The Pears Family
Patrons: Academic Advisors:
Romeo Dallaire Yehuda Bauer
Bob Geldof Frank Chalk
Richard Goldstone Helen Fein
Clare Short Carol Rittner
Marcus Storch John Roth
Desmond Tutu Hugo Slim
Elie Wiesel Jonathan Webber
Policy, Research and Campaigns Unit Staff:
Dr James Smith
Chief Executive Officer
+44 (0)1623 836 627
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Dr. James Smith is co-founder and Chief Executive of the Aegis Trust, both in the UK and Rwanda. During the crisis in Kosovo in 1999, Dr. Smith initiated the East Midlands Kosovo Appeal and worked with the International Medical Corps in Albania and Kosovo as a volunteer physician. (He is a medical doctor, qualified Leeds, 1993). Dr Smith worked with the Rwandan Government and Kigali City Council to develop the Kigali Memorial Centre in 2004. Hundreds of thousands of genocide victims are buried there. The site is now an internationally renowned educational exhibition and documentation centre. He is also co-founder of the UK Holocaust Memorial and Educational Centre, where the lessons of history are applied to the prevention of mass atrocities and is visited by over six hundred students each week.
PA to the Chief Executive
+ 44 (0)1623 836 627
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Stephen Twigg
Director of Special Projects
+44 (0)20 7481 1000
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Stephen Twigg has worked for the Aegis Trust since June 2005. He is the Director of Special Projects advising both Aegis and the Holocaust Centre on Government & Parliamentary relations and broader campaign strategy. He also chairs the Management Board. After serving as General Secretary of the Fabian Society from 1996 to 1997, Stephen was elected as a Member of Parliament for Enfield Southgate in 1997, which he represented until 2005. He was Parliamentary Secretary to the leader of the House of Commons the Rt. Hon Robin Cook MP from 2001 to 2002 and then a Minister in the Department of Education and Skills between 2002 and 2005. He is Director of the Foreign Policy Centre and Labour's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the West Derby constituency of Liverpool.
Nick Donovan
Head of Policy, Research and Campaigns
+44 (0)20 7481 1000
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Nick Donovan was a senior policy analyst at the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit for five years, leading their research on weak and failing states and their strategic futures team. He was also a consultant on DFID's security and development review. His domestic policy work included the UK childcare review, 'what makes people happy?', financial exclusion, government loans, exclusions from school, choice and contestability in public services, poverty and social exclusion, and geographic mobility . He has operational experience in a British Army bomb disposal team and has lived and worked in the UK, US and Palestinian Occupied Territories.
Melissa Pack
Senior Counsel - International Justice Programme
+44 (0)20 7481 1000
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Melissa Pack is a barrister and senior counsel on the international justice programme. She was called to the Bar in 1995 and worked in private practice from Chambers in London until 2002. Between 2002 and 2007 she worked as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). At ICTY she was a trial attorney on the Milosevic case (amongst others) and at SCSL a trial attorney on the Brima et al case.
Alain Werner
Senior Counsel - International Justice Programme
+44 (0)20 7481 1000
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Alain Werner is a Swiss lawyer admitted to the Bar of Geneva (2002) and senior counsel on the international justice programme. Since 2003 he has worked at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). AT SCSL he worked as a prosecutor on the Sesay and al case and the Charles Taylor case. At ECCC he represented civil parties in the Kaing Guek Eav case. He has also acted as a consultant for Human Rights Watch in the procedure against former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre.
Anna Macdonald
Senior Policy and Campaigns Officer
+44 (0)20 7481 1000
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Anna Macdonald is the Senior Policy & Campaigns Officer and Co-ordinator of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Genocide Prevention. Anna has recently returned from Brussels where she worked as a researcher at NATO focusing on security and development issues and then as researcher to Glenys Kinnock MEP, then Chair of the European Parliament Committee on International Development. She has also worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the Federal Trust for Education and Research. Anna has a first class degree in Modern History from Oxford University and an MSc with distinction in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
Sheila Velez
Trial Monitor, Lubanga Chronicles Project
+31 (0) 614 113 071
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Sheila is co-ordinator of the Lubanga Chronicles Project, based in The Hague. The project follows the International Criminal Court's first trial - the case of former Congolese rebel commander Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. The project will chronicle the case widely through daily reports and audio clips that will be broadcast on local DRC radio stations in affected communities. Sheila is a qualified journalist. She recently received a masters degree from London Metropolitan University in International Relations, during which she focussed on international justice issues. She has just completed an internship in the Public Information Unit of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, where she had the opportunity to attend the Lubanga trial from it's early days.
David Brown
Head of Media and Communications
+44 (0)1623 836 627
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Ben Walker
Development Co-ordinator
+ 44 (0)1623 836 627
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Ben read Development Studies and International Politics at Leeds University (graduated 2003). He did a one year internship with Aegis before moving into a full time research position in 2004. In 2007 he took up the post of Development Coordinator.
