Paddy Coulter is a specialist in media and development with over 30 years professional experience of international communications. Hailing originally from Northern Ireland, he is currently based in Oxford as a Director of Oxford Global Media, a UK consultancy working on a range of communications strategy assignments for international organisations.

His previous experience includes responsibility for the Reuters international journalism programme of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University where he was Director of Studies between 2001 and 2007.  From 1990-2001 Paddy was Director (and from 1987-1990 Deputy Director) of the International Broadcasting Trust, producing over a hundred television programmes on global development and human rights for BBC TV, Channel 4 Television and other leading international broadcasters.   He was previously and Head of Communications at Oxfam (1982/1987).

Paddy is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He has maintained a strong interest in media and civil society, having had lengthy involvements as a Trustee with UNICEF UK, Comic Relief and the Media Trust as well as Oxfam. He won the Gold Award from the United Nations Correspondents Association in New York for the IBT television documentary series ‘Under the Blue Flag’ and in 2000 Paddy was awarded OBE by Her Majesty’s Government in London for “services to development awareness”.  He is also a Trustee of the Geddes Trust which seeks to promote Oxford student journalism and is a Visiting Fellow of the Bournemouth Media School, University of Bournemouth.

In addition to being Chair of the International Board of ARTICLE 19 (since 2014), Paddy sits on the Finance and General Purposes Committee, the Governance Committee and is also a director of the regional affiliate ARTICLE 19 East Africa.

David Kaye teaches law at the University of California, Irvine. From 2014 – 2020 he served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. He is also the author of Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet (2019). Since October 2020 he has been serving as the Independent Chair of the Board of the Global Network Initiative. He has also written for international and American law journals and numerous media outlets. David began his legal career with the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a Ugandan journalist and writer with over 30 years of experience, who lives and works in Nairobi.

He is currently developing a museum of African historical figures, “The Wall of Great Africans”, part of which is published on Facebook.

Onyango-Obbo, has an MA in Journalism from the American University in Cairo, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

He was co-founder and Managing Editor of The Monitor, Uganda’s most successful independent newspaper. He has campaigned long for media freedom, in a career that saw him arrested several times over his newspaper’s reporting, and appearing in court over a record 120 times, during which he and a colleague won a definitive case in the Uganda Constitutional Court protecting freedom of expression.

In 2003 moved to work with Nation Media Group (NMG) in Nairobi after it bought a controlling stake in The Monitor, as the group’s first Executive Editor for Media Convergence and Africa project. In 2014 he joined Mail & Guardian (South Africa),  to launch its pan-African unit Mail & Guardian Africa.

In June 2016 he launched Africapedia, a story ideation startup, in Nairobi. He writes three weekly columns published in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, focusing mostly on democratic transitions, technology, and disruptive trends across various sectors in the continent.

He is the author of three books, and a fourth, exploring the exploits of  pioneering journalists over 150 years in 16 eastern African countries, is being published in July.

He sits on the board of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Nairobi, and the advisory board of media innovation hub Baraza Lab.

Onyango-Obbo joined the Article 19 international board in June 2021.

David Viney is a digital technologist with more than 20 years’ leadership experience across the public, private and third sectors, including six years building a digital consulting business.

He is currently Director of Enterprise Platforms at the British Standards Institute (BSI), having previously undertaken similar roles at Arup and at the BBC; where he delivered business systems across news, television and radio.

David is professionally qualified in both IT and Finance, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Passionate about international development and human rights, he has served on the Finance Committee and main Boards of both SciDev, a global news media NGO, and Privacy International (‘PI’).

Whilst David was at PI, the board oversaw a complete overhaul of the vision, strategy and branding of the organisation, to maintain relevance in the post-Snowden era; addressing not only fundamental privacy rights, but also emerging concerns such as data exploitation by large corporates and the protection of democracy from malign actors.

David joined the ARTICLE 19 board in December 2020.