Update | Staff | Interns | Vol­un­teers

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Staff Update

The Insti­tute for Jus­tice & Democ­racy in Haiti (IJDH) and IJDH’s Haiti-based affil­i­ate, the Bureau des Avo­cats Inter­na­tionaux (BAI) grew sig­nif­i­cantly in 2009 and 2010. This expan­sion, made pos­si­ble by our gen­er­ous donors, is ful­fill­ing our dream of cre­at­ing a corps of trained, moti­vated Hait­ian human rights lawyers and advo­cates.

Staff (IJDH and BAI)

Lead­er­ship

• Brian Con­can­non Jr., Esq., Direc­tor of IJDH
• Mario Joseph, Av., Man­ag­ing Attor­ney of BAI

Haiti-Based Staff

• Rose Get­chine Lima, BAI Grass­roots Groups Coordinator
• Dyliet Jean-Baptiste, BAI Staff Attorney
• Baze­lais Thevenot, Av. , BAI Staff Attorney
• Meena Jagan­nath, BAI Legal Fellow

United States-Based Staff

• Steve Forester, IJDH Immi­gra­tion Pol­icy Coordinator
• Han­nah Surowitz, IJDH Devel­op­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Manager
• Nicole Phillips, Esq., IJDH Staff Attorney
• Marcy Strazer, IJDH Admin­is­tra­tive Consultant
• Han­nah Surowitz, IJDH Devel­op­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Manager

Direc­tors

Brian Con­can­non, Jr., Esq., IJDH Direc­tor, co-managed the BAI in Haiti for eight years, from 1996–2004, and worked for the United Nations as a Human Rights Offi­cer in 1995–1996. He founded IJDH, and has been the Direc­tor since 2004. He helped pre­pare the pros­e­cu­tion of the Raboteau Mas­sacre trial in 2000, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant human rights cases any­where in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. He has rep­re­sented Hait­ian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers before the Inter-American Com­mis­sion on Human Rights, and rep­re­sented the plain­tiff in Yvon Nep­tune v. Haiti, the only Haiti case ever tried before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Mr. Con­can­non has received fel­low­ships from Har­vard Law School and Bran­deis Uni­ver­sity and has trained inter­na­tional judges, U.S. asy­lum offi­cers and law stu­dents across the U.S. He is a mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­ial Board of Health and Human Rights, An Inter­na­tional Jour­nal. He speaks and writes fre­quently about human rights in Haiti. He holds an under­grad­u­ate degree from Mid­dle­bury Col­lege and JD from George­town Law. He speaks Eng­lish, Hait­ian Cre­ole and French.
Brian@ijdh.org

Mario Joseph, Av., BAI Man­ag­ing Attor­ney, has co-managed or man­aged the BAI since 1996, and has prac­ticed human rights and crim­i­nal law since 1993. The New York Times called him Haiti’s most respected human rights lawyer. He spear­headed the pros­e­cu­tion of the Raboteau Mas­sacre trial in 2000, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant human rights cases any­where in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. He has rep­re­sented dozens of jailed polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, in Hait­ian courts and in com­plaints before the Inter-American Com­mis­sion on Human Rights. In 2009, he received the Judith Lee Stronach Human Rights Award from the Cen­ter for Jus­tice & Account­abil­ity and the Kather­ine and George Alexan­der Human Rights Prize from the Uni­ver­sity of Santa Clara Law School. He has tes­ti­fied as an expert on Hait­ian crim­i­nal pro­ce­dure before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and in U.S. courts, and served on the Hait­ian government’s Law Reform Commission.

Mr. Joseph is also an edu­ca­tor, and a grad­u­ate of Haiti’s Teach­ers’ Col­lege. He has exten­sive expe­ri­ence teach­ing human rights and legal issues to grass­roots advo­cacy orga­ni­za­tions, human rights groups and vic­tims’ orga­ni­za­tions. He appears fre­quently on tele­vi­sion and radio in Haiti to explain legal issues. He speaks Hait­ian Cre­ole, French and English.

Haiti-Based Staff

Rose Get­chine Lima, BAI Grass­roots Groups Coor­di­na­tor, was born on March 15, 1978 in the south­ern depart­ment of Haiti. She stud­ied Soci­ol­ogy and Anthro­pol­ogy at the Fac­ulty of Eth­nol­ogy at the State Uni­ver­sity of Haiti from 2004 to 2008. Her goal is to work with the most dis­ad­van­taged seg­ments of soci­ety, espe­cially women who suf­fer any form of exclu­sion and vio­lence. In March 2010, she worked as an inves­ti­ga­tor with Oxfam. From March to June 2010, she vol­un­teered as a psy­choso­cial agent with SOFA (Sol­i­darite Fanm Ayisyèn / Sol­i­dar­ity of Hait­ian Women) in order to edu­cate and moti­vate Hait­ian women against all acts of violence.

Dyliet Jean-Baptist, BAI Staff Attor­ney is a Hait­ian trained attor­ney hired in March 2011 to fill the Health and Human Rights in Prison Project staff attor­ney posi­tion in Mire­bal­ais, one of three pilot loca­tions. Dyliet stud­ied law at the Fac­ulté de Droit des Gonaïves from 1993 – 1997 and began to prac­tice law in 1997. He then did his legal Stage in 2006 in Croix des Bou­quets and Port de Paiy, Haiti. Dyliet has held a num­ber of pro­fes­sional posi­tions includ­ing: Coun­sel to the City of Bom­bar­dopo­lis, Mem­ber to the Depart­men­tal Assem­bly of the North­west, teacher at St. Ignatius High School, and mem­ber of the Me Zephirin Jean Louis and Asso­ciates firm.

Baze­lais Thévenot, Av., BAI Staff Attor­ney, is a Hait­ian trained attor­ney based in Saint Marc in the Art­i­bonite region. He joined the BAI in Octo­ber 2009 to imple­ment the Health and Human Rights in Pris­ons Project in Saint Marc, one of the three pilot loca­tions. He obtained his legal edu­ca­tion at the State Uni­ver­sity Haiti, Gonaives School of Law and Eco­nomic Sci­ences and received his license to prac­tice law in 2003. He brings nearly a decade of expe­ri­ence work­ing in the area of pol­i­tics and human rights. Mr. Thévenot has held var­i­ous posi­tions as an elec­tion observer and reporter. Since 2007, he has worked as coun­sel for the City Coun­cil of Saint Marc. And, prior to join­ing the BAI, he worked with the Office of Legal Assis­tance in Saint Marc pro­vid­ing free legal ser­vices to dis­ad­van­taged pris­on­ers and has advo­cated for reform of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Haiti. He has attended var­i­ous train­ings includ­ing sem­i­nars on the Inter-American Sys­tem of Human Rights and Human Rights and Crim­i­nal Pro­ceed­ings. He speaks Hait­ian Cre­ole and French.

Meena Jagan­nath, BAI Legal Fel­low, has been a human rights activist for over ten years in such areas as transna­tional jus­tice, women’s rights and immi­gra­tion. While she has had the oppor­tu­nity to advo­cate at the macro-level through U.S. courts and the U.N sys­tem, she has com­ple­mented that expe­ri­ence by work­ing at the grass­roots level with orga­ni­za­tions around the world in order to increase her effec­tive­ness as an advo­cate for mar­gin­al­ized and excluded com­mu­ni­ties. Meena recently grad­u­ated from the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton School of Law, where she was a William H. Gates Pub­lic Ser­vice Law Scholar. Prior to get­ting her J.D., she com­pleted a Master’s degree in Inter­na­tional Affairs (with a con­cen­tra­tion in Human Rights) at the School of Inter­na­tional and Pub­lic Affairs, Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity. She holds an under­grad­u­ate degree in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions and Peace and Jus­tice Stud­ies from Tufts Uni­ver­sity. Meena Jagan­nath has been a human rights activist for over ten years in such areas as transna­tional jus­tice, women’s rights and immi­gra­tion. Meena speaks Eng­lish, French, Span­ish, Tel­ugu, Hindi and Urdu, and plans to study Hait­ian Cre­ole. Meena@ijdh.org

United States-Based Staff

Steve Forester, Esq., IJDH Immi­gra­tion Pol­icy Coor­di­na­tor, leads efforts to secure prompt parole into the U.S. of 55,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries of approved visa peti­tions to give par­ity with DHS’s ongo­ing Cuban Fam­ily Reuni­fi­ca­tion Parole Pro­gram, cre­ated in 2007, and help Haiti recover by gen­er­at­ing remit­tances to hun­dreds of thou­sands.  Since the quake he has secured eleven edi­to­ri­als urg­ing this relief in the Wash­ing­ton Post, Philadel­phia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Los Ange­les Times, San Anto­nio Express-News, Star Ledger, News­day, and Miami Her­ald, writ­ten a U.S. Con­fer­ence of May­ors res­o­lu­tion passed June 14 and an op-ed pub­lished Sep­tem­ber 8, etc. He cham­pi­oned the six month TPS fil­ing period exten­sion announced July 12 and facil­i­tates TPS coordination. Pre-quake, Forester led efforts to secure TPS due to four storms which dev­as­tated Haiti in Fall 2008, secur­ing pro-TPS edi­to­ri­als in the New York Times, Wash­ing­ton Post, Chicago Tri­bune, San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle, News­day, Orlando Sen tinel, South Florida Sun–Sen­tinel, and Miami Her­ald; let­ters from seven U.S. sen­a­tors and oth­ers; NYT and St. Peters­burg Times articles; a National Bar Asso­ci­a­tion res­o­lu­tion, etc.  In late 2009 he met with offi­cials re-granting Haitians work per­mits and the Miami Her­ald pub­lished his op-ed, “Let Haitians work in dig­nity;” his Jan­u­ary 2009 out­reach to a White House offi­cial secured the quiet halt of all non-criminal Haiti removals for­mal­ized a year later. A Hait­ian rights advo­cates since 1979, he has tes­ti­fied before the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee and other bod­ies and in 1997 began and led the fight which secured the Hait­ian Refugee Immi­gra­tion Fair­ness Act of 1998 (HRIFA), under which 20,000 Haitians have become legal per­ma­nent res­i­dents of the U.S. IJDH has spon­sored his work since Feb­ru­ary 2009.
SteveForester@aol.com


Nicole Phillips, Esq., IJDH Staff Attor­ney, has always been pas­sion­ate about inter­na­tional human rights and was so moved  by the earth­quake in Haiti that she left her career as a union labor lawyer to join IJDH in April 2010.  Her prac­tice included ten years with Wein­berg, Roger & Rosen­feld in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area, where she served as gen­eral coun­sel to unions and employee ben­e­fit trust funds across the coun­try, arbi­trated col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing dis­putes, and man­aged a case­load in fed­eral and state courts involv­ing labor, employ­ment, health insur­ance, and envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions. Ms. Phillips has served since 2000 as a Mem­ber of the Board of Direc­tors of Human Rights Advo­cates, an NGO based in Cal­i­for­nia with con­sul­ta­tive sta­tus to the United Nations and has appeared before the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee, Com­mit­tee on the Elim­i­na­tion of all Forms of Dis­crim­i­na­tion and Com­mis­sion on the Sta­tus of Women on var­i­ous human rights issues. She first worked with IJDH in 2006 while direct­ing the Uni­ver­sity of San Fran­cisco, School of Law, Cen­ter for Law and Global Jus­tice, Haiti and Domini­can Repub­lic human rights pro­grams, which she con­tin­ues to do. Ms. Phillips earner her B.A. from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego in Polit­i­cal Sci­ence with a con­cen­tra­tion in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions, and her JD from the Uni­ver­sity of San Fran­cisco, School of law. She has lived and stud­ied in France and Mex­ico and speaks French and Span­ish (and is learn­ing Kreyol).
Nicole@ijdh.org

Marcy Strazer, IJDH Admin­is­tra­tive Con­sul­tant, has worked with IJDH since 2005 help­ing with news briefs, finan­cial man­age­ment, devel­op­ment, fundrais­ing and var­i­ous admin­is­tra­tive tasks. She lived and worked in Haiti for six years. She was the Oxfam GB (Great Britain) Haiti Direc­tor from 1997–2000 and had been a Human Rights Observer with the OAS/UN Mis­sion in Haiti from 1993–1996. Prior, she served as a Peace Corps Vol­un­teer work­ing with fish farm­ers in the Demo­c­ra­tic Repub­lic of the Congo (for­merly Zaire) from 1989–1991. Marcy holds a Mas­ters degree in Applied Eco­nom­ics from Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan and a B.S. from Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon in eco­nom­ics and his­tory. She speaks Hait­ian Cre­ole, French and Kikongo (cen­tral Africa).

Han­nah Surowitz, IJDH Devel­op­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ager, grad­u­ated cum laude from The Col­lege of New Jer­sey with a B.A. in Psy­chol­ogy and minors in African stud­ies and French. She has always been pas­sion­ate about global, social and eco­nomic jus­tice. From August 2010 to June 2011, Han­nah served as Pro­grams Coor­di­na­tor for AMURTEL, a non-governmental orga­ni­za­tion work­ing on dis­as­ter relief and women’s empow­er­ment in Haiti. While liv­ing in Port-au-Prince, she cre­ated a micro­fi­nance pro­gram for women who were earth­quake vic­tims. She con­tin­ues to sup­port AMURTEL’s efforts and is a mem­ber of the board of advi­sors. Liv­ing in Haiti and see­ing the injus­tices expe­ri­enced by Haitians every day influ­enced her com­mit­ment to work with Haitians to improve their lives. Before join­ing IJDH, she worked as a donor ser­vices rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­ica. In 2010, Han­nah interned at Anchor House, Inc., an emer­gency shel­ter for run­away, abused, and neglected youth in Tren­ton, New Jer­sey. Since 2007, Han­nah has worked many sum­mers at the Kateri day camp for at-risk youth in Mon­mouth and Ocean Coun­ties in New Jer­sey. She has also vol­un­teered for Rotary Youth Lead­er­ship Acad­emy, a four-day lead­er­ship camp for high school stu­dents, since 2005. She has also vol­un­teered for Rotary Youth Lead­er­ship Acad­emy, a four-day lead­er­ship camp for high school stu­dents, since 2005. Han­nah speaks Hait­ian Cre­ole, French, and basic con­ver­sa­tional Wolof, which she learned in 2009 while study­ing abroad in Sene­gal. She is delighted to join the IJDH team! Hannah@ijdh.org

Interns

Boston Office Interns: 2012

Ronald Bernard, IJDH Trans­la­tion and Pol­icy Intern, is a grad­u­ate stu­dent at The Heller School for Social and Pol­icy Man­age­ment at Bran­deis Uni­ver­sity. His last work was as a vol­un­teer inter­preter and trans­la­tor for an Amer­i­can med­ical doc­tor in Haiti. In this posi­tion at the Saint Rock Haiti Foun­da­tion, he assisted in pro­vid­ing health care, spon­sor­ing children’s edu­ca­tion and work­ing with the com­mu­nity in the devel­op­ment of self-sustaining pro­grams. Addi­tion­ally, he acted as a liai­son between US-based admin­is­tra­tors and com­mu­nity mem­ber to address issues related to cul­tur­ally sen­si­tive and local demands. Finally, he assisted in coor­di­nat­ing sen­si­tiz­ing pro­grams about HIV/AIDS and other sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted dis­eases for young peo­ple to reduce the ration of infected young peo­ple related to those dis­eases. He taught Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage and assisted in the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign 2006 in Haiti as an elected observer. Ronald received his BA in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions from the Acad­e­mie National Diplo­ma­tique et Con­sulaire in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Ronald@ijdh.org

Jae­won Lee, Devel­op­ment and Admin­is­tra­tion Intern, is a junior at Han­kuk Uni­ver­sity of For­eign Stud­ies in South Korea pur­su­ing a bachelor’s degree in law. While plan­ning and devel­op­ing sev­eral 100^th anniver­sary high school events as a pres­i­dent of stu­dent coun­cil, she became inter­ested in the orga­ni­za­tional man­age­ment. Over three years, she has grad­u­ally estab­lished com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of legal struc­ture by closely study­ing con­sti­tu­tional law and work­ing at her university’s law school as an assis­tant who researched legal prece­dents and com­piled rel­e­vant case infor­ma­tion for the pro­fes­sors. She plans to attend law school when going back to Korea, but before that, she has decided to take a year off to acquire prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of human rights and learn how a NGO works on the ground to accom­plish its mis­sion. She looks for­wards to work­ing at IJDH where all team­mates have strong pas­sion about human rights. Jaewon@ijdh.org

Lau­ren Piette, Devel­op­ment Intern, is a recent grad­u­ate from the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa, where she received her degree in Inter­na­tional Stud­ies. After com­plet­ing her senior the­sis on the Iraqi Refugee Cri­sis, Lau­ren was able to bet­ter under­stand the chal­lenges that arise in sit­u­a­tions of wide­spread human rights abuse and envi­ron­men­tal dev­as­ta­tion. She was frus­trated by the many bureau­cratic bar­ri­ers and long delays that often pre­vented peo­ple from get­ting the assis­tance they need. Because of this, Lau­ren is excited to assist with IJDH and its more direct, grass­roots efforts in Haiti. She is cur­rently work­ing towards flu­ency in French and hopes to learn some Hait­ian Cre­ole as well. Lauren@ijdh.org

Kelly Geoghe­gan, Legal Intern, grad­u­ated from New York Uni­ver­sity School of Law where she was a Thur­good Mar­shall scholar focus­ing on human rights, human­i­tar­ian law, and inter­na­tional crim­i­nal law.  Dur­ing law school she interned at the Bosn­ian War Crimes Tri­bunal, and led the Dar­fur Vic­tims Project, in which law stu­dents assisted an NGO rep­re­sent­ing Dar­furi vic­tims before the Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court.  She also interned at the United Nations for UNICEF.  How­ever, it was her expe­ri­ence in the Global Jus­tice Clinic, work­ing on a study of gender-based vio­lence in Haiti’s dis­place­ment camps, which spurred her pas­sion for Hait­ian rights.  Prior to attend­ing NYU, Kelly grad­u­ated summa cum laude from the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina – Chapel Hill, where she was a Robert­son Scholar. She also earned an LL.M. in Human Rights and Crim­i­nal Jus­tice (Cross-Border) through a joint pro­gram with the Irish Cen­tre for Human Rights in Gal­way, Ire­land, and Queen’s Uni­ver­sity in Belfast, North­ern Ire­land. Kelly@ijdh.org

Jes­sica Drain, Vol­un­teer Coor­di­na­tor, grad­u­ated from Bridge­wa­ter State Uni­ver­sity with a degree in Man­age­ment Sci­ence. Cur­rently, she is tak­ing classes towards a Master’s of Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion with a con­cen­tra­tion in Civic and Non­profit Lead­er­ship. In the past, she vol­un­teered at a day­time shel­ter for women. Addi­tion­ally, Jes­sica works with a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides ser­vices for adults with dis­abil­i­ties. In her spare time, she enjoys vol­un­teer­ing with the Spe­cial Olympics. She is very excited for the oppor­tu­nity to intern with IJDH.

Nadine Dava Malle­branche, Social Media Intern, is a first gen­er­a­tion Haitian-American who’s father’s polit­i­cal involve­ment in Haiti prompted the family’s exit, shortly after the Duva­lier coupe. Dava has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in social ser­vices and direct care work­ing pri­mar­ily with at risk youth as a coun­selor, pro­grams admin­is­tra­tor and out­reach worker with DCF affil­i­ates through­out greater Boston. She is pas­sion­ate about the rights of the mar­gin­al­ized and unde­served in eco­nom­i­cally blighted com­mu­ni­ties around the world; this com­mit­ment is the cat­a­lyst in Dava’s inten­tion on pur­su­ing a law degree in the near future.  Dava@ijdh.org

Port-au-Prince Office Interns: 2012

Nick Strat­ton, BAI Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Intern, recently grad­u­ated from Tufts Uni­ver­sity in the Boston area with a degree in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions and a con­cen­tra­tion on Global Health. He is cur­rently the Pres­i­dent of a ven­ture cap­i­tal startup, Brand­Haiti, which is a mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tion that re-brands Haiti’s neg­a­tive image through high­light­ing the country’s strengths and com­par­a­tive advan­tages to fos­ter pro-Haitian busi­ness invest­ment and revi­tal­ize a non-exploitative econ­omy in part­ner­ship with small Hait­ian entre­pre­neurs. Dur­ing his time at Tufts, Nick was a Sigma lota Rho National Hon­ors Soci­ety for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies scholar, a Synap­tic Scholar of the Insti­tute for Global Lead­er­ship, a mem­ber of the year-long Edu­ca­tion for Pub­lic Inquiry and Inter­na­tional Cit­i­zen­ship (EPIIC) col­lo­quium on cities of the Global South, and a mem­ber of Stu­dents Active For End­ing Rape (SAFER) who reformed the university’s inad­e­quate sex­ual assault and harass­ment pol­icy in 2010. Prior to arriv­ing in Haiti, Nick was an intern at the William J. Clin­ton Foun­da­tion, a vol­un­teer at Hous­ing Works in NYC who worked wit HIV+ trans­gen­der home­less clients, and a research assis­tant at I’Agence Regionale de Sante, lle-de-France in Paris where he worked on the imple­men­ta­tion of the national health plan for youth (ages 15–24). He is an author of an arti­cle on media cov­er­age of US for­eign pol­icy in Haiti pub­lished in Nar­coNews, and a co-author of the 2011 white paper on MINUSTAH’s human rights record enti­tled “Keep­ing the Peace, or Con­spir­ing Against It?” pub­lished by the Har­vard School of Pub­lic Health. In addi­tion to his projects at the BAI, Nick is also a com­mu­nity orga­nizer in the firstL­GBT rights-based move­ment in Haiti, KOURAJ. He is flu­ent in French and pro­fi­cient in Hait­ian Cre­ole.  nick@ijdh.org

Other IJDH-BAI Interns