Dr. Agnès Callamard, Executive Director

Dr. Agnès Callamard took up the post of Executive Director in October 2004. She has evolved a distinguished career in human rights and humanitarian work. Agnès is a former Chef de Cabinet for the Secretary General of Amnesty International, and as the organisation’s Research Policy Coordinator, she led Amnesty’s work on women’s human rights. Agnès has conducted human rights investigations in a large number of countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. She founded and led HAP International (the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership) where she oversaw field trials in Afghanistan, Cambodia and Sierra Leone and worked extensively in the field of international refugee movements with the Center for Refugee Studies in Toronto. She has written and been published widely in the field of human rights, women’s rights, refugee movements and accountability and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the New School for Social Research in New York.

John Barker, Senior Operations Director
John Barker became Senior Operations Director in October 2007. Prior to that, he was the Director of the Africa programme at ARTICLE 19 from December 2000 - October 2007. Initially managing the ARTICLE 19 Africa Office in Johannesburg South Africa, he returned to the UK office in 2004, after 14 years of living and working in Africa.

Before joining ARTICLE 19, John managed and developed the broadcasting policy and legislation work of the Media Institute of Southern Africa’s regional office in Windhoek, Namibia. He has extensive experience in media freedom and freedom of expression issues and in addition to broadcasting policy has a wide-ranging and recognised knowledge of the community/alternative media sector.

He has an honours degree in Applied Photography, Film and Television from the University of Westminster and a postgraduate diploma in Journalism and Media Studies from Rhodes University.

JUDr. Barbora Bukovská, Senior Director for Law

Toby Mendel, Senior Legal Counsel
Toby Mendel joined ARTICLE 19 in June 1997 and has worked extensively on media law and freedom of expression issues in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, running training seminars, advising governments and local NGOs, critiquing laws and taking cases to both national and international courts. He has published widely and contributed to numerous ARTICLE 19 and other publications.

Prior to joining ARTICLE 19, Toby Mendel worked for some time in human rights and international development, as a Senior Human Rights Consultant with Oxfam Canada and as a Human Rights Policy Analyst at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). He holds an honours degree in Mathematics from McGill University, a first class LL.B. (law) from Dalhousie University, and is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in International Refugee Law at Cambridge University.

Jasmine O'Connor, Senior Director of Development

Tahmina Rahman, Bangladesh Country Director
Ms. Tahmina Rahman took up the position of ARTICLE 19 Bangladesh country director in March 2008. She has held management and policy positions in a number of International NGOs including Oxfam (GB), Water Aid and HAP International. Tahmina has evolved a notable career in organisational development and change management in human rights, development and humanitarian programmes. Before joining ARTICLE 19 she was the Deputy Director of the International Mobilisation Programme at the Secretariat of Amnesty International and oversaw change programmes in a number of countries in South Asia, Africa and Europe, including India, Pakistan, Ghana, South Africa and Croatia. She also ran a successful field programme in promoting the issue of beneficiary rights and humanitarian accountability for HAP International in Cambodia. She has worked extensively on gender mainstreaming and women’s rights issues in development and humanitarian programmes, which includes several reviews, evaluations, reports and studies. Working with the Institute of Governance Studies, BRAC University, Tahmina led the research and publication of the GoB’s Review of Compliance and Progress of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the report was presented at the second Conference of the UNCAC in Bali, Indonesia this year. She holds a Masters in Law (LL.M) from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies and was a MacArthur Fellow at the Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University, USA

Darío Ramírez, Project Coordinator (based in Mexico)  
Before joining ARTICLE 19, Darío was the Deputy General Director of the Unit for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights at Mexico’s Ministry of Interior. In this post, he helped design and implement the National Human Rights Programme, drafted public policies with a human rights dimension, coordinated government action plans for compliance with human rights standards and facilitated relations with the Inter-American System of Human Rights. Prior to his role at the Ministry of Interior, Darío worked for 5 years at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) within the Regional Office in Mexico (covering El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba and Belize) and in Angola. Darío holds a B.A. in International Relations and an LL.M. in Public International Law from the University of Amsterdam.

Paula Martins, Brazil Project Coordinator (based in Brazil)
Paula joined ARTICLE 19 in 2007 to coordinate the organisation's project on access to information in Brazil. Paula is a Brazilian lawyer with an LLM in Public Interest Law from New York University. Before joining ARTICLE 19, she worked as a researcher on Angola with Human Rights Watch and as a focal point on housing rights with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. As a fellow, Paula spent some time with the Federation Internationale des ligues des Droits de l’Homme (FIDH) in Paris and with the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), in Budapest. Paula has worked for many years with local NGOs in Brazil on issues such as housing rights, indigenous land rights and disability rights, as well as developing human rights capacity building programs and materials.