Najat M’jid Maalla 

Dr. M'jid is a pediatrician who has dedicated the last three decades of her life to the promotion and protection of children's rights. She has been Head of the Department of Pediatrics and Director of the Hay Hassani Hospital for Mother and Child in Casablanca. 
Dr. M'jid was a member of the Moroccan Council for Human Rights and founder of the NGO Bayti, the first program addressing the situation of street children in Morocco. 
From 2008 to 2014, she was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Dr. M'jid has been an expert consultant on national and international projects, strategies and policies related to the promotion and protection of children's rights. She has participated in the development of national policies on child protection and has worked with several governments, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations. 
She has also lectured in Moroccan and foreign universities on the protection, promotion, planning and monitoring of children's rights as well as on social and development policies. A member of several regional and international NGOs and networks working on children's rights, Dr. M'jid has also been involved in the training of social workers, law enforcement officers, teachers, judges and medical personnel. 
Dr. M'jid received her medical degree from the University of Rabat and her specialty in pediatrics and neonatology from the University of Bordeaux II. She holds a master's degree in human rights from the Geneva Institute of Human Rights and has received several awards and distinctions for her strong commitment to the protection of children's rights.

 

Dr Gilles Julien

As a physician, clinician and researcher, Dr. Gilles Julien's mission is to enable children from vulnerable backgrounds to thrive and develop their potential. As a social pediatrician, Dr. Julien became interested early in his career in the causes of morbidity in children who are victims of social and economic inequalities. A visionary leader, he created a preventive approach, community-based social pediatrics, based on egalitarian co-intervention that ensures respect for each of the fundamental rights of the child, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in collaboration with Me Hélène (Sioui) Trudel. This new approach is revolutionizing the way we work with children in very vulnerable situations and their families in Quebec.
Over the years, Dr. Julien has mobilized the population of Montreal's disadvantaged neighbourhoods through the establishment of three centers of expertise: Centre Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Centre Côtes-des-Neiges and Garage à musique. His innovative approach is now spreading across the country through a community-based social pediatrics movement supported by the Fondation du Dr. Julien. His expertise and great contribution to society have been recognized on many occasions, both nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the Gold Medal of the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, the Order of Quebec and the Order of Canada, and an Ashoka Fellowship.

 

Renate Winter   

Renate Winter has been a judge in Austria since 1981. Her areas of specialization are juvenile justice, crimes against humanity, gender issues, organized crime and restorative justice. She served as a judge in the Supreme Court of Kosovo, as part of the UN mission, and was appointed to the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2002. She has served as a justice advisor in over forty countries. Ms. Winter is currently the President of the residual Special Court for Sierra Leone, Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, as well as in charge of the EU4Justice project in Georgia.

 

 

Lisa Wolff   

Lisa Wolff is Director, Policy and Research at UNICEF Canada. Her mission is to promote public policy and practices in Canada that align with the principles and standards of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. She leverages UNICEF’s global strengths including data and innovation and works across sectors with many Canadian partners to advance the rights of Canada’s children. Lisa is a member of the Board of Directors of PREVNet. She has a Bachelor of Environmental Studies from University of Waterloo, and a Bachelor of Education and Master of Education from the University of Toronto. Lisa received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal from the Governor-General of Canada in 2012.

 

 

Arlene Eaton-Erickson

Arlene is the Manager of Intake, Outreach and Systemic Advocacy with the OCYA. She has been with the OCYA for fifteen years in a number of roles. Arlene has over 24 years of experience with the public service, and prior to coming to the OCYA she was with Child and Family Services. Arlene is a sessional social work instructor with the University of Calgary and Grant McEwan University. Arlene’s formal qualifications include a Masters of Social Work and she is a registered social worker. The focus of Arlene’s work has been on ensuring that the voices of young people are heard, and working to ensure that system’s hear – and respond to – what young people have to say.

 

 

Alexie Cossette    

Alexie Cossette (she/her) is Senior Coordinator, Youth Participation at UNICEF Canada. She is passionate about advancing children and young people’s rights through meaningful participation and innovative research. She has an MSc in Children’s Rights from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland and has worked on children’s rights-based research projects in Europe, the UK and Canada. 

 

 

 

Kelsey Beson 

Kelsey Beson (she/her) is a natural and talented advocate with over 17 years of experience in serving young people, their families, and the systems they interact with, including the child welfare, residential, mental health, education, and criminal justice systems. Kelsey is the Manager of Programs for Children First Canada (CFC), a national advocacy agency with a bold and ambitious vision that together we can make Canada the best place in the world for kids to grow up! We are an alliance of Canada’s leading children’s charities and hospitals, research institutes, corporations that invest in kids, teachers, parents and kids themselves. Kelsey’s previous work experience has included engaging in community development, managing residential care homes, licensing group and foster care homes for the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, and working as a child and youth advocate at the Ontario Child Advocate’s office. Within residential care, Kelsey co-led a program revitalization grounded in recent research about effective ways to treat relational trauma in adolescents and was unique in Toronto residential programs. At the Ontario Child Advocate’s office, she partnered with young people in individual advocacy projects, while challenging systems that oppressed their rights under a variety of provincial and federal acts, and international conventions and declarations. Kelsey has an Honours Bachelor from the University of Guelph in Applied Science with a major in Child, Youth and Family Studies, and is currently pursuing her Masters of Social Work with the University of Windsor. 

 

 

Devi Yusvitasari and Desi Yunitasari     

Devi Yusvitasari and Desi Yunitasari are students and activists from Indonesia. They are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in law at Ganesha University of Education in Bali. As they are passionate about human rights field, they served as Youth Advisory of Amnesty International Indonesia and Legal Advocacy Team of Mata Hukum Indonesia Legal Aid Institute.

 

 

 

Dr. Sarah Gander   

Dr. Sarah Gander is a native to New Brunswick who has settled in Saint John and is raising her family of two boys, Eddie and David with her husband Steve. Sarah started her practice as a pediatrician in 2008 after training in Newfoundland and Kingston, Ontario. She has a busy clinical practice and is the newly appointment Clinical Department Head in Pediatrics in Saint John. She is faculty at both Dalhousie University and Memorial University of Newfoundland and completed her Master of Education in 2016. In collaboration with other members of the department, she co-founded the New Brunswick Social Pediatrics Research Program and is very involved with numerous organizations in the community aiming to better the care of families and children.

 

 

Dr. Lori Vitale Cox

Dr. Lori Vitale Cox is a community researcher and clinician who works in Elsipogtog First Nation where she worked with community professionals to found the Eastern Door Center for diagnosis and intervention of ND disorders related to trauma. This was the first Indigenous diagnostic team for complex conditions related to generational trauma and the first team providing FASD diagnosis in the Atlantic region. She worked on the provincial executive to help develop the model for the NB FASD Centre of Excellence and was hired initially to train the provincial team. She founded the Nogemag Healing Lodge an alternative school for Indigenous youth who were living with generational trauma. She has been active in FASD research, for many years designing the Medicine Wheel Tools and the Two Eyed Seeing diagnostic tool in collaboration with FN elders. The MW Tools tools were chosen by the Public Health Agency of Canada for inclusion in their FASD Screening Toolbox. With culturally safe diagnosis and intervention the rate of FASD in the community has significantly decreased. Youth diagnosed and provided interventions through the ED Centre have gone on to complete high school and some to college and work in the community. She is an adjunct professor at UBC Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine. She is Principle Investigator on a CIHR Catalyst Grant exploring culturally safe screening, assessment and treatment of Iron Deficiency.as well as a NEIR Grant that brought together a network of indigenous health and service professionals to explore the development of an Indigenous research center in the Atlantic 

 

 

Karen Van Laethem   

Since October 2016, Karen Van Laethem is the President of the National Commission on the Rights of the Child - Belgium. In this capacity, she was among others responsible for heading the Belgian delegation in light of the fifth and sixth combined review of Belgium by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, and implemented two important data collection projects on children in migration and children deprived of their liberty. She was a guest lecturer at the UC Leuven Limburg where she taught the human rights course. She formerly worked as a Human Rights Officer in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti. Ms. Van Laethem also performed extensive human rights research for the Research Foundation – Flanders at the Free University of Brussels. She is co-author of a textbook on international human rights law. She has a Master’s degree in Law of the Free University of Brussels, Belgium and an Ll.M.-degree in International Legal Studies from the New York University School of Law. 

Dr Ziba Vaghri  

Dr Ziba Vaghri is an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria and the Director of the CIHR-funded GlobalChild research program. She has over two decades of extensive global health research and international experience in the areas of early child development and child rights and is one of the leading scholars in creating linkages between these two fields in Canada. 
Her current program of research takes a rights-based approach to the promotion of child health and development through creating child rights monitoring tools and platforms that facilitate the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Dr Vaghri is also the lead author of the Manual of the Indicators of General Comment 7, and the leading scientist behind the idea of the Early Childhood Rights Indicators (ECRI), which is the digitized format of the manual.
As a global health researcher in the field of child health and development, Dr. Vaghri has worked with various international development and UN agencies including the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and UNICEF. She is currently serving as the co-Chair and the Secretariat of the Global Network of Research and Development Institutions (GNRDI), comprised of prominent child rights scholars and institutions across the globe, working under the auspices of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
In 2014, she received a 5-year Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.

 

David Nicholas

David Nicholas, PhD, RSW, is a Professor and Associate Dean, Research and Partnerships in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary. The focus of his work is on children and youth with vulnerabilities, and their families. He is the author of over 180 publications, including a focus on wellbeing and quality of life, service development, and pandemic response. He brings extensive experience in multi-method research methodology, graduate-level teaching, and has a clinical and administrative background in the fields of social work and health. Increasingly, Dr. Nicholas has focused his research in areas of systems development, organizational practices, and developmental disabilities.