ESCR-Net's Board

Binota Moy Dhamai holds more than 15 years of experience on Indigenous Peoples rights movement, network building, campaign and advocacy, in the national, Asia regional and international forum. He led as Coordinator the Asia Indigenous Peoples Caucus (2009-2014) to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), and the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) of the UN Human Rights Council. From 2013 to 2014, he represented Asia indigenous peoples to the Indigenous Global Coordinating Group (GCG) of the UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples 2014 (WCIP 2014) which concluded in September 2014, in New York by the UN General Assembly. He served as the member of the AIPP Executive Council (September 2012 – March 2021) and the Board of Trustee of the UN Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples (2015 – 2020). Binota Dhamai is currently serving as the Member of AIPP Human Rights Advocacy Committee and an expert Member of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), a subsidiary body of the UN Human Rights Council. 

Christiana Saiti Louwa has been a co-chair of WFFP from 2017 to date and a coordinating committee member representing Africa since 2014. She is a member of the Civil Society Mechanism and Indigenous Peoples (CSM) CC for relations with the Committee on World Food Security(CFS) from 2017 to 2021. She is also a member of the CFS Advisory Group from 2019 to 2021. Christiana Saiti Louwa has been a member of the Indigenous Peoples Movement from 2004 to date. In 2006, she made an intervention for a rights based approach to development at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) and was one of the main speakers in a film by Rebecca Sommers which was used to lobby member states to pass the United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which later became a reality (on the 13th September 2007). She is also the Founder and Director of The Elmolo Forum-Kenya, an organization that focuses on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Women and especially small scale fishers and fishing communities.

Irene Escorihuela Blasco holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Administration and another in law, along with a master's degree in Law. Specialized in human rights, she has been working for many years for the defense of social rights at local, national and international levels. She has academic and work experience in Latin America (Peru and Ecuador), and has also worked in administration and at the University of Barcelona. Since 2015, she has been Director of the Observatory of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ODESC) in Barcelona (Spain), where she coordinates research and publications, human rights training, public policy advising and strategic litigation. Her main area of work is the right to housing and the city, from a progressive perspective. She participates in the Barcelona Tenants' Union and in other social areas defending the right to housing.

Juana Toledo Pascual is Q’anjob’al Mayan woman, indigenous peoples’ rights defender, from the Eulalia municipality in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. She is part of the Council of Wuxhtaj Peoples’ leadership,  co-founder and coordinator of the Political Council of Women (CPO), an organization that includes most of the Mayan peoples of Guatemala, and has participated in national and international spaces for analysis and discussion on women's political participation and the rights to consultation and self-determination of indigenous peoples. She has been recognized by the Presidential Commission against Discrimination and Racism (CODISRA) for her contribution to the promotion of the rights of the Mayan, Garifuna, and Xinka Peoples in Guatemala. She is part of ESCR-Net, as well as the Corporate Accountability working group that is pushing for a UN binding treaty on human rights and business.

Maha Abdallah is a legal researcher and human rights advocate from Palestine. She is currently an International Advocacy Officer at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), a regional organisation working to promote human rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Prior to that, Maha served as a Senior Legal Researcher and Advocacy Officer at Al-Haq, a Palestinian non-governmental human rights organization. In her legal research, Maha focuses substantially on the involvement of corporations and the private sector in violations committed in situations of conflict and occupation, including economic, social and cultural rights violations. In November 2017, Maha received her LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway. Prior to that, between July 2013 and August 2016, Maha worked as a Research Associate at Al-Haq. In 2013, Maha graduated from The American University in Cairo with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. Following her undergraduate studies, Maha joined the Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA) in Cairo as an intern legal advisor where she represented refugees from many different nations.

Mary Ann Manja Bayang is an indigenous person, a human rights advocate, a woman, and a lawyer. Manja's work since more than two decades ago revolves around these fundamental characteristics that describe her.

Ryan Schlief is a life-long activist, who has led local and global human rights campaigns specializing in economic and social rights for 25 years. He started as a local community organizer and then worked for Amnesty International’s headquarters and managed global campaigns on forced evictions at the video and tech organization, WITNESS. Ryan specializes in collective campaigning methods and using technology for change. As its Executive Director, the International Accountability Project works to ensure all people lead the decisions that affect their homes, environment and communities. IAP asks, “What if development were designed and lived by the same people?” Community-led approaches to realizing economic, social and cultural rights are at the core of IAP’s activities.