Meet the panellists for the 21st
#NMAL.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, who will deliver this year’s Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, will be part of a panel discussion after her address.
1. Graça Machel, founder of the Graça Machel Trust and the Foundation for Community Development, is an African stateswoman whose decades-long professional and public life is rooted in Mozambique’s struggle for self-rule and international advocacy for women’s and children’s rights.
She is a founding member and Deputy Chair of The Elders, and played a key role in establishing Girls Not Brides, a global partnership aimed at ending child marriage. She is also a member of the UN Secretary-General’s high-level SDG Advocates group.
2. Nompendulo Thobile Mkhatshwa is the youngest woman on the benches of the African National Congress in South Africa’s National Assembly and serves as the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, Science and Innovation.
She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation and on the Board of Trustees of the South Africa Student Solidarity Foundation for Education.
3. Karima Bennoune is the Lewis M Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she specialises in public international law and international human rights law, including issues related to culture, extremism and terrorism, and women’s human rights.
She has served as the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, and in September 2023 addressed the UN Security Council about gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
4. Metra Mehran is an Afghan human rights activist and academic whose work is focused on women’s empowerment, gender equality, peace and development. She has been recognised for her contributions to these fields and was a finalist for the prestigious 2021 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Mehran co-founded the Feminine Perspectives Movement, an initiative aimed at ensuring women’s perspectives are reflected in peace negotiations, while promoting intergenerational exchange for sustainable peace.
Read more about the panellists when you register to watch the livestream of the annual lecture, taking place on 5 December 2023:
brnw.ch/21wEVY8
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