Dr. Ziba Vaghri is the director of the GlobalChild program of research and the Principal Investigator of the CIHR fund that supports the GlobalChild project. She is an Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick Saint John. She was trained and mentored by one of the most prolific researchers of early child development, the late Dr. Clyde Hertzman (OC). She has received a number of awards and recognitions including a 5-years Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, which was in recognition of a decade of work on child development and child rights.
Dr. Vaghri is a recognized researcher in the Global Health arena and one of the leading scholars whose research is creating linkages between the two fields of child rights and child development. She has led the process of developing the Early Childhood Rights Indicators (ECRI), a child rights monitoring tool for young children (0-8 years). ECRI is a tool developed by an international team of experts working under the auspices of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Dr. Vaghri is currently leading the global initiative of GlobalChild; a comprehensive child rights monitoring tool for all children and spearheading its first pilot in the province of New Brunswick of Canada.
D.h.c. Gerison Lansdown was the founder-director (1992-2000), of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, and, over the past 20 years, has worked as an international children’s rights consultant and advocate, publishing and lecturing widely on the subject of children’s rights, including on children’s participation and evolving capacities. She has worked with the Committee on the Rights of the Child in the development of several General Comments, including on Articles 12 and 31, the rights of children during adolescence and currently on the rights of children in the digital environment.
She was actively involved in the development of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and in the drafting of the General Comment on inclusive education. She has Honorary Doctorates from the Open University UK, Carleton University, Canada and the University of East London, and an Honorary Fellowship from the University of Central Lancashire. She was Vice Chair of UNICEF-UK for nine years and is currently on the editorial advisory board of the Canadian Journal of Children’s Rights, Chair of the ODI GAGE programme, Chair of Child to Child and on the OSF Early Years Advisory Board.
Mr. Adem Arkadas-Thibert is an international child rights consultant and advocate. Currently he works as a key expert on human rights monitoring and advocacy for a direct support programme of the European Union for Civil Society. He was head of the Human Rights Programme at the International Children’s Center (ICC) in Turkey. He has worked with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in Bosnia, in Herzegovina, the United Nations’ Refugee Agency in Turkey, the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants, and the Children’s Legal Centre in the UK.
Mr. Arkadas-Thibert has written reports and published articles on child rights, human rights and refugee issues. He has over 23 years of experience in programme and project development and management, in developing policy advocacy guides, training materials, as well as running trainings and projects in human rights and children’s rights. Mr. Arkadas-Thibert studied international relations, political science and public administration at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Middle East Technical University (METU). He also completed a Masters in Theory and Practice of Human Rights at the University of Essex and a Masters in Science (Economic and Social Demography) at Hacettepe University, Turkey.
Dr. Roberta Ruggiero is a senior researcher and teaching associate at the University of Geneva’s Centre for Children’s Rights Studies (CCRS). She is also the academic coordinator of the Children’s Rights European Academic Network (CREAN). She holds an MA in law, an MA in human rights and democratization from the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratization (EIUC), and a PhD in children’s rights promotion and protection awarded by the University of Molise.
Her publications and research interests include independent human rights institutions for children, children’s rights implementation, comparative childhood governmental policies, the status of parenthood in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and children’s rights approaches to evidence-based policy. She is a member of the Committee of Experts and a scientific advisor to the Cantonal Observatory of Youth of Canton Valais, Switzerland and to the Working Group on National Child Maltreatment Data Collection at the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN).
Mr. Christian Whalen is the deputy advocate and senior legal counsel at the New Brunswick Office of the Child and Youth Advocate. He is a native of Fredericton, New Brunswick (NB), and holds degrees from Carleton University (BA ’87), the University of New Brunswick (LLB ’89) and l’Université de Strasbourg III (D.E.A. ’92), as a French Government Scholar and Council of European Human Rights Fellow.
He has been responsible for systemic investigations and acted as lead investigator on several reports of Ombudsman and the Child and Youth Advocate. He has served as acting child and youth advocate for the Province of New Brunswick (2011-2013). Mr. Whalen was the founding chairperson of the first Children’s Law section within the Canadian Bar Association and is founder and director of the International Summer Course on the Rights of the Child at the Université de Moncton since 2011. In 2014 he received the Children’s Rights Champion Award from the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children and in 2015 was awarded the John Tait Award for distinguished service as public sector counsel by the Canadian Bar Association.
Mr. Adem Arkadas-Thibert is an international child rights consultant and advocate. Currently he works as a key expert on human rights monitoring and advocacy for a direct support programme of the European Union for Civil Society. He was head of the Human Rights Programme at the International Children’s Center (ICC) in Turkey. He has worked with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in Bosnia, in Herzegovina, the United Nations’ Refugee Agency in Turkey, the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants, and the Children’s Legal Centre in the UK.
Mr. Arkadas-Thibert has written reports and published articles on child rights, human rights and refugee issues. He has over 23 years of experience in programme and project development and management, in developing policy advocacy guides, training materials, as well as running trainings and projects in human rights and children’s rights. Mr. Arkadas-Thibert studied international relations, political science and public administration at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Middle East Technical University (METU). He also completed a Masters in Theory and Practice of Human Rights at the University of Essex and a Masters in Science (Economic and Social Demography) at Hacettepe University, Turkey.
Dr. Roberta Ruggiero is a senior researcher and teaching associate at the University of Geneva’s Centre for Children’s Rights Studies (CCRS). She is also the academic coordinator of the Children’s Rights European Academic Network (CREAN). She holds an MA in law, an MA in human rights and democratization from the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratization (EIUC), and a PhD in children’s rights promotion and protection awarded by the University of Molise.
Her publications and research interests include independent human rights institutions for children, children’s rights implementation, comparative childhood governmental policies, the status of parenthood in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and children’s rights approaches to evidence-based policy. She is a member of the Committee of Experts and a scientific advisor to the Cantonal Observatory of Youth of Canton Valais, Switzerland and to the Working Group on National Child Maltreatment Data Collection at the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN).
Mr. Christian Whalen is the deputy advocate and senior legal counsel at the New Brunswick Office of the Child and Youth Advocate. He is a native of Fredericton, New Brunswick (NB), and holds degrees from Carleton University (BA ’87), the University of New Brunswick (LLB ’89) and l’Université de Strasbourg III (D.E.A. ’92), as a French Government Scholar and Council of European Human Rights Fellow.
He has been responsible for systemic investigations and acted as lead investigator on several reports of Ombudsman and the Child and Youth Advocate. He has served as acting child and youth advocate for the Province of New Brunswick (2011-2013). Mr. Whalen was the founding chairperson of the first Children’s Law section within the Canadian Bar Association and is founder and director of the International Summer Course on the Rights of the Child at the Université de Moncton since 2011. In 2014 he received the Children’s Rights Champion Award from the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children and in 2015 was awarded the John Tait Award for distinguished service as public sector counsel by the Canadian Bar Association.
