Aktiviteter 

Big Brother and Empowered Sisters
The role of new communication technologies in democratic processes
April 16 - 17, 2008

Mia Melin is working as a coordinator at the Collegium for Development Studies with an overall responsibility to coordinate conferences, seminars as well as publications. Mia is a psychologist and psychotherapist as well as a journalist. She has long experience of work with development issues within NGOs - as desk officer and project coordinator, as conference and course organiser with pedagogical responsibility, as editor and translator. Mia was one of the initiators of this series of democracy conferences.

Helena Bjuremalm works for the Foreign Ministry/Sida, at the Swedish Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, as a regional Democracy and Human Rights advisor in Greater Eastern Africa. She previously worked as a Programme Officer at the Division for Democratic Governance at Sida where she devoted most of her time to parliaments, political party systems and the human rights based approach. In addition, she was, together with Mia, one of the initiators of this series of democracy conferences.

Helen Belcastro works as an ICT Advisor at Sida’s ICT for Development Secretariat. She has several years experience from NGO’s active in development cooperation and human rights. She previously worked at the Swedish NGO Centre for Development Cooperation (Forum Syd) and the Swedish NGO Foundation for Human Rights where she focused on information, capacity building in human rights in developing countries and Sweden. She has a master in Communication for Development and her research was on Internet as a tool for information, communication and democratic participation among tertiary students in Namibia.

Anriette Esterhuysen (South Africa) is the Executive Director of the Association for Progressive Communications, an international networked organisation (established in 1990) that focuses on the use of information and communication technologies by civil society for social justice and development. She was Executive Director of SANGONeT, an internet service provider and ICT training institution for the development sector in South Africa from 1993 to 2000. Prior to that she worked in development and in human rights organisations involved in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. She is a founder of Women'sNet, a national women's network in South Africa and has served on the African Technical Advisory Committee of the UN's Economic Commission for Africa's African Information Society Initiative and on the United Nations ICT Task Force from 2002-5. She serves on the governing bodies of Isis Women's International Cross Cultural Exchange in Uganda, the Global e-Schools & Communities Initiative (GeSCI), and Ungana Afrika, a South African e-rider network.

Robert Hårdh is the Secretary General of the Swedish Helsinki Committee. He holds an LL.M. from Uppsala University. He started to work for the Helsinki Committee in 1999 as Human Rights Lawyer and was appointed Secretary General of the organisation in 2000. He is a former board member of Swedish Amnesty International and a present board member of the Expo Foundation, which works against racism and xenophobia. He has been writing numerous reports, articles and columns regarding surveillance and bugging from a human rights perspective.

Alice Wanjira Munyua is the co-founder and convenor of the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) and act as its national coordinator. She is a graduate of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy. She is a commissioner with the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) and a board member of the Kenya Information Network (KENIC), which is Kenya’s country Code Top Level Domain organisation. She previously worked with the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) as a programme officer. She has also been involved in a number of research projects, among them the Gender Research in Africa for ICTs for Empowerment (GRACE), The Kenya E-waste project, and Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) Campaign, which aimed at promoting understanding of communication rights and governance.

Sasha Costanza-Chock is a media activist and a PhD student at the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication. His work is on the political economy of communication, tactical media production, and the transnational movement for communication rights. He holds a master in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania. He also works with the international campaign for Communication Rights (www.crisinfo.org), the Access to Knowledge initiative (www.access2knowledge.org), and the Indymedia video distribution network (video.indymedia.org).

Walid Al-Saqaf was the editor-in-chief 1999-2005 of the Yemen Times; Yemen’s first and most widely read English-language newspaper. After that he worked for the Wall Street Journal’s Washington DC Bureau as part of a fellowship program. Since 2006, Walid has been involved in consultancy work for the Washington DC-based International Research and Exchange Board. Walid is currently pursuing a Master in Global Journalism at Örebro University in Sweden. During his master program, he has developed YemenPortal.net, which is the first news and article news engine of its kind in the Arab world.

Johan Hellström is an independent ICT for development consultant based in Kampala, Uganda. He previously worked as an ICT Advisor at Sida’s ICT for Development Secretariat and prior to that as a coordinator at the Collegium for Development Studies. He is the editor of the reports "ICT - A Tool for Poverty Reduction – Challenges for Development Cooperation" and "The World Summit on the Information Society – A Summit of Solutions?". Johan has a Master in Informatics with a focus on development from Göteborg University, and has studied and worked for almost eight years in East Africa.

Ory Okolloh is a lawyer, a political activist and a blogger. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the co-founder of Mzalendo (www.mzalendo.com) a website that tracks the performance of Kenyan Members of Parliament. She is also the co-founder of Ushahidi (www.ushahidi.com), a website that grew out of the political crisis in Kenya and that maps both incidents of violence and peace efforts. She is currently based in Johannesburg, South Africa where she works as a consultant for several NGOs and manages her various activism efforts.

Yu Zhang is a Chinese citizen with permanent residence in Sweden. He is a graduate of Wuhan Institute of Chemical Technology and has a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). Parallel to his scientific career he has been engaged in promoting Chinese culture overseas while defending freedom of expression in China. In the wake of Beijing Massacre he co-founded “Supporting June Fourth Movement in Sweden” (a human rights association of Chinese students). He also founded the Stockholm-based monthly newsletter Nordic Chinese for which he became the chief editor. Since 2002, he has been the editor-in-chief of the Nordic Chinese Communication, an Oslo-based Chinese monthly. He later joined the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) and became its Secretary-General (November 2005 to March of 2008). Despite holding a valid Chinese passport he is denied to enter China and has been deported twice when on transit by the police in Beijing. This based on an oral " decision by superior" on the allegation of his activism (ie his position and activities at ICPC) endangering the national security.

Manuel L. Quezon III was born in 1970 and currently hosts a weekly program on the ANC cable news channel, "The Explainer". He has been an opinion and editorial writer and editor since 1994. At present he a columnist for the Arab News Newspaper; head of the Speaker¹s Bureau, columnist, and an editorial writer for The Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper; and Assistant Managing Editor and editorial writer for The Philippines Free Press weekly news magazine. He has received various awards for his professional work, including being named ³Opinion Writer of the Year² in 1994 and 2005 by the Rotary Club of Manila¹s Journalism Awards, the oldest journalism awards in the country.

Gihan Abou Zeid is an Egyptian human’s rights researcher and an authority on women’s rights in development in the Arab world. She is currently managing a nation-wide study on behalf of USAID on violence against women as part of a larger attempt to present concrete recommendations to the government and civil society in Egypt. Gihan is a founding member of several grassroots NGO’s in Egypt and an honorary member of a variety of youth and human rights initiatives in the Arab region. She is educated in physiology and education, trained as a writer and journalist editor, and is an articulate spokesperson and activist for human’s rights. Gihan is an authority on Arab gender dynamics, the politics of participation and citizenship, as well as a seasoned gender and development trainer. Most recently Gihan compiled and edited UNDP’s Report on Arab Youth and MDGs and is currently completing a UNFPA study of the of human right’s values across the Arab region, where she has also looked at questions of types of community and political participation. Her career, which spans over 20 years, has also entailed service as specialist and consultant to UNICEF, UNDP, UNDESA, International IDEA, Arab League, and Swedish institute in Alexandria among others.