Dr Ramona Biholar is Deputy Dean, Graduate Studies and Research and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of The University of the West Indies (The UWI) on Mona Campus, Jamaica. She is a socio-legal scholar whose research and publications intersect primarily in the areas of international human rights law, gender, the right to development and reparatory justice. Particularly, she has taken a decolonial approach to international human rights law and has written on the intersections between Caribbean reparations and the human right to development. She has also been working with United Nations UNWOMEN, UNICEF, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to build capacity of Caribbean governments and civil society organisations on rights, state obligations and reporting procedures under United Nations human rights treaties, such as CEDAW, ICCPR, ICESR, ICERD, CRC, as well as under the policy processes of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

Professor Vusi Gumede is a Professor and Dean for the Faculty of Economics, Development and Business Sciences at the University of Mpumalanga and President of the National Council of the South African Association of Political Studies.

He is a Distinguished Africanist Scholar at Cornell University, a World Fellow at Yale University, Oxford University’s Center for the Study of African Economies, UNDP’s International Policy Center and the Center for the Advanced Study of African Society. He is widely published, including 19 books and over 50 journal articles and book chapters as well as guest edited 4 special issues of journals and he has presented 68 papers in conferences. His qualifications are in economics, public policy and leadership, including a PhD in Economics.

Dr Mihir Kanade is the Academic Coordinator of the University for Peace, the Head of its Department of International Law, and the Director of the UPEACE Human Rights Centre. Dr. Kanade also serves as the academic co-coordinator of the LLM programme in Transnational Crime and Justice, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity and International Law offered jointly with the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), Turin, Italy. Dr. Kanade currently serves as an independent expert of the United Nations Human Rights Council as a member of the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development representing the Asia-Pacific region. He chaired the drafting group of international experts appointed by the United Nations for elaborating the “Draft International Covenant on the Right to Development” currently before the UN General Assembly for its consideration and adoption. Dr. Kanade co-leads an e-learning project of UPEACE in partnership with the OHCHR for training UN staff, diplomats of permanent missions of States, staff of NGOs and academics on operationalizing the Right to Development in Implementation of the SDGs..