PANELLISTS:

• Nancy Rocio Tapias Torredo (Colombia) [ paper/presentation ]
  Ms. Tapias Torredo holds a Lawyer's degree and is working on her Masters in Philosophy from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Colombia. She also did postgraduate work at the University of Barcelona, Spain. She is currently a Consultant to the Gender Issues Oversight of the Presidential Advisory Council for the Equality of Women in her country. Her publications cover issues of armed conflict, and the CEDAW Convention. She is a member of Women Waging Peace of Harvard University and received a semi-finalist award at the National Contest on Human Rights.



• Lois Lewis Bruthus (Liberia) [ paper/presentation ]
  Ms. Bruthus holds a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Liberia and is currently the Director General of the Organization for Children and Adolescent Mothers in Monrovia, Liberia. Her work is focused on women and children's rights, particularly with regard to the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers and war-affected youth in Liberia. She had previously served as Senior Legal Counsel to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Liberia, as Senior Demobilization Interviewer within the United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL), and as a Humanitarian Officer within the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Office (UN - HACO). She is a founding member and co-chairperson of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia.



• Ariane Brunet (Canada) [ paper/presentation ]
  Ms. Brunet is responsible for women's human rights programming at Rights & Democracy, a non-partisan organization with an international mandate, created by Canada's Parliament in 1988. She has worked on women's human rights issues in armed conflict situations since 1996, including to ensure that crimes against women committed in armed conflict are adequately examined and prosecuted. In 1997, she co-founded the Urgent Action Fund (UAF), which is both a grant maker and an initiator of programmes to equip women's human rights activists with the resources necessary to respond to emerging conflict or crisis. Ms. Brunet was a board member of the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice and is now on the Advisory Council of the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice (WIGJ).



• Amal Adib Sabbagh (Jordan) [ paper/presentation ]
  Ms. Sabbagh holds a PhD in Social Policy and Administration from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. She is now the Secretary-General of the Jordanian National Commission for Women, a semi-governmental commission promoting women's issues. She works on mainstreaming a gender equality perspective in all policy areas, defining general policies related to women, identifying priorities, plans and programmes in both governmental and non-governmental sectors and following-up on the implementation of the National Strategy for Women. She has worked for the Ministry of Social Development in Jordan for many years.



• Youssef Mahmoud (UN-DPA)
  Mr. Youssef Mahmoud has been with the United Nations for over 20 years and is currently Director of the Africa II Division (North, Central and West Africa) in the Department of Political Affairs. Over the last seven years, Mr. Mahmoud has been directly involved in initiating or implementing a number of conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding activities in Central and West Africa.

  Before taking up his present functions, Mr. Mahmoud served as Senior Political Advisor to several Special Representatives of the Secretary-General for Central Africa. He served for three years as the head of the office of the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs upon his return from Cambodia where he served for 14 months with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). Prior to his mission in Cambodia, he was Deputy Chief of the Training Service in the Office of Human Resources Management. Mr. Mahmoud is a national of Tunisia. He holds a PhD in linguistics from Georgetown University.

Panel II - The role of men and boys in achieving gender equality (Tuesday, 2 March 2004, 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm)

Summary submitted by the moderator (E/CN.6/2004/CRP.10): available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish

PANELLISTS:

• Mr. Robert W. Connell (Australia) [ paper/presentation ]
  Mr. Connell has a PhD from the University of Sydney, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. He is currently Professor of Education at the University of Sydney. He has extensive experience of research on masculinities, strategies for gender equality, the education of boys, and other issues about gender and sexuality. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Gender, Work and Organization and Theory & Society, and was one of the founding editors of the journal Men and Masculinities. Mr. Connell has published eighteen books, the latest being "Gender" (2002). In 2003, Mr. Connell moderated the online discussion on the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality, organized by the Division for the Advancement of Women, and prepared the key working paper for the Expert Group Meeting held in Brasilia, Brazil, from 21 to 24 October 2003.



• Mr. Jorge Lyra (Brazil) [ paper/presentation ]
  Mr. Lyra holds a Master of Arts degree in Social Psychology from the Catholic University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and currently pursuing a PhD in Public Health. His main area of expertise is adolescent fathers, as well as gender violence and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. His work has focused on social intervention targeting men and masculinities, in health and reproductive rights. In 1996, he designed a project "Creating a place for teenage paternity" for supporting teenage fathers. In 1997, he co-founded Institute PAPAI [translated from Portuguese: Daddy], which focused on the subject of paternity in adolescence and on implementation of the first support programme for young fathers in South America.



• Ms. Njoki Wainaina (Kenya) [ paper/presentation ]
  Ms. Wainaina is a freelance consultant in gender training, programming and policy. She has campaigned for male support in eliminating all forms of discrimination against women, particularly gender-based violence, for the last fifteen years. She is one of the founders of the Network of African Men Against Gender-based Violence, the Network Against Gender Based Violence in Malawi and Men for Gender Equality Now in Kenya. She has published reports on men's programmes in Ethiopia, Malawi and South Africa and prepared a manual for training men in gender based violence jointly with colleagues from the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET).
  
  
• Mr. Bertil Lindblad (UNAIDS) [ paper/presentation ]
  Mr. Bertil Lindblad is currently Deputy Director, UNAIDS New York Office. He is a graduate of Pomona College in Claremont, California, with a major in International Relations, and also studied at the Claremont Graduate School as well as Institut d'études politiques and the Sorbonne in Paris. Mr. Lindblad was a coordinator for the UNAIDS Secretariat that supported the preparations of the General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in 2001 at which Governments adopted a Declaration of Commitment to expand global efforts to combat the epidemic. Mr. Lindblad was a senior consultant for UNAIDS/USAID during the development of an Action Plan for HIV/AIDS Prevention in the Baltic Sea Region. Between 1994 and 1999, he served as Senior Adviser/Child Protection at UNICEF Headquarters in New York.