Governing Board

Ong Keng Yong

ONG Keng Yong is Ambassador-At-Large in the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Singapore’s Non-Resident Ambassador to Iran. He is concurrently Director of the Institute of Policy Studies in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He was Secretary-General of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) from January 2003 to January 2008.  His diplomatic postings took him to Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and the USA. He was Singapore’s Ambassador to India and Nepal from 1996-1998. He was appointed Press Secretary to the Prime Minister of Singapore and concurrently held senior positions in the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, and the People’s Association in Singapore from 1998-2002. He is a graduate of the University of Singapore and Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA).

Kavi Chongkittavorn

Kavi Chongkittavorn is an editor at large of The Nation, the Bangkok-based English daily, where he has been a journalist for nearly three decades covering domestic and international affairs. He also writes regular commentaries and editorials.

Theary Seng

Theary Seng is a Cambodian-American lawyer, prominent human rights activist, and author, and Founder and Director of the Center for Justice and Reconciliation.  Theary is a Executive Committee member of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in the East Asia & Pacific (ANSA-EAP) operated by the Ateneo School of Government; a member of the World Forum for Democratization in Asia (WFDA), the World Movement for Democracy, and the Non-Governmental Process of the Community of Democracies; a former Board member of the Cambodian Living Arts (Silapak Khmer Amatak, which produced Where Elephants Weep), a co-founder and former vice-president of Women’s Association of Small & Medium Businesses (WASMB), etc.

Theary graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service (Washington, DC) with a Bachelor of Science in International Politics in 1995 and from the University of Michigan Law School with a Juris Doctor in 2000. Theary is a member of the New York Bar Association and American Bar Association.

Dato Param Cumaraswamy

Barrister-at-law at Inner Temple, London, and an Advocate and Solicitor in Kuala Lumpur since 1967.  A former President of the Malaysian Bar between 1986-1988 was also one of the founder members of the Bar Council’s Human Rights and Legal Aid Committees.  He is a life member of the Law Association of Asia and the Pacific and served as its President from 1993 -1995.  Since 1990 he has been a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists of which he was Vice-President between 2004 and May 2005.  In 1994 he was appointed the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers by the UN Commission on Human Rights and served on that mandate until 2003.  He is also a member of the Regional Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism.

He received the 2002 “Justice in the World Award” of the International Association of Judges and in 1999 the International Peace and Justice Award from the Irish American Unity Conference.  In 2003 he was called to the Bench of the Honorable Society of the Middle Temple in London as an Honorary Bencher.  In the same year he was conferred Honorary Membership to the Law Society of England and Wales;  In 1987 he was conferred Honorary Membership to the Law Society of New Zealand.

On September 19, 2005 he received the 2005 Peter Gruber Foundation’s Justice Prize at the University of Columbia Law School, New York.

Kevin YL Tan

Kevin Tan is Adjunct Professor at both the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore; and the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He was born and educated in Singapore, graduating with LLB (Hons) from the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore in 1986. He joined the teaching staff of the same faculty that same year. Subsequently obtained his LLM (Masters of Law) and JSD (Doctor in the Science of Law) at Yale Law School in the United States. From 1986 to 2000, he taught at the Law Faculty, specializing in Constitutional and Administrative Law, Law and Government, Law and Society and International Human Rights. Beyond his university duties, he has been active in many organisations, serving as National Programme Commissioner in the Singapore Scout Association (1992-95); Council Member of the National Youth Achievement Award Council (since 1998), Singapore Red Cross Society (since 1999), CSCAP (since 1998), Board Member of the Preservation of Monuments Board (since 1998), Singapore Academy of Law Legal Heritage Committee (since 1999), Executive Director of the Society of International Law, Singapore (1998-2003), President, The Roundtable (1999-2002). Since 2001, he has been President of the Singapore Heritage Society.

He has published widely in his areas of specialization and his Constitutional Law in Malaysia and Singapore is the standard casebook in use in Malaysia and Singapore.

Carolina Hernandez

Carolina G. Hernandez is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of the Philippines. She is the Founding President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Strategic and Development Studies, Inc. (ISDS Philippines). She holds the degrees of Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from UP, Masters in International Relations from the University of Karachi, and Ph.D. in Political Science from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.

Dr. Hernandez currently chairs the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, of which she has been a member since January 2006. She is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Fragile States, the Advisory Board of the Global Facilitation Network on Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR), and the Steering Committee of the Global Consortium on Security Transformation (GCST). She is also a member of the Advisory Group on Sustainable Security of the Oxford Research Group.

During the past 20 years, she has been involved in various policy research networks including the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN ISIS), that provides policy inputs to the ASEAN processes, the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) in relation to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and the Council for Asia-Europe Cooperation (CAEC) in relation to the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).

Marzuki Darusman

A long serving veteran in the political arena and former Indonesian Attorney General, Mr. Darusman has in-depth knowledge and practical experience in Indonesia’s legal and regulatory systems. His determined work to build up the credibility of the National Human Rights Commission in the early days of its establishment earned him a well-deserved reputation as a human rights advocate.

Asmara Nababan (1946-2010)

Mr. Nababan was a prominent legal scholar in Indonesia. He was the Chairman of the Board of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (DEMOS) and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for ELSAM in Jakarta, Indonesia. Mr. Nababan also served as a member of the National Commission on Human Rights (NHCR) since its establishment in 1993, and served as its General Secretary from 1999-2002.

Harkristuti Harkrisnowo

Prof. Harkristuti Harkrisnowo is a criminologist and senior UI Law Faculty member, leading the UI Center for the Study of Human Rights. She studied law at the University of Indonesia (S.H., LL.M.) and criminology at Sam Houston State University (M.A., Ph.D.). Since 1999 Prof. Harkrisnowo has been a member of the National Law Commission and remains a frequent commentator in national media on the Indonesian legal system and law reform issues. She is a leading Indonesian authority on human rights, women’s issues and a broader range of social concerns touching on such areas as corruption, the police and judicial performance. She has also been actively involved in DPR work since 2000 both for LFIP and separately on behalf of UI.