Executive Committee
Dr. Valery Engel
Director of ICDD - East European Platform
vice director
President of the European Center for Democracy Development (Riga, Latvia), Chairman of the Expert Board of the European International Tolerance Center (Riga, Latvia), Director of the Institute of the Ethnic Policy & Inter-Ethnic Studies in (Moscow, Russia)
Dr. Antonietta Elia
Program Director for Yemen, Italy, Women
Vice DIRECTOR
Dr. Antonietta Elia is Senior Associate Fellow in Law at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Dr. Elia has published numerous articles on a variety of human rights issues and is currently completing a manuscript on new forms of discrimination based on religion. In addition to her academic career, she is also actively engaged with international organizations and networks, serving as international consultant for the EU-Council of Europe joint project on Human Rights Standards Capacity Building in Turkey, the COE Project for the Reform of the Criminal System in Moldova, and the COE project Supporting Criminal Justice Reform in Armenia.
Dr. Micheline Ishay
Program Director for Middle East
Vice DIRECTOR
Micheline Ishay is a political scientist known for her work in political theory, international relations, human rights, foreign policy, and the Middle East. She is Professor of International Studies and Human Rights at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, where she serves as Director of the International Human Rights program. In 2008 Ishay was named University of Denver Distinguished Scholar. She has served as a Visiting Professor at Hebrew University (2006) and Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (2010-2013). She was Resident Fellow at the Bellagio Center, Rockefeller Foundation, Italy (Fall 2015).
Igor A. Kotler
Director of ICDD - USA
Vice DIRECTOR
Igor A. Kotler served as a historian at Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. President and Executive Director of the Museum of Human Rights, Freedom, and Tolerance, Kotler is also Visiting Research Fellow and Director of the US-Russia-Former Soviet Union Dialogue Project at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, Vice Director of the International Council for Diplomacy and Dialogue, and Senior Research Associate at the International Educational and Research Center of the Holocaust and Genocides History at the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow).
Vera Tika
Program Director for Balkans, Refugees, Human Rights
vice director
veraponteion@gmail.com
Pranvera Tika is a Political Scientist. Her main academic and research interests includes
the broad spectrum of the processes of democratization in the Balkans, right-wing
extremism in Europe and in the Balkans, Populism, Comparative Politics, Euroscepticism,
Conspiracy theories, social movements, political parties, human rights and globalization.
She is completing her PhD thesis at Panteion University in Athens (Greece) with emphasis
on the political systems of three Balkan countries after the fall of Communism: Albania,
Bulgaria and Romania. Mrs. Vera Tika has a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the
University of Panteion in Athens (Greece) and an undergraduate degree in Social Policy
from the University of Panteion in Athens (Greece).