#NoWar2026 Speakers
Dr Mujib Abid
Dr Mujib Abid is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He is an Afghan-Australian scholar of modern Afghan history, peace studies and political theory. Mujib's work foregrounds critical traditions that self-locate in the Global South, including postcolonial and decolonial approaches, as well as other traditional and Islamic knowledge perspectives. He's the author of the forthcoming book, Resurgent Histories of Afghanistan.
Gabriel Aguirre
Gabriel Aguirre is Latin America Organizer for World BEYOND War, is from Venezuela, and is currently based in Bógota. He has been an activist and advocate for peace, social justice, international solidarity and human rights, and has more than 13 years of experience in social and community work. He has participated in multiple international events and activities on five continents, always in defense of a stable and lasting peace. He has been a representative to the United Nations to defend the foundations of a more just world without wars or sanctions. His work experience includes participation in several international missions of solidarity to countries that have had military, economic, political, and social conflicts. He has also been an organizer of various campaigns for the closure of military bases, and the lifting of sanctions on countries that suffer their consequences. He holds a degree in Political Science, with a specialization in International Relations, and a master’s degree in Public Policy.
Khawaja Hammad Akbar
Khawaja Hammad Akbar, often called Maddy, works where the future quietly takes shape at the intersection of policy, imagination, and power. A futurist by practice and instinct, he maps uncertainty across the Global South, translating complexity into strategy for governments, think tanks, and institutions. His work moves between boardrooms, classrooms, and global networks, designing scenarios, challenging inherited narratives, and building tools that outlive conversations. From training senior officials to co-creating decolonized futures frameworks, he treats foresight as both method and responsibility, questioning not just what comes next, but who gets to shape it.
Dr Wesam Amer
Dr Wesam Amer is a CARA (the Council for At-Risk Academics) fellow and visiting professor at the University of Cambridge. Between 2020 and 2024, Dr Amer was Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Languages at Gaza University. He was a Fulbright scholar and researcher at Harvard University in 2022. He was a Marie Curie fellow at Newcastle University from 2017 to 2020. Dr. Amer obtained his Ph.D. from Hamburg University in 2015. His interests in teaching and research center around political communication, violent language, warfare, and contemporary geopolitics in the Middle East.
Taína Asili
Taína Asili is a dynamic singer, composer, interdisciplinary artist, and activist carrying on the tradition of her Puerto Rican ancestors, fusing past and present struggles into one soulful and defiant voice. She is celebrated by NPR, Rolling Stone, Billboard and Democracy Now! for her soulful, genre-blending music echoing calls for love and liberation. For over 25 years she has offered energetic performances at diverse venues nationwide – from iconic stages such as Lincoln Center, to renowned festivals like San Francisco Pride, to historic events like The Women’s March on Washington – inspiring audiences to dance to the rhythm of rebellion.
Gracie Mae Bradley
Gracie Mae Bradley is a writer, policy expert and campaigner concerned with what it means for people to live flourishing lives. She is particularly interested in civil liberties, state power, tech/surveillance, Black feminism, and abolition. She is currently working on a novel.
Gracie is the host of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Locating Legacies podcast, co-author of Against Borders (Verso, 2022), and author of the essay From Grenfell to Windrush which appears in “After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response” (Pluto Press, 2019). Her political writing has appeared in The Guardian, OpenDemocracy, The Independent, Vice, and elsewhere. Her first short story, Peacetime, was published in Salvage Magazine #13 (2022), and her poem Unlawful Gathering appears in When This Is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic (Policy Press, 2023). Gracie is part of the Saturday School creative learning lab curated by Migrants in Culture, and in 2021 co-facilitated the Black Abolitionist Futures reading group.
Gracie has over a decade’s experience in developing and landing creative strategies for systemic change in solidarity with people at the sharpest end of unfair power structures. In January 2024 she coordinated Grenfell Testimony Week, supporting fifty bereaved and survivors to speak their truths to the companies and public authorities many of them hold responsible for the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire. In 2023 she was the first woman to direct Friends of the Earth Scotland, scoping and drafting a transformative three-year strategy to keep Scotland’s carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. During her tenure at the pressure group Liberty, including a stint of over a year as Director, she strategised and won a string of bold, ambitious campaigns to defend civil liberties across protest, migration, policing, surveillance, and the pandemic.
Gracie was born and grew up in social housing in Leicester, surrounded by a big and loving family. She holds a BA (Hons) in Philosophy & French from Trinity College, University of Oxford, and an MSc in Human Rights from the LSE. From autumn 2024 she is a James McCune Smith Scholar at the University of Glasgow studying for a Doctorate in Fine Art in Creative Writing.
Maria Cernat
Maria Cernat is the president of the Institute for Media Research and Human Rights and an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, Communication and Public Relations of Titu Maiorescu University and at the Faculty of Communications and Public Relations of SNPSA, the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration. Since 2011 she has published numerous articles on Romanian websites for political debates (The Barricade, Critic Atac, Cealaltă Agendă, România Curată, Gazeta de Artă Politică, etc.). Maria is a passionate advocate for peace and cooperation and she has written numerous articles supporting a nuanced analysis of geopolitics. Maria is a radical feminist and a socialist. She is the Co-Coordinator of the World BEYOND War Romania Chapter.
Farah Chamma
A Palestinian poet and performer, Farah Chamma is known for her spoken-word performances, in which she combines orality, acting, and live music. She’s participated in many different events and festivals around the world including: Palestine en Campagne (France), Wilde Möhre (Germany), Bradford Literature Festival (UK), Karama Film Festival (Jordan), Faladura (Portugal), Requiem for Justice (Mexico), Le Guess Who? (Holland) and many more. In February 2021, she and Brazilian music producer Liev launched chamæleon, a poetry and electronic music duo. Besides her native Arabic, she also writes and performs in English and French. She holds a master’s degree in Performance and Culture from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BA in Philosophy and Sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris. She is currently an actress in training at Sharjah Performing Arts Academy.
Steven Dereck Chinsendenji
Steven Dereck Chinsendenji, the Coordinator of the World BEYOND War chapter in Malawi, is a youth leader, environmental activist, and social justice advocate. He has spearheaded numerous initiatives focused on climate change, sexual and reproductive health, peacebuilding, and youth empowerment. Steven is deeply committed to nonviolence and civic education. He works to create inclusive spaces where marginalized voices are heard and valued in decision-making processes. He has coordinated campaigns aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and has actively participated in regional youth dialogues across Africa.
Ronda Cooperstein
Ronda Cooperstein is a retired prison librarian who has worked as a peace and animal rights activist in Baltimore for forty-seven years. She is known in the local Jewish community for her lifelong support of equal rights for Palestinians. She volunteers with the organization HorseracingWrongs to end horseracing in Maryland, a cruel and violent industry that should be abolished. She believes that, in order for human supremacy to end, war must be abolished. Ronda is a Co-Coordinator of the World BEYOND War Baltimore Chapter.
Sal Corbin
Sal Corbin worked for 15 years in academia as a Psychology Professor before transitioning to nonprofit work. He has done workforce development training and program management as a Training Coordinator for the Behavioral Health System of Baltimore. He is now Board Chair and Facilitator for the DC Peace Team in bystander intervention, community safety, restorative justice and trauma informed care. His vision is to help others build and maintain healthy relationships with conflict transformation as the primary focus. He holds degrees in Clinical (M.S.) and Educational (PhD) Psychology.
Joseph Essertier
Joseph Essertier is an American living in Japan who began actively opposing war in 1998 during the Kosovo War. Subsequently, he came out against Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2016 the construction in Henoko and Takae that anti-base Okinawans have tenaciously resisted and successfully slowed down. He has recently written and spoken about Japanese activists who educate their fellow citizens about history and resist denialism surrounding the Asia-Pacific War. His research has mostly focused on language reform movements between the 1880s and 1930s in Japan that facilitated democracy, inclusivity, cultural diversity in Japan and abroad, and writing by women. He is presently an associate professor at the Nagoya Institute of Technology. He is a Co-Coordinator of the WBW Japan Chapter.
Robert Fantina
Robert Fantina is a Member of the Board of Directors of World BEYOND War and its Secretary. He is based in Canada. Bob is an activist and journalist, working for peace and social justice. He writes extensively about the oppression of the Palestinians by apartheid Israel. He is the author of several books, including ‘Empire, Racism and Genocide: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy’. His writing appears regularly on Counterpunch.org, MintPressNews and several other sites. Originally from the U.S., Mr. Fantina moved to Canada following the 2004 U.S. presidential election, and now resides in Kitchener, Ontario. Visit his web page at robertfantina.com.
Guy Feugap
Guy Feugap is Africa Organizer for World BEYOND War. He is a secondary school teacher, writer, and peace activist, based in Cameroon. He has long worked to educate youths for peace and non-violence. His work has put young girls in particular at the heart of crisis resolution and awareness raising on several issues in their communities. He joined WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom) in 2014 and founded the Cameroon Chapter of World BEYOND War in 2020.
Helena Maleno Garzón
Helena Maleno Garzón is a Spanish-Moroccan human rights defender, journalist, researcher, documentalist and writer. She is a specialist in migration and trafficking in human beings, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Balearic Islands. She is the Founder and CEO of Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders Collective).
She is also the author of Mujer de Frontera (Border Woman, Editorial Planeta, 2020) — a landmark book in which she recounts in first person the years of judicial persecution she faced in both Spain and Morocco, accused of facilitating irregular immigration simply for alerting rescue services to boats in distress. The book is both a personal testimony and a powerful indictment of the criminalization of human rights work at Europe's borders.
Since 2001 she has denounced human rights violations at the Western European border. Maleno works for the human rights of people on the move in border zones, with a particular focus on women and children. The emergency alert line run by her organization has saved more than 200,000 lives.
Her work has been recognized with more than 20 international awards, including the International Hrant Dink Award (2025), the Gernika Peace and Reconciliation Prize, the Seán MacBride Peace Prize from the International Peace Bureau, the National Journalism Award from the Pro Human Rights Association of Spain, and the Human Rights Award from the General Council of Spanish Lawyers, among many others.
Luz Mireya Mena González
Luz Mireya Mena González, from Caracas, Venezuela, is the Chapter Coordinator of the World BEYOND War Venezuela Chapter. From a very young age she was in the artistic world participating in street theater and musical choirs. She led social and community work brigades of political organizations from early on. She is a lawyer graduated from the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, aspiring for the Master's degree in Public International Law, in charge of the International Relations training program at the UBV ccs headquarters 2021-2022. Within her work experience she has belonged to the front of the Danilo Anderson movement, she worked in the Ministry of Petroleum, working with youth. She has been an activist for social organizations in defense of Human Rights, an external advisor to the Ancestral coordination of the Movement for Peace and Life. She believes that life is the most valuable thing for human beings and that distinctions are created by us.
Syed Hussan
Syed Hussan is the Executive Director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change and a member of the Migrant Rights Network Secretariat. The Migrant Workers Alliance for Change is Canada’s largest membership-based organization comprising over 30,000 migrants, ranging from farmworkers and domestic workers to migrant students and undocumented people.
Hussan has spent over 15 years building power and winning change for migrants including pioneering Canada’s first Sanctuary City policy, coordinating hunger strike actions in immigration detention, and influencing changes in medical inadmissibility laws. He is a regular news commentator and adjunct professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Hussan has also been involved in the FreeGrassy campaign, supporting Grassy Narrows First Nations in their fight for mercury justice, and he co-founded RememberJan29 to combat anti-Muslim hatred after the Quebec City mass shooting in 2017.
Adriana Jasso
Adriana Jasso is a Human Rights Advocate based in San Diego, California. She currently serves as the Program Coordinator for the U.S./Mexico Border Program of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Her work includes documentation of human rights abuses by immigration agencies, community civil rights education, monitoring immigration enforcement activities in the region and keeping migrant communities informed of their human and civil rights.
Jhay de Jesus
Jhay de Jesus is World BEYOND War’s Asia Organizer. He is a Filipino political activist, a cultural worker, and a human rights defender. His journey as an activist began when he was a student in a state university, where he realized that concerns within the academic halls, such as budget cuts, tuition fee increases, and issues related to academic freedom reflected the larger society. Then he devoted his time to volunteering full-time for various sectoral and thematic organizations. His experience as an activist involves organizing, campaign design and implementation, communication and education work, protest actions, and lobbying work.
Norbert Byambo Kagosi
Norbert Byambo Kagosi is the Coordinator of the Isingiro Nakivale chapter of World BEYOND War. He is a young peacebuilder, social educator and conflict resolution trainer from the Democratic Republic of Congo, currently living in Uganda as a refugee since 2018, fleeing war and insecurity. While in Uganda, he emerged as a trusted voice within his community, leading to the creation of New Talent for the Best Future in 2020 (a youth-led initiative he co-founded to empower fellow refugees through education and community engagement). As a program coordinator, Norbert supports projects that uplift vulnerable communities and foster peaceful coexistence. He also serves as a liaison for Sangano City of Peace and collaborates with international networks including Veterans For Peace, International Cities of Peace, Seniors Without Borders, Aalborg City of Peace, Niigon Abin Consultancy Services, and Safe Defense.
Charlotte Kalanbani
Charlotte Kalanbani is an activist, founder of the NGO “Initiatives positives TCHEWAI” and coordinator of the Togolese chapter of WBW. She is also a member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), of which she is Secretary General for the Togo Section. At WILPF International, she is a member of the environmental working group. She is also a trade unionist and works with Public Services International (PSI), where she is Administrator of the Togo-based Regional Office for Africa and Arab Countries.
Kathy Kelly
Kathy Kelly is board president of World BEYOND War. From 2022 to 2024 she co-coordinated the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, she has co-coordinated an international network to assist young Afghans forced to flee their country. She made over two dozen trips to Afghanistan from 2010 – 2019, living with young Afghan Peace Volunteers in a working-class neighborhood in Kabul.
With Voices in the Wilderness companions, from 1996 – 2003, she traveled twenty-seven times to Iraq, defying the economic sanctions and remaining in Iraq throughout the Shock and Awe bombing and the initial weeks of the invasion. She joined subsequent delegations to the West Bank’s Jenin Camp in 2002 during and after Israeli attacks, to Lebanon during the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah and to Gaza, in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead and following the 2013 Operation Pillar of Defense.
Kathy has been an educator for most of her life, but she believes children of war and those who are victims of violence have been her most important teachers.
Hannah Lee
Hannah Lee (they/she) is a scholar and organizer based in Philadelphia, PA. They hold a B.A. in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) and Psychology and M.S.Ed. in Education Policy from the University of Pennsylvania. They have experience working with Women Cross DMZ, spanning U.S. Congressional advocacy to local grassroots organizing, and are currently the Coalition Building Committee Co-Coordinator at Korea Peace Now! Grassroots Network. They were an Inaugural Feminist Korea Peace Fellow with Women Cross DMZ in 2020, a member of their 30 Under 30 Cohort in 2023, and actively organize for Korea peace and other Asia-Pacific efforts locally in Philadelphia, as part of Koreans4Decolonization and the Philly Alliance Against Imperialism. They strive for their research to reflect their work, with foci including international feminist movements, social norms and behavioral economics, and education equity in the United States. In their spare time, they are an avid music enjoyer and violin player.
Publications include: Feminism as a Collective Good: How Women in the R.O.K. Uphold Collective Action in the Face of Neoliberalism (PPE Honors thesis), Using State Longitudinal Data Systems to Improve Cross-Sector Policy in Early Childhood (2024 APPAM Conference).
Todd Miller
Todd Miller is Co-Founder and Editor-in-chief of The Border Chronicle. Based in Tucson, Arizona. Author of Border Patrol Nation, Storming the Wall, Empire of Borders, and Build Bridges Not Walls.
Penboy
Penboy, born Taleabong Boris Alemnge, is a talented spoken word poet from Cameroon. He is known for using his words to express his views on social and political issues, particularly the Anglophone crisis in his home country. The artist began honing his skills as a spoken word poet in 2018 during his university days as a Law student in the University of Buea. Penboy’s art is not just about entertainment; he is also a voice for his generation, advocating for marginalized groups and promoting social change. He has released several digital poetry albums, his most recent album being “RED.” He has equally written and performed for several events & institutions across Cameroon & Africa. Aside from being an artist and a performer, Penboy is also an art incubator and an educator. He is the cofounder and coordinator of STAGE LIFE GROUP, an organisation whose aim is to promote, foster and valorise oral literature in Africa. In addition, Penboy is also a creativity coach - he helps individuals and organizations nurture their artistic potential through trainings, workshops & private coaching. As a multi-award-winning poet, Penboy has received recognition for his work, including winner of the World Bank Youth Act on Education Spoken Word Contest, Laureate Goethe Decouverte 2022 and third-place winner of the National Artistic Competition hosted by the Conseil Nouveau Sommet Afrique France, amongst many others.
Mir Rahimi
Mir Rahimi is a dedicated advocate for peace, justice, and human rights. Born in Afghanistan, he moved to the UK in 2001 as a child refugee and went on to earn a master’s degree in political theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2011. He has worked with charities, NGOs, and the United Nations across multiple countries to support displaced and vulnerable communities, and has spoken at major global forums, including high-level United Nations conferences. As the founder of Edu-Change, a UK-based charity, Mir empowers young people from displaced and disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed in education and become leaders of positive change. He is the author of Across Mountains, Land and Sea: One Boy's Extraordinary Journey.
Liz Remmerswaal
Liz Remmerswaal is the Vice President of the World BEYOND War Board of Directors and the national coordinator of WBW Aotearoa New Zealand.
Liz is a former Vice President of the NZ Womens International League for Peace and Freedom and won the Sonya Davies peace award in 2017, enabling her to study peace literacy with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in California.
The daughter and granddaughter of soldiers, she has a background in journalism, environmental activism, and local body politics.
Liz runs a radio show called ‘Peace Witness,’ coordinates the local Peace Pole Project and is a founding member of the Pacific Peace Network.
Liz is a Quaker and a member of the Peace and Disarmament Collective Aotearoa.
She lives at the beach in Haumoana, Hawkes Bay, on the east coast of the north island and enjoys visiting her Sydney-based granddaughter.
John Reuwer
John Reuwer is Treasurer and a Member of the Board of Directors of World BEYOND War. He is a retired emergency physician whose practice convinced him of a crying need for alternatives to violence for resolving tough conflicts. This led him to the informal study and teaching of nonviolence for the last 35 years, with peace team field experience in Haiti, Colombia, Central America, Palestine/Israel, and several US inner cities. He worked in South Sudan with the Nonviolent Peaceforce, one of the few organizations practicing professional unarmed civilian peacekeeping. He also serves on the Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons with Physicians for Social Responsibility educating the public and politicians about the threat from nuclear weapons, which he sees as the ultimate expression of the insanity of modern warfare, so blatantly displayed in the current war in Ukraine. John has been a facilitator for World BEYOND War’s online courses “War Abolition 201” and “Leaving World War II Behind.”
Rachel Small
Rachel Small is the Canada Organizer for World BEYOND War. A community organizer, she has organized within local and international social/environmental justice movements for over a decade, with a special focus on working in solidarity with communities harmed by Canadian extractive industry projects in Latin America. She has also worked on campaigns and mobilizations around climate justice, decolonization, anti-racism, disability justice, and food sovereignty. She is a longtime member of the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network and has a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University. She has a background in art-based activism and has facilitated projects in community mural-making, independent publishing and media, spoken word, guerilla theatre, and communal cooking with people of all ages across Canada. She lives with her partner and kids in the woods about halfway between Toronto and Ottawa on Anishinaabe, Huron-Wendat, and Mississauga land, covered by Treaty 20. She can often be found at a protest or direct action, gardening, spray painting, and playing softball.
Josephine Solanki
Josephine Solanki anchors the Transnational Institute's work on militarism, focusing especially on EU militarisation, the military-border-industrial complex, and Border Wars. She is active in the international Abolish Frontex network.
Jonathan Solari
Jonathan Solari is World BEYOND War’s Major Donor Liaison. He has built his professional life helping thoughtful people and businesses invest in creating positive change. He has led philanthropic efforts in the name of improving outcomes in healthcare, higher education, international development, and the arts. As a theatre director and producer, Jonathan has worked in Minsk alongside Belarus Free Theatre, organized Madison Ballet’s 2021 performances and classes for displaced Afghan families at Fort McCoy, and orchestrated performances that organized communities in support of Brooklyn’s endangered hospitals, Türkiye’s farmlands, and West Virginia’s polluted waterways. He is a dual citizen of Italy and the United States.
David Swanson
David Swanson is Co-Founder, Executive Director, and a Board Member of World BEYOND War. He is based in Virginia in the United States. David is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk World Radio. He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook. Sample videos.
Dr Sarah Turnbull
Dr Sarah Turnbull is Associate Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo (Canada) and a faculty member at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Her research and teaching focuses on the intersections between migration, criminal justice, and social justice.
Yasmin Ullah
Yasmin Ullah is a Rohingya feminist, author, poet, and human rights activist born in Northern Arakan, Myanmar. After living as a refugee in Thailand, she resettled in Canada in 2011. She is the founder and executive director of the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network. Yasmin previously served as President of the Rohingya Human Rights Network in Canada and has contributed to global advocacy efforts on Rohingya genocide recognition in many countries.
Her work includes collaborations with major human rights institutions namely the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on Time to Act: Rohingya Voices Exhibition and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on various activities that led to the U.S. determination of the Rohingya genocide in 2021.
Yasmin also use creative writing as an outlet to raise awareness about Rohingya crises further through publishing poetry in I Am A Rohingya, and the children’s book Hafsa and the Magical Ring. She serves on multiple boards of human rights organizations. She was named to the FemiList 100 in 2021, and is a UN Minority Fellow.
Her activism spans advocacy, writing, and cultural preservation to amplify Rohingya voices worldwide.
Expertise: Yasmin specializes in global human rights advocacy, gender justice, and refugee-led/community organizing. Her work centers on women, peace and security, intersectional feminist humanitarian approach, survivor-led solutions, and transnational movement-building, alongside global advocacy for genocide recognition and accountability.
Harsha Walia
Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. She has been involved in community-based grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist, Palestinian liberation, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One is Illegal and Women's Memorial March Committee. She is formally trained in law and works with women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. She is the author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021).
John Washington
John Washington is an award-winning translator, author, and reporter. His latest book, How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention, was published by Haymarket Books in July. He is also the author of The Case for Open Borders and The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexico Border. He is a staff reporter at Lookout and writes a newsletter, Lit & Border News.
Gerry Yokota
Gerry Yokota is a U.S. citizen who has been living in Japan permanently since 1988, when she began her lifelong career teaching and conducting research at The University of Osaka. She applies her research in cognitive linguistics to the decolonization of rhetoric and the promotion of nonviolent communication. A Quaker, she is Clerk of Osaka Friends Meeting and Chair of the Peace and Social Justice Committee of Japan Yearly Meeting. She is a veteran of the international anti-apartheid movement who served on the Mandela Welcoming Committee which first brought him to Japan in 1990. She is a member of the CODEPINK Palestine Working Group and a co-founder of BDS-Japan and Kairos Palestine Japan. Gerry is a Co-Coordinator of the WBW Japan Chapter.
Nazir Ahmad Yosufi
Dr. Nazir Ahmad Yosufi is an Afghan scholar, educator and peacebuilder. He earned his Ph.D. in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University and completed his postdoctoral research project at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. He currently teaches bachelor's and master's students at EIIET, Hamburg, Germany.
Inspired by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela, Dr. Yosufi firmly believes that global peace, nonviolent communication, and quality education are the foundations of a better future. On the International Day of Peace in 2021, he established the Afghanistan Chapter of World BEYOND War. In 2011, as one of the youngest school founders in Afghanistan, he established the Afghan National School, a model school dedicated to nurturing young minds through quality education and the values of peace. In 2020, he moderated the first-ever India–Afghanistan Religious scholars Conference for ongoing Peace efforts in Afghanistan, organized by the Embassy of Afghanistan in India. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped connect several Afghan schools with Indian schools and played a key role in reopening Sayed Jamaluddin Afghan High School for Afghan refugees in India in 2022. That same year, he contributed to organizing the first-ever Gandhi–Badshah Khan Friendship Week, and invited Tara Gandhi, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, as the chief guest.
His commitment to youth empowerment was recognized through his election as the Afghan Youth Representative to the Asia at Youth High Council in 2020. Dr Yosufi, along with Dr. T. Elham, co-founded the Al-Zahra Tele-Consultation Clinic, which provided critical medical support to Afghan patients during the pandemic. He also authored a book titled Search the Light Within You, dedicated to Afghan youth to inspire them to embrace peace, hope, resilience and inner strength. Furthermore, in 2025, he played an important role in establishing the Afghanistan Research Hub (ARH) in collaboration with Humboldt University to bring Afghan and German scholars and researchers together on a common academic platform. Most recently, he translated the acclaimed book Practicing Nonviolent Communication authored by Dr Vedabhyas kundu, from English into Dari/Persian to make its principles more accessible to Afghan readers.
Dr. Yosufi, fluent in seven languages and several dialects, actively uses his multilingual and cultural skills to foster dialogue, build bridges across cultures and promote peace through education, research, translation and international cooperation.
