Steering Committee Members
Lennox Hinds
CoordinatorLennox S. Hinds is a Professor Emeritus of Law and former Chair of the Administration of Justice Program, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. A graduate of The City College of New York and Rutgers Law School, he was awarded City College’s highest Townsend Harris Alumni Award and Rutgers Law School’s J. Skelly Wright Award for contribution to civil rights. He was a Charles H. Revson Fellow, Center for Legal Education and Urban Policy, City College of New York 1979-1980. In addition to his practice as a criminal defense and international human rights lawyer, he was Nelson Mandela’s US attorney and counsel in the US to the Government of South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa and (SWAPO) of Namibia. He is the permanent Representative to the United Nations for the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. He is admitted to practice before the Unites States Supreme Court, the International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICTR), the International Criminal Court for Yugoslavia (ICTY), the Permanent International Criminal Court in The Hague and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
He has published and taught about crimes against humanity under international law for more than two decades, and has presented expert testimony on the Crimes Against Humanity of the Apartheid Regime before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Johannesburg, South Africa presided over by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Jeanne Mirer
Steering Committee member, IADL PresidentJeanne Mirer is a 1971 graduate of Boston University School of Law. She has almost a half century of work for progressive legal change in the United States working to promote human rights throughout the United States and internationally. Jeanne is the President of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the President of the Board of the International Commission for Labor Rights and a member of the Executive Committee of the National Lawyers Guild where she represents the International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild. She has spoken and written on a variety of subjects and has devoted her life and work to the fight against racism and other forms of oppression.
Jeanne is a partner in the law firm of Mirer, Mazzocchi & Julien in PLLC which was founded in 2015. She specializes in labor, employment, and civil rights law. She has handled numerous class actions and multi-party actions for victims of discrimination and wage theft. Her clients’ various worker centers, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Worker’s United and other labor organizations.
Nana Gyamfi
Steering Committee member, NCBL PresidentNana Gyamfi is the president of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) and A faculty member of its Law Enforcement Accountability Project (LEAP). She is also Executive Director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). Nana is a human rights and criminal defense attorney bringing with her over three decades of service to the Movement for Black liberation, and over twenty years experience directing Black social justice organizations and networks. She is a Co-Founder and managing member of two Black-led and Black-focused organizations – Justice Warriors 4 Black Lives and Human Rights Advocacy. Nana received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University, and her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law.
Pooja Gehi
Steering Committee member, NLG representativePooja Gehi has worked for immigrant and racial justice, trans and queer liberation, transformative justice, youth leadership, and cross-movement coalition building throughout her life. She served as Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild from 2015 through 2020. For over eight years, she worked as a Staff Attorney and Director of Immigrant Justice at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP). There she provided direct legal services to hundreds of low-income transgender and gender nonconforming clients and achieved major victories like access to transition-related healthcare for New York State Medicaid recipients through litigation and coalition work. Pooja’s scholarly work focuses on social movements, the devolution of criminal and immigration systems, and the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality. Her recent work has appeared in the Berkeley Asian American Law Journal and Harvard Journal of Law and Gender and The Unfinished Queer Agenda: After Marriage Equality.
Kerry McLean
Steering Committee member, Commission spokespersonKerry McLean is an international human rights lawyer and social justice activist.
She is a Co-Chair of the NCBL’s International Affairs Section, and has done work with the IADL for over a decade.
An NLG member since 2003, Kerry is the founder and Chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s Africa Subcommittee and is a former NLG national board member. She also chaired the NLG’s Anti-Sexism Committee for several years.
Over the past 17 years Kerry has lived in Africa, Europe and Asia, working with local and international organizations on human rights and international development. She has engaged in significant United Nations advocacy, including litigation with treaty monitoring bodies, writing shadow reports concerning compliance with CERD, CEDAW and CAT, contributing to UPR reports and working with UN Special Rapporteurs. She has provided training on and delivered lectures on international human rights in the US and other parts of the world.
Anne Else
Steering Committee memberAnne Else is currently employed as a part-time administrative assistant at a residential hospice facility in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1979 she coordinated the logistics of the International Jurists visit to political prisoners in the U.S. which set the precedent for this Commission of Inquiry. For this endeavor she has provided research and scheduling assistance.
Claire Gilchrist
Steering Committee memberClaire Gilchrist is an alternate representative to the United Nations in New York for IADL since 2009. She served on criminal defense teams before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and represented United Nations staff members in labor disputes before the United Nations Dispute Tribunal. She is a trial lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts.
Richard Harvey
Steering Committee memberRichard Harvey is a barrister (England & Wales, 1971 to date). He practiced at the New York Bar (1982-2000), UN International Criminal Tribunals (1999-2014) and today focuses primarily on environmental justice litigation. Throughout his career he has defended the right of peoples to self-determination and fought racial discrimination. In 1979 he co-authored the International Jurists Report on US Human Rights Petitioners and in 1971 he co-wrote the report of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression Inquiry into Racist Policing in the United States. He is a member of Garden Court Chambers, London.
Charlotte Kates
Steering Committee memberCharlotte Kates coordinates the work of the National Lawyers Guild International Committee. She is the international coordinator of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and has organized delegations, actions, reports and articles that highlight the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian prisoners. She is also a member of Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition and the Organizing Collective of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Beth S. Lyons
Steering Committee memberBeth S. Lyons is currently a defense counsel in the Dominic Ongwen case at the International Criminal Court (ICC), and has defended clients at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). She has served as an Alternate Representative to the UN in NY for IADL since 1997.
Beth has made presentations and published on international justice, human rights, international criminal law, fair trial, rights of ICTR acquitted and prisoners and truth commissions. She has been involved in struggles for equality and for the right of self-determination since the 1960’s.
Emel Mcdowell
Steering Committee memberAs a teenaged honor roll high school senior in Brooklyn, New York , Emel Mcdowell was falsely convicted of murder and ultimately prepared his own court documents that resulted in the reversal of his unjust conviction. Upon release from prison Emel joined law firms and successfully contributed to the dismissal of false arrests and the reversal of wrongful convictions. Emel was previously in Super Lawyers Magazine as a “rising star paralegal” for his having excelled in preparing litigation for white collar criminal defense and civil rights matters.
Micòl Savia
Steering Committee memberMicòl Savia is the permanent representative of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and the Transitional Secretary-General of the IADL. She has delivered reports and statements on human rights conditions and workers’ rights around the world and participated in a number of legal delegations and fact-finding missions. She is a law graduate of the University of Turin, Italy and has worked as a civil lawyer in Italy, working mainly in the areas of international law and human rights. She is an active member of the Italian Association of Democratic Jurists and is also a member of the European Association of Lawyers for Human Rights.