2022 speakers

Sri Lanka Action Speaker: Thyagi Ruwanpathirana

Thyagi Ruwanpathirana is the South Asia and Sri Lanka Researcher at Amnesty International. She holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Warwick and a Master of Laws degree in Human Rights from Birkbeck College, University of London. Prior to joining Amnesty International, Thyagi was the National Legal Advisor for the International Commission of Jurists. She also was a National Research Consultant with the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms and a Researcher with the Legal and Constitutional Unit of the Centre for Policy Alternatives. Thyagi also has worked on transitional justice, enforced disappearances, reparations for conflict related sexual violence, counter terror laws, shrinking civic space, and memorialization.
China/Tibet Action Speaker: Tenzin Miglay

Tenzin Miglay is a 23-year-old Tibetan activist born on a Tibetan refugee settlement in India currently residing in New York. She is the North America Grassroots Coordinator for Students for a Free Tibet, a chapter-based network of young people working to amplify the voices of Tibetans inside Tibet. Most recently, she was involved in the No Beijing 2022 campaign, where she chained herself to the Olympic Rings outside the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. She was previously the Founder and President of the Tibetan Interest Association at the University of Connecticut, where she majored in History and Biological Sciences. ​
Ukraine Action Speaker: Alex Raufoglu

Alex Raufoglu is an Azerbaijani-American journalist, researcher, and press freedom advocate who focuses on Eurasia. He has worked extensively in the South Caucasus and Black Sea regions for several international broadcast outlets, such as the BBC, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty (RFE/RL), Voice of America (VoA), and others. Alex currently serves as the Eurasia & Turkey Coordination Group, Country Specialist on Azerbaijan and Georgia, and a Cogroup Steering Committee Member for Amnesty International USA.
Syria Action Speaker: Rajaa Altalli
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Rajaa Altalli is a Board Member for Justice for Detainees in Syria (JDS). She currently is the Sergio Vieira de Mello Endowed Visiting Chair in the school of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University. She is a member of the Syrian Women’s Advisory Board (WAB) for the UN Special Envoy for Syria since it was established in January 2016 to ensure that women’s perspectives and leadership are taken into account in the Syrian peace process. She co-founded the Center for Civil Society and Democracy (CCSD). Ms. Altalli is the co-chair of the US. Civil Society Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security and a senior fellow at the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Seton Hall University. Ms. Altalli was 12 years old when her father was arrested by the Syrian government for being part of a political party. She thought she would never be involved in public life, because “It would be too costly for one family to have more than one person arrested.” 
In 2011, as the Syrian revolution began, Ms. Altalli was working on her PhD in the United States after receiving her Masters in Applied Mathematics from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts in 2009 through the Fulbright Scholarship program. She started documenting human rights violations, and moved to Turkey from 2012-2020 to work with Syrian refugees in the region in addition to working with Syrians inside Syria through CCSD.