Oroub el-Abed
Oroub El-Abed is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre for British Research in the Levant (British Academy grant). She holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, and has consulted and written in the area of political economy of development and forced migration, particularly Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. She is the author of Unprotected: Palestinians in Egypt since 1948 (Washington, DC, and Ottawa, CA:Institute for Palestine Studies and the International Development Research Centre, 2009).
Nael Bitarie
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nael Bitarie is a Palestinian Syrian. Since 2004, Nael has been working with refugees from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and refugees in Sweden where he currently lives. He is a Co-founder of Sawa for Development and Aid in Lebanon where he was the programmes manager. Currently he is a consultant and board member at Jafra Foundation. His work focuses on community mobilization, capacity building, and development. Currently Nael works with a number of initiatives in relation to Al-Yarmouk camp crisis.
Munir Nuseibah
Munir Nuseibah is a human rights lawyer and academic based in Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, Palestine. He is an assistant professor at Al-Quds University’s faculty of law; the director (and co-founder) of Al-Quds Human Rights Clinic, the first accredited clinical legal education program in the Arab World; and the director of the Community Action Center in Jerusalem. He holds an LL.M in International Legal Studies from the Washington College of Law of the American University in Washington DC and a PhD degree from the University of Westminster in London, UK, where his thesis dealt with Forced Displacement in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, International Law, and Transitional Justice.
Muhammad Jaradat
Muhammad Jaradat is a founding member of BADIL Resource Center, the global Palestine Right-of-Return Coalition and of the BDS Movement. As coordinator of the BADIL Refugee Rights Campaign, he works with Palestinian refugee and internally displaced community organizations in the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel and the Palestinian exile, as well as with the international solidarity movement, in order to enhance knowledge and campaigning skills and facilitate effective community-based campaigns for respect of the fundamental rights of Palestinian refugees and IDPs.
Mezna Qato
Mezna Qato is completing her DPhil in History from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, on the history of educational regimes for Palestinians.
Jaber Suleiman
Jaber Suleiman is an independent researcher/consultant in Refugee Studies. Since 2011, he has been working as a consultant and coordinator for the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Forum at the Common Space Initiative, UNDP Support Project on Consensus Building, and Civil Peace in Lebanon. Between 2007 and 2010, he worked as a consultant for the Palestinian program of UNICEF in Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon. He was a Visiting Study Fellow at the Refugee Studies Program, University of Oxford. He is also a co-founder of Aidoun Group & the Centre for Refugee Rights/Aidoun, and has written several studies dealing with Palestinian refugees and the right of return.
Hazem Jamjoum
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Hazem Jamjoum is a graduate student in Modern Middle East History at New York University. His writing has focused on political-economy approaches to Israeli colonialism and Palestinian elite formation, and critiques of partition-based conflict management “solutions,” among other areas.
Hashem Abushama
Hashem Abushama graduated from Earlham College with a BA in Peace and Global Studies. In 2015, Abushama became a Youth Representative of Palestine Refugees at the United Nations. He was appointed as a Youth Ambassador to the UNRWA@65 Conference in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. At Earlham, Abushama served as the President of the Earlham Student Body. Recently, he has been selected as one of first two Rhodes Scholars from Palestine. While at the University of Oxford, Abushama hopes to pursue his graduate studies in International Development with a particular focus on Refugee and Forced Migration Studies.
Fateh Azzam
Fateh Azzam is the Director of the newly established Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University in Beirut, and Senior Policy Fellow at AUB’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy. Previously, he directed al-Haq (1987-1995), was Human Rights Officer at the Ford Foundation (1996-2003), Director of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo (2003-2006) and Middle East regional Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights until July 2012. He is co-founder and former Board Chair of the Arab Human Rights Fund.