Work Culture

Our work culture is an important element to the organisation vision and mission. We do not seek growth for growth’s sake and intend to remain a small, nimble and effective organisation. We aim, rather, to cultivate a culture of internal leadership and sustain organisational memory, through slow, managed growth, which embodies effective governance and management, successful programmatic work, and adequate administrative support.

To achieve transformative change, we will not sacrifice the institutional culture and values that we cherish, values which prioritise the people, relationships and partnerships that make up the organisation and its work in the world.

We are an organisation that effectively navigates legal and technical spaces, but which nonetheless comes to the scene with heart; understanding that change is something we all can only contribute to when we have enthusiasm, hope, and a deeply seeded commitment to the full realisation of human rights.

Methodology

We value relationships and partnerships and see them as key to the effectiveness of our methodology. Our approach focuses on a two-way exchange of information and advocacy results both in specific change at the local level and structural change within the international human rights normative framework, and a more intentional and profound symbiosis between the two. We are effective when our partners are effective.

MARCOS A. ORELLANA

CHAIR

Marcos A. Orellana is an expert in international law, human rights law and environmental law. He currently is the UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes.

His practice as legal advisor has included work with United Nations agencies, governments and non-governmental organisations, including on waste and chemicals issues at the Basel and Minamata conventions, the UN Environment Assembly and the Human Rights Council. He has intervened in cases before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body. His practice in the climate space includes representing the eight-nation Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean in the negotiations of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and serving as senior legal advisor to the Presidency of the 25th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Professor Orellana has extensive experience working with civil society around the world on issues concerning global environmental justice. He was the inaugural director of the Environment and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. Previously, he directed the trade and the human rights programs at the Center for International Environmental Law, and co-chaired the UN Environment Program's civil society forum.

He teaches international environmental law at George Washington University School of Law and international law at the American University Washington College of Law. Previously, he lectured in prominent universities around the world, including Melbourne, Pretoria, Geneva, and Guadalajara. He was a fellow at the University of Cambridge, visiting scholar with the Environmental Law Institute in Washington DC, and instructing professor of international law at the Universidad de Talca, Chile.

rachel moussié

Vice Chair

Rachel Moussié is the Deputy Director of the Social Protection Programme at WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) – a global network aimed at securing the labour and economic rights of workers in the informal economy.  She contributes to WIEGO’s research, analysis and advocacy to extend social protection to all workers.  Since joining WIEGO in 2016, she leads the Child Care Initiative supporting organisations of informal economy workers to mobilise for quality, affordable, accessible and publicly financed child care services as part of national social protection systems.  

Prior to joining WIEGO, Rachel was the Policy Manager for the Women’s Rights program at ActionAid International where she raised funds and oversaw multi-country research and advocacy projects on addressing women’s unequal responsibility for unpaid care work.  She brings a feminist perspective to her policy work on development financing. In her earlier roles at ActionAid International she focused on global tax policy reform and public education financing.  Rachel holds a MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics and a BA from McGill University. She is from and resides in Mauritius and has lived and worked in Canada, Colombia, France, Kenya, South Africa and the UK.

JOSé fiocca

treasurer

José Fiocca has over 20 years’ experience in providing accounting and fiscal management services to clients in the not-for-profit sector. Jose works very closely with the senior management of the clients he serves and has significant experience in designing control systems and procedures to assist in the management of various activities and programs of his not-for-profit clients. Jose’s extensive experience with a variety of financial systems helps his clients to review and monitor budgets, program reports, financial projections and the management of multiple and diversified funding sources. Jose holds a Bachelor of Economics degree from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).

Allan Maleche

board secretary

Allan Maleche is the Executive Director of Kenya Legal and Ethical Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN). With his colleagues, he has litigated landmark cases that halted the forced sterilization of women living with HIV, stopped the unjust use of public health concerns as a reason to incarcerate people living with TB, prevented the government of Kenya from making the names of children living with HIV available to the public and much more.  

Mr. Maleche currently co-chairs the UNAIDS human rights reference group and he serves as a member of the International AIDS Society–Lancet Commission on Health and Human Rights. He is presently a member of the International Advisory Board  of the Graduate Institute, Geneva. Allan  a former member of the Global Fund Board representing Developing Country NGOs and the former chair of the Implementer group of the Global Fund. Allan has over a decade of experience in promoting ethical, human rights–based approaches to health planning, programming and service delivery. In 2018, Allan was awarded the Elizabeth Taylor Human Rights Award.

A former fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Allan holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Nairobi, and a Diploma in Gender and Human Rights from Uppsala University.

PROF. Radhika Balakrishnan

Board Member

Radhika is Professor in Women's and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University and the former faculty director at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University. She is on the Global Advisory Council for the United Nations Population Fund. She was the President of the International Association for Feminist Economics and was a Commissioner for the Commission for Gender Equity for the City of New York,

Radhika is the co-author of Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights with James Heintz and Diane Elson (Routledge, 2016). She is the co-editor with Diane Elson of Economic Policy and Human Rights: Holding Governments to Account (Zed Books, 2011). She edited The Hidden Assembly Line: Gender Dynamics of Subcontracted Work in a Global Economy (Kumarian Press, 2001) and co-edited Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions, with Patricia Jung and Mary Hunt (Rutgers University Press, 2000). Her research and advocacy work has sought to change the lens through which macroeconomic policy is interpreted and critiqued by applying international human rights norms to assess macroeconomic policy.

KATE DONALD

BOARD MEMBER

Kate Donald is a human rights and economic justice advocate, currently the Senior Director of Accountability and International Policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC. From 2014 to 2022, she worked at the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), including as Director of Program and Acting Executive Director. At CESR, she worked with partners around the world to conduct research on the human impacts of economic and social policies and to translate those findings into impactful advocacy at the global level. Her work has focused on economic and gender inequality, global economic governance, fiscal policy, and development finance. Earlier in her career, Kate worked at the United Nations in Geneva, with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and at the International Council on Human Rights Policy. She holds a bachelor’s degree in modern history from Oxford University and an interdisciplinary master’s degree in human rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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