Aheli Moitra, Senior Research Associate is M.A. in International Security and Terrorism from the University of Nottingham (UK) and holds a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Mumbai (India). She has formerly worked for a global think tank on issues of terrorism, conflict resolution, human and state security, focusing on South Asia and the Middle East, with special attention to emerging threats to global security from the conflict in the Middle East and the scope of strategic cooperation between the U.S. and Iran. Her Master's thesis highlighted reasons behind India's abstention from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, with special focus on the failure of the Indian State to establish individual criminal responsibility in Gujarat. In the past, Aheli has been a journalist with some of India's leading national dailies like the Indian Express, Times of India, Daily News & Analysis, and has also worked with London-based INGO Concern Worldwide on issues of development and human security mainly in Africa and Asia.

Akoijam Sunita, Research Associate, did her graduation and post-graduation in Political Science from Delhi University. Earlier she had worked as a copy writer and assistant editor in a publishing firm before working as a journalist in Manipur with the Imphal Free Press. During her three-year profession as a journalist, she won numerous international, national, regional awards and recognition for her writings on HIV/AIDS, gender and conflict. She has presented a number of papers on women and conflict in international and national seminars.

Anjuman Ara Begum, Regional Research Associate for the Northeast was previously a Legal Associate with the North East Network. She has been trained on various aspects of human rights, women's rights issues, right to information, budget analysis and has actively engaged in these for many years. As part of her L.L.M. curriculum, she has conducted an extensive research on the International Criminal Court and its relevance in the North East of India. She has also researched the armed conflict in West Garo Hills and its impact on civilians.

Johanna Barnabas Lokhande, Regional Research Associate for Gujarat has completed her M.A. in Political Science from M.S. University, Baroda (Gujarat). She has formerly worked as a research assistant at the Women's Studies Center at the University on a Project on School textbooks of the state board, analyzing the representation of gender, nation, identity and citizenship in school textbooks. Since the past two years, she has been engaged with the survivors of 2002 mass violence in Gujarat, working on legal justice, peace and reconciliation with 'Nyayagraha'. She is an active member of PUCL Baroda chapter and has worked in a post conflict situation with minority women.

Nagesh Badu, Information Management Officer, is an IT graduate. He concluded his graduation in Information Management from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu (Nepal). Presently, he is pursuing his Masters in Rural Development from the same university. He has previously worked as a Software Developer, developing various standalone and server based softwares for national and international organizations. He also has experience in website designing and development.

Ram Narayan Kumar, former director of SAFHR’s South Asian Orientation Course in Human Rights and Peace Studies, was the full time Director of the project.
Kumar has been involved with human rights and democracy issues in the region since 1975 when he was imprisoned for 19 months for his vocal opposition to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime that lasted till March 1977. Kumar's work for justice and accountability in Punjab is widely recognized. A founder member of the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, which petitioned the Supreme Court in April 1995 for a comprehensive investigation on the matter of police abductions resulting in the secret cremations in Punjab, Kumar is the lead author of Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab, (SAFHR, 2003). Some of his other publications are: The Sikh Unrest and the Indian State: Politics, personalities and historical retrospective (Ajanta Publications, New Delhi, 1997); The Sikh Struggle: Origin, Evolution and Present Phase (Chanakya Publications, Delhi, 1991); Confronting the Hindu Sphinx (Ajanta Publication, New Delhi, 1991); Four Years of the Ceasefire Agreement between the Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim: Promises and Pitfalls (Other Media Communications, New Delhi, 2002); "India's Constitutional Discourse: Some Unanswered Question" and "Rights Guarantees and Judicial Wrongs: Arguments for an Appraisal" in Recasting Indian Politics, ed. Paul Flather (Palgrave, London Forthcoming; June 2007); Critical Readings in Human Rights and Peace (Shipra publications, New Delhi, 2006). Former Reuters Foundation Fellow at the University of Oxford, Kumar has recently released his new book, Terror in Punjab: Narratives, Knowledge and Truth (Shipra Publications, Delhi, 2008).

Shafat N. Ahmad, Regional Research Associate for Jammu and Kashmir is a Law graduate from Kashmir University and is presently working as an Advocate in Jammu & Kashmir. He also holds a Diploma in Human rights and Peace education. He was part of training programs on People’s Diplomacy and Conflict Management in East Timor and Sweden respectively. He has been involved in documentation of human rights violations and organizing Para-legal training programs for NGO workers and students, and received a fellowship from Action Aid International.

Som Prasad Niroula, Project Coordinator, completed his M.A in Peace Education from United Nations Mandated University of Peace (UPEACE), Costa Rica in 2007. He also holds an M.A in Anthropology from Department of Sociology/Anthropology from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu (Nepal). He completed his dissertation research on anthropological study of human rights and its implication on development in Jhagar community, an indigenous group of Eastern Tarai of Nepal. He submitted a thesis on 'Rights to Education of Dalits in Nepal' to UPEACE in 2007. His areas of interests are peace research, human rights and right to development.

Nyaya-agraha: Campaign for Legal Justice and Reconciliation in Gujarat is led by Harsh Mander, former officer of the Indian Administrative Service who quit his position in the wake of the carnage in Gujarat to devote himself to pursue the objectives of justice, reparation and reconciliation. Nyaya-graha is a group, comprising young lawyers and human rights activist, drawn mainly from the victim communities in various districts of the state involved mainly in monitoring and intervening in the cases that have been reopened for investigations following Supreme Court’s intervention in August 2004. Harsh Mander will be one of the project’s expert consultants.

The Lawyers’ Collective, an organization of lawyers and law students involved with public interest issues in India, is headed by Indira Jaising who, as a senior Supreme Court advocate in India since 1986, has been focusing on protection of human rights, rights of women and those of the poor working class. Indira Jaising successfully prosecuted K. P. S. Gill, former Director General of Punjab police, on behalf of Rupan Deol Bajaj, an IAS officer who filed a complaint against Gill for outraging her modesty. Indira represented the victims of the Union Carbide’s industrial disaster in their claims for compensation against the multinational and has also represented a people’s commission in Punjab, comprising three retired high court judges, when the Punjab police moved the high court to ban its investigations into histories of extrajudicial killings, disappearances and mass cremations in the State.
Indira Jaising will be the project’s main expert consultant on the issues of domestic law and its working on impunity and the rights to truth, justice and reparation. Mehak G. Sethi, a lawyer with the Lawyers’ Collective responsible for all litigations relating to the issues of justice in Gujarat, will be actively involved in the collection, compilation and analysis of the data in the first phase of the project for the duration of eight months.

Patrick Hoenig researched the issues of self-determination in Kashmir, published as a book in Germany, Der Kashmirkonflit und das Recht der Voelker auf Selbstbestimmung, Berlin: Verlag Duncker & Humblot, 2000, and worked for several years for the United Nations in New York and in Africa, serving as the Political Officer in the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2004 to 2006. He has remained closely involved with the issues of justice, democracy and human rights in South Asia as a member of the faculty of SAFHR’s South Asian Orientation Course on Human Rights and Peace Studies, as a “UN Dialogue with Global South” fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2005.

Sanjib Baruah is a professor of political studies at Bard College, New York, and is also the author of several important studies on the Northeast of India, including Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India, New Delhi: OUP, 2005 and India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, University of Pennsylvania Press/ OUP, 1999. He is also a visiting professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi and the Department of Humanities and Social Science at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gauhati, Assam. Sanjib Baruah will be the project’s expert consultant on issues of the Northeast.

Satish Kumar Jain is a professor of economics at the Center for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, specializing in social choice theory, law and economics, and methodology and philosophy of economics. He is the editor of Contemporary Ideas and Issues in Social Sciences, an online journal, and has authored a number of papers on the issues relating to theories and practices of democracy, human rights and environment. Satish Kumar Jain will be one of the project’s expert consultants.

Ensaaf is a registered charitable organization at Portland, the USA, working mainly with the objectives to end impunity in Punjab. Two of the organizations founding directors, Jaskaran Kaur, a law graduate from Harvard and a co-author of Reduced to Ashes, and Sukhman Dhami, who earned his J. D., from the Washington College of Law and is a 2006 Echoing Green fellow, have also been involved in the field work in Punjab. In 2001, Jaskaran Kaur had a Harvard Human Rights Program Summer Fellowship to study the judicial attitudes in Punjab reflected in its handling of the petitions from the relatives of the disappeared for the writ of habeas corpus. The study was published in the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Ensaaf is in the process establishing a permanent field presence in Punjab, which will significantly contribute to the implementation of phases I and III of the project in the region. Both Jaskaran and Sukhman will join the project as consultants and research associates.

Tapan K. Bose, a renowned documentary film maker, author and human rights and peace activist from the region, is the Secretary-General of SAFHR. He will also be the project’s expert consultant on Kashmir.