Advancing justice and accountability around the world

Christy Fujio

Christy Fujio is a human rights lawyer with more than 15 years of experience building and supporting global programs in diverse settings to improve access to justice and protection services, including medical, mental health, shelter, and livelihoods. She is a founding member of Synergy for Justice, and has been working with Syrian doctors and lawyers to document torture and sexual violence since 2013. Ms. Fujio has extensive experience training judicial actors, law enforcement, and other government officials to strengthen their capacity to uphold rule of law, human rights, and international treaty commitments. Ms. Fujio is a founding member of the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) Task Team on Anti-Trafficking in Humanitarian Action, liaising regularly with UN agencies, INGOs, and donors and stakeholders. Ms. Fujio’s substantive areas of expertise include juvenile justice, trafficking, asylum and refugee law, torture, forensic medical documentation, sexual and gender-based violence, and women, peace, and security agenda.

Dr. Ingrid Elliott MBE

Dr. Ingrid Elliott MBE is a criminal investigator and prosecutor with 25 years of experience, including investigating and prosecuting international crimes at the Bosnia State Court and then UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She led the design and negotiation of the legal and operational framework of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. She has been on the UK Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Team of Experts since 2013. She has worked on investigation and response to sexual violence in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Libya, Myanmar/ Bangladesh and Ukraine. Ms. Elliott has been working as part of Synergy’s international multi-disciplinary team with Syrian doctors and lawyers since 2013 to build medical expert documentation and holistic community responses to Syrian conflict-related sexual violence, including initiatives to tackle stigma. She was co-investigator on a AHRC-FCDO research grant exploring the long-term radiating and unaddressed impacts of male CRSV in Syria. She has also worked closely with investigators and prosecutors across Eastern African and the Indian Ocean to help build systems, skills, and tools for better justice for wildlife trafficking and other organised crimes. She is the primary drafter of The Murad Code and Commentary, a Global Code of Conduct for Documenting Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. She also leads on the Synergy project targeting the reduction of stigma, myths and misconceptions in CRSV criminal justice proceedings.

Stephanie Barbour

Stephanie Barbour is an international criminal investigator, analyst, and legal adviser with over 16 years of experience in domestic, hybrid, and international criminal justice initiatives. Her work has focused on Rwanda, the Balkans, Nepal, Syria, Iraq, and the Central African Republic. Her expertise lies in design and delivery of capacity-building and mentoring programmes for national actors and building successful private criminal investigations, particularly in relation to the collection and analysis of sexual and gender-based crimes. She lectures, publishes, and consults on a range of issues.

Kathryne Bomberger

Kathryne Bomberger has worked in the field of international relations, human rights, politics and conflict prevention for over 25 years.  Since 1998, she has led the development of ICMP, which is today the world’s leading human rights and rule of law organization dedicated exclusively to helping governments and others address missing persons issues arising from war, human rights violations, migration, organized crime, natural disasters and other causes. She was appointed ICMP Director-General in 2004.

Ms Bomberger has worked in conflict and post-conflict areas as well as in areas affected by disasters and by organized crime (including the Western Balkans, Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, Mexico, Colombia, Haiti, the Philippines and Vietnam), helping governments, courts, prosecutors, NGOs, scientists, academics and others to build capacity to address the cross-cutting issue of missing persons, including through the development of effective institutions and legislation. She has spoken on the issue of missing persons at countless public forums, including the United Nations and the US Congress, and she has been interviewed by the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Economist and many other media outlets, as well as participating in TV and film documentaries. Her awards include recognition by the President of France as a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur.

Niku Jafarnia

She is currently the Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch, where she investigates human rights abuses and violations of international law in both countries. She previously worked with the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), where she led research on civilian protection across the MENA region, including in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, including on the intersections of climate change, environmental destruction, and conflict drivers. Prior to her time with CIVIC, she worked with Mwatana for Human Rights, a Yemeni civil society organization, to pursue justice for survivors of the Yemeni war in international courts and through research and reporting. She holds a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Bachelors of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley.

Tejal Jesrani

Tejal Jesrani is an attorney and member of the NY Bar with over 20 years of experience in human rights and rule of law, including trial monitoring and advocacy, capacity building, research and policy development in countering human trafficking, migrant smuggling and other transnational crime and criminal justice issues. She is the Director of the TrialWatch project at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, where she monitors criminal trials in order to expose injustice, help those unjustly detained and convicted, and promote the rule of law. Previously, she was a Program Officer in the Crime Research Section of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime where she worked in various roles for 16 years. Her most recent research sought to amplify the lived experiences and voices of incarcerated individuals to inform better rehabilitation and reintegration programs and policies around the world in line with international standards and norms. Ms. Jesrani has also worked in the areas of immigration law, women’s rights and international criminal law. She was a Dean’s Fellow at the War Crimes Research Office at American University, Washington College of Law, worked as an Attorney Advisor at the United States Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review and at Human Rights Watch as Women’s Rights Associate.

Dr. Coleen Kivlahan

Dr. Coleen Kivlahan is a senior physician executive leader for primary care services at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).  She is engaged in U.S. health policy, redesigning care, and public health. Dr. Kivlahan is a family physician with clinical experience in primary and complex care and has worked in health care at the local, state, national and international levels. Her special interest is health and human rights, and she has been a skilled trainer in the scientific documentation of human rights violations for the past twenty years. At UCSF, she is the lead faculty member for a new medical student rotation on immigrant health and forensic evaluations of torture, she leads the forensic evaluation clinic with UCSF faculty and students, and is a Chairperson of the UCSF Health and Human Rights Initiative. Dr. Kivlahan worked for five years in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Physicians for Human Rights, followed by more than five years training doctors during the Syrian conflict with Synergy for Justice. She has also worked in Guatemala, Sierra Leone, and Belgium on torture and ill-treatment medical consequences. She has authored multiple articles and book chapters on this subject. 

Mera Eftaiha

Mera Eftaiha oversees Synergy’s portfolio of programming and has 15 years cumulative experience in humanitarian and international development programs in the Middle East and north and central Africa. Mera served in senior management roles in two complex emergency programs-Iraq and South Sudan, where she oversaw large program teams working on emergency health and human rights protection programming with a focus on access to justice, emergency protection, mental health and psychosocial support and women empowerment programs. Mera has also worked on overseeing emergency health programming in Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, and Libya. Mera is a native Arabic speaker who is also fluent in English.

Juan Esteban Vivas

Juan Esteban Vivas provides overall finance oversight and support to the program team. Juan has over 16 years of experience working in and overseeing financial operations of non-governmental organisations and private sector organisations. He was the country finance manager at Medicines Sans Frontiers in the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Colombia, Haiti, Niger, Paraguay, Bolivia, South Sudan, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Mexico. Juan also worked with Case Matrix Network as a finance officer, and with CIJA as a finance project officer and operations and planning manager. Juan is a certified public accountant with a BA in Business Administration and a Master's degree in Project Management. He is a native Spanish speaker and is fluent in English and French.

Sari Bernardo

Sari Bernardo oversees Synergy's Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) functions and supports the organizational development needs of the partner organisations through systematic mapping, benchmarking and monitoring of set milestones. Sari has over 15 years of experience working with INGOs managing multisectoral humanitarian programmes and teams in conflict areas and natural disaster affected areas including India, Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Turkey/Syria and MENA region. For the past 5 years Sari has been focusing on consultancies building local partners capacity and organisational structures. She is a native Finnish speaker, fluent in English.

Nathalie Dermesrobian

Nathalie Dermesrobian leads Synergy's Syria programming. With 10 years of experience, Nathalie has worked with local and international NGOs in humanitarian and development programs, creating strategic partnerships and implementing projects in Armenia, Lebanon, Belgium, Turkey, and Syria. Her expertise lies in legal programming, and she has held both technical legal and programmatic roles. Nathalie holds a Master’s degree in Security, Peace, and Conflict Studies, as well as a Master’s in Public Law. She is a native speaker of Arabic and Armenian and is fluent in English and French.

Lisa Palfart

Lisa Palfart manages the Stigma in Justice Project, which aims to improve justice outcomes for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). She has over 15 years of experience working with INGOs, governmental development agencies, and UN agencies, managing human rights, transitional justice, and access to justice projects in conflict and post-conflict settings, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the MENA region. For the past 5 years, Lisa has focused on conflict-related sexual violence and access to justice, working with survivors and women human rights defenders in conflict-affected countries and assisting their advocacy before UN mechanisms. Her expertise includes documenting SGBV and CRSV cases and developing guidebooks for field investigators, CSOs, and human rights defenders. She is a native French speaker and fluent in English.

Corina Stanton

Corina Stanton is Synergy’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Coordinator for the Stigma in Justice Project, which aims to improve justice outcomes for victims and survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). She has over 10 years of experience working with INGOs and international development projects and has specialised in measuring, assessing, and communicating impact for criminal justice and gender-based violence projects in Latin America. Her expertise includes qualitative and quantitative research methods, technical reporting, and developing and driving organisational learning, data-driven decision-making at multiple levels, and evidence-based storytelling and communications. She holds an M.A. in Political Theory and a B.A. in Politics and Philosophy and is a native English and Spanish speaker. 

Alejandra Prado Suárez

Alejandra Prado Suárez leads operations at Synergy, bringing over 20 years of experience in humanitarian and development programs. She has held senior roles at UNOPS, HEKS-EPER, Oxfam Intermón, and Acción contra el Hambre, overseeing multi-donor and multi-office projects. Alejandra specialises in risk management, compliance, financial management, logistics, and strategic planning for humanitarian and development initiatives. Recognised for her leadership and promotion of safe, collaborative environments, she excels in optimising resources and fostering teamwork. Fluent in Spanish and English, Alejandra holds an MBA, a Master’s in Local Development, and a Bachelor’s in Economics.

Anna Dobrohorska

Anna is responsible for managing external and internal communications for Synergy for Justice. She oversees content creation for all social media platforms, newsletters, website. With the beginning of a full-scale invasion in Ukraine, her focus of work shifted towards conflict-related and social issues communications for various organisations. Anna graduated with a BA in Humanities and is now pursuing her degree in Social Studies in Germany. She is a native Ukrainian speaker, fluent in English and is working on her German skills.