assistance, legal counselling, training and labour insertion.

Accem website

Aditus Foundation

Aditus Foundation was established with a view to monitor, act and report on access to fundamental human rights by individuals and groups. Aditus Foundation was founded on the principles of the universality, interdependence and indivisibility of all fundamental human rights, and we strive to promote their understanding and application. As a generic human rights NGO, we work constantly to adopt a broad perspective for human rights in Malta, identifying themes such as non-discrimination and access to effective remedies. We also work towards highlighting the regional and international implications of human rights. Our main activities include the identification of priority areas, formulating advocacy strategies and working towards improvement in legal and administrative standards. We focus primarily on the Government of Malta, but also address the EU institutions, the UN, the Council of Europe and other relevant agencies. We remain in constant communication and cooperation with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental entities to maintain a comprehensive approach to our activities.

Aditus Foundation website

Ahmad Jaber

Ahmad Jaber, alias Ahmad Benswait, is a stateless researcher in the United Kingdom. He is originally from a minority indigenous to the lands of Kuwait but excluded from the right to Kuwaiti nationality since the country’s independence from Britain. Benswait’s research is informed by his lived experiences of statelessness, including being arbitrarily classed ‘illegal (Bidoon) resident’ in what has always been his homeland, the deprivation of basic human rights and forced migration.

Barbara von Rütte

Barbara von Rütte is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Prior to this she has completed her PhD at the University of Bern within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research NCCR - on the move. Her doctoral and postdoctoral research focuses on the regulation of nationality in international law, in particular the right to nationality. Her broader research interests include questions relating to citizenship law and theory as well as statelessness, Swiss nationality law, legal identity, and the administrative detention of migrants both from a constitutional law as well as a human rights perspective. Since 2020 she is a member of the Swiss Federal Commission on Migration and serves as a book review editor for the Statelessness and Citizenship review. Until 2019 she also served as a consultant for the Council of Europe on the committee of experts on administrative detention of migrants (CJ-DAM).

Barbara von Rütte website

Cecilia Manzotti

Cecilia Manzotti is a PhD researcher at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology of the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on the determination of the nationality status of asylum seekers and refugees, including their possible statelessness, in Europe. Previously, she worked in refugee status determination, first as a legal advisor with Africa and Middle Refugee Assistance (AMERA) in Cairo, and later as a decision-maker with UNHCR in Egypt, Turkey and Italy. Cecilia also worked in wider refugee protection, and more recently served as a consultant with UNHCR in Guinea, focusing on statelessness. Moreover, she conducted research on migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons with UNODC and contributed to UNODC publications on these topics.

Clara Van Thillo

Clara Van Thillo is a PhD researcher and teaching assistant in international law at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, KU Leuven. She is also a visiting teaching assistant at the University of Hasselt. At the Centre, Clara pursues a PhD on the role that UNHCR plays in the development of the international legal framework on statelessness under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters. 
Prior to joining the Centre, she worked as an intern at the General Representative of the Government of Flanders to the United Nations in Geneva. She holds a Master of Laws degree, which she obtained from KU Leuven in 2021. Her Master’s thesis examined the prosecution of sexual violence against the stateless Rohingya in Myanmar before the International Criminal Court. She also studied one semester at the University of Barcelona in 2019.

Clara Van Thillo website

Erika Kalantzi

Erika Kalantzi past and current roles include Attorney-at-Law at the High Court of Greece 1990-1996: legal counselor at the Greek Council for Refugees 1998-3/2001: participation – representing UNHCR’s office in Athens - to second instance committee for the regularization of illegal migrants in Greece. 2000-2008: participation to second instance committees for the examination of submissions filed by rejected asylum seekers. 1998 till 2015: editing of the Yearbook of Refugee and Aliens Law (issued by the Publisher Ant. N. Sakkoulas in Greece).

Humanrights.ch - Menschenrechte Schweiz

Humanrights.ch is a Swiss non-profit organization founded in 1999 with the main aim of gathering and providing information, raising public awareness, monitoring state action and counselling on human rights issues and the human rights situation in Switzerland. Today, the online-platform www.humanrights.ch is one of the most important independent information-platforms for international human rights in the German-speaking world. Humanrights.ch has particular expertise in coordinating and publishing reports and opinions on the human rights situation in Switzerland and has contributed to a number of reports to UN and Council of Europe monitoring bodies. In collaboration with ENS, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion as well as Terre des hommes Foundation, humanrights.ch has submitted a joint submission on statelessness to the Human Rights Council for the third Universal Periodic Review of Switzerland in 2017. Humanrights.ch further offers a legal aid program for persons in the penal system and coordinates a network for victims of racial discrimination. Finally, humanrights.ch is very well connected as a founding member of the NGO Platform Human Rights Switzerland, a network of over 80 Swiss NGOs working in the field of human rights.

Humanrights.ch - Menschenrechte Schweiz website

Immigrant Council of Ireland

The Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) is an independent human rights organisation. We advocate for the rights of migrants and their families and act as a catalyst for public debate as well as legislative and policy change. The ICI is an Independent Law Centre, which means we can provide legal representation to migrants and their families. We undertake strategic litigation in order to try to effect change and in that context also represent stateless persons in Ireland. We are a non-governmental organisation with charitable status.

Immigrant Council of Ireland website

Jesus Tolmo

Jesus Tolmo practised as a lawyer for more than 25 years. Formerly, he worked as coordinator of the Legal, International and Advocacy department in Fundación Cepaim, and as a Consultant on statelessness for the UNHCR representation for the Nordic and Baltic countries. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the University of Murcia, his research focuses on statelessness in the case of non-recognized states or with limited recognition.Â