As of January 2018, the Knowledge Platform welcomed several new members to its newly conceived Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee replaces the replaces Steering Group, and serves to supervise the Secretariat of the Knowledge Platform, provide a sounding board for its ideas, expand its network, and promote its interests in international forums.
The new members of the Advisory Committee:
- Fulco van Deventer
- Lisa Denney
- Isabelle Geuskens
- Leanne McKay
- Sweta Velpillay
Sitting members:
- Willem van Genugten (Chair)
- George Mukundi
- Anton du Plessis
- Yannick du Pont
- Jelte van Wieren (MFA Representative)
The full biographies of the Advisory Committee members are listed below.
Isabelle Geuskens
Isabelle has over 16 years of experience as a peace and women’s rights activist, working on issues of nonviolent mobilization, gender & peace, feminism & militarism, and the integration of a masculinities perspective in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Recently, she worked and published on the issue of how counterterrorism financing (CTF) impacts on women’s civil society mobilizing for peace and gender justice.
She served as manager and later Executive Director of the Women Peacemakers Program (WPP), focusing extensively on capacity building, advocacy and research with peace and gender activists around the world. She also serves as Steering Committee Member of the Feminist Alliance for Rights (FAR), as well as Advisory Board Member of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence Campaign, and Women Cross DMZ. She holds a Masters in Arts and Sciences from the University of Maastricht.
Sweta Velpillay
Sweta Velpillay is the Senior Advisor on Conflict Sensitivity and Peacebuilding Effectiveness at CDA Collaborative Learning Projects. She specializes in systems analysis, Do No Harm / conflict sensitivity and collective impact for peacebuilding, through analysis, capacity building and accompaniment, and strategic program development for program and policy effectiveness. At CDA Sweta primarily focuses on a multi-donor conflict sensitivity resource facility (CSRF) in South Sudan and on improving peacebuilding effectiveness of partners globally. She is experienced in managing large-scale, complex programs and applying peacebuilding expertise in humanitarian and development settings.
Over the past 12 years she has worked for a range of organizations and entities including bilateral donors, local, regional and international NGOs, supporting the work of national and regional governments, non-state actors and local civil society. Sweta has worked in and assisted programs in South Sudan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.
Lisa Denney
Lisa has over ten years of experience working on issues of security, justice, governance and development in fragile and low-income countries. This includes leading research, providing technical assistance, training and capacity support to governments and civil society, as well as conducting political economy analysis, program design and evaluation. More recently, she has worked extensively on embedding learning and adaptation in development programmes. She has worked in a range of countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste. She has been involved in establishing communities of practice on security and justice in both the United Kingdom and Australia.
Lisa is currently an independent consultant, based in Melbourne, Australia. Previously, she worked as a researcher with the Overseas Development Institute in London and for civil society organisations in Sierra Leone. Lisa completed her PhD in International Politics at Aberystwyth University in 2010. She is the author of Justice and Security Reform: development agencies and informal institutions in Sierra Leone, published with Routledge in 2014.
Fulco van Deventer
Fulco van Deventer is co-founder of Human Security Collective and works on the security-development nexus. He is focused on the impact that counter terrorism measures have on civil society and facilitates government and civil society efforts on countering and preventing violent extremism. He has a background in psychology and organizational development and has worked extensively in conflict areas to help civil society organizations build their capacity on conflict transformation. In addition to his membership of the Advisory Committee, Fulco is a board member of GCERF (Geneva).
Leanne McKay
Leanne McKay is a qualified lawyer and rule of law practitioner with more than a dozen years’ experience implementing and managing projects to enhance rule of law in conflict-affected and transitioning countries, including Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and more. Her work spans areas such as access to justice and legal empowerment, countering violent extremism and border security, and institutions strengthening; as well as providing technical expertise in monitoring, evaluation and learning for justice and security programming, and designing and delivering rule of law training courses for government officials, civil society representatives, and international practitioners. An advocate for an adaptive and transformative approach to rule of law promotion, she is the author of a practitioner’s guide titled, ‘Toward a rule of law culture: exploring effective responses to justice and security challenges.’ Together with two colleagues, Leanne recently established Maharbal, a consultancy company based in Tunis. Maharbal focuses on issues pertaining to security, strategic governance and the rule of law. Leanne is currently an independent consultant based in Athens, Greece.
Jelte van Wieren
Jelte van Wieren is currently Director of the Department for Stability and Humanitarian Aid at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, covering thematic areas of Stabilization, Peacebuilding, Rule of Law, Humanitarian Aid and Migration and Development. Jelte holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of Groningen and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1991, after a short assignment with the United Nations Environment Programme. He has been posted in South Africa and Kenya. In The Hague he held various positions, including Management Advisor, Head of Good Governance and Head of Humanitarian Aid.
In 2015, Jelte became a member of the Innovation Task Team, preparing the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, in May 2016. Presently, he is a member of the Advisory Group of the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and the Advisory Board of Interpeace.
George Mukundi
George Mukundi Wachira is the CEO of Maendeleo Groupa legal advisory and management consulting firm focused on Democratic Governance, Sustainable Development, and Peace and Security in Africa. He was the founding Head of the African Governance Architecture Secretariat, African Union (AU) Commission (2013-2016). He has over 15 years expertise in legal drafting, dialogue facilitation, knowledge management, policy analysis, and advocacy at continental and national levels. He has provided strategic and technical support to AU Member States, AU organs and institutions, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), United Nations Agencies, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank on rule of law, constitutionalism, democratic governance, human rights, transitional justice, migration and humanitarian assistance. George has a Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree in international human rights law from the University of Pretoria and a Master in Public Administration (MPA) from Kennedy School of Government., Harvard University.
Anton du Plessis
Anton is the Legal and Criminal Justice Coordinator in CTED. He was previously the Executive Director of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS). Before that he served as a Terrorism Prevention Expert with TPB in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and as a senior prosecutor working on organized and serious crime matters in South Africa.
Anton is an international criminal law and counter-terrorism legal expert. He has three law degrees, and has worked on human security, international criminal justice and rule of law issues in more than 20 African countries. He has been an expert advisor to the United Nations and several other international and regional organizations for several years prior to joining CTED.
Anton was selected as a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader, an honor bestowed by the WEF each year to recognize the most distinguished young leaders nominated from around the world. Anton has chaired and spoken during public and private sessions at the World Economic Forum, including a public session at the Forum’s annual meeting in Davos in 2015 and several high-level panels at WEF Regional Summits.
He is a member of the WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Fragility, Violence and Conflict; and the WEF Meta Council on the Illicit Economy. These Councils are the world’s foremost intellectual network that helps inform the Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos as well as set the direction for global, regional and industry agendas. Anton is a recipient of a Dangote Fellowship awarded by the WEF for young Africans selected each year for their outstanding leadership, professional accomplishments and commitment to society.
Anton serves on numerous expert groups and editorial boards, and has presented to several parliamentary committees and is a well-known commentator and analyst in local and international media, including BBC, Channel 4 UK, Channel Islam and Voice of America.
Yannick du Pont
Founder and director of SPARK, Yannick has been working in the field of higher education & economic development in post-conflict countries since 1994. With an MA in International Relations and Sociology from the University of Amsterdam, Yannick worked for the Netherlands Minister of Development Cooperation from 1996 to 1997. Later with the Dutch PAX; and the Development think-tank of the Dutch Labor Party, the Evert Vermeer Foundation, Yannick was engaged as researcher for the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael to evaluate the performance of the OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000/2001). SPARK has programs to support growth-oriented SMEs and facilitate youth job creation in 17 fragile States in primarily East and West Africa, North Africa & Somalia and the Middle East. Next to his work at Spark, Yannick du Pont also serves on the Board of the Max van der Stoel Foundation (Amsterdam), Advisory Board of the Centre of Theory of Change (New York), the Advisory Committee the Knowledge Platform on Security and Rule of Law (The Hague) and the LittleBits Foundation (The Hague).
Willem van Genugten
Willem van Genugten studied law and philosophy (graduation ‘with distinction’ and cum laude resp.). He has been a.o. professor of Human Rights Law at Nijmegen University (1991-2006), visiting professor at the Minnesota School of Law, USA (2000-2014), and full professor of International Law at Tilburg University (1996-2015). Currently, he is professor of International Law by special appointment in South Africa (since 2008). In 2012, he was awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the South-African North-West University.
Willem has twice served as Dean of his Law School and Chair of the board of NWO-WOTRO Science for Global Development, among other positions. In the years 1991-2012, he was a member and chair of the standing Commission on Human Rights of the Dutch government (since 1997 part of the Advisory Council on International Affairs). As of now, he is the Chair of the Committee on the Implementation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the International Law Association and President of the Royal Netherlands Society of International Law.
