AINNI ADVISORS
Ms. Maja Daruwala
Ms. Maja Daruwala is currently Senior Advisor at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). She is a barrister by training whose primary interest lies in systemic reforms, concentrating on issues relating to police reform, prison reform, right to information, legal empowerment, non-discrimination, women's rights, freedom of expression and human rights advocacy capacity building. Maja has over forty years of experience advocating for social justice and is on several charitable boards including the International Women’s Health Coalition, NAMATI, International Record Management Trust, Public Affairs Centre (PAC) Bangalore. She is a recipient of the Nani Palkiwala Award for protection and preservation of civil liberties in India.
Dr. Y.S.R Murthy
Dr. Y.S.R Murthy is a Professor and Registrar at the OP Jindal Global University. He is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Human Rights Studies and a Senior Fellow of the International Institute for Higher Education Research and Capacity Building. He served in the National Human Rights Commission of India for over 12 years in various capacities including as the Director of Policy Research, Programmes, and Projects Division. He carried out a number of assignments as the Director, including media and communications to the Prime Minister’s Office, President’s Secretariat and Cabinet Secretariat from 2005-07.
He provided research support to the NHRC on policy research, legal analysis and monitoring of projects on human rights. He spearheaded the Commission’s advocacy and monitoring efforts in the areas of public health, HIV/AIDS, disability, rights of Scheduled Castes, mentally ill persons, refugees, migrants and displaced persons, torture, terrorism and international human rights conventions. He has to his credit numerous publications in national and international journals.
Mr. Mathews Philip
Mr. Mathews Philip is the Founder and Executive Director of South India Centre for Human Rights Education and Monitoring (SICHREM). He is also a member of the Core Group of NGOs of the National Human Rights Commission mandated to identify the areas of cooperation between the commission and civil society, identifying important human rights issues which could be jointly taken up with the civil society and advising the commission on International Human Rights Conventions. Before SICHREM, Mathews was the General Secretary of Karnataka Chapter of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties from 1993 – 96. He was the General Secretary of Karnataka Chapter of Citizens for Democracy 91-93, a member of Amnesty International for over two decades and currently the Secretary for the Karnataka Chapter of Transparency International. He for more than three decades has intervened in issues pertaining to torture, custodial deaths etc. and has been actively promoting human rights education in schools and communities.
Ms. Vrinda Grover
Ms. Vrinda Grover is an advocate, researcher and human rights activist based in New Delhi. As a lawyer, she has represented women and child survivors of domestic and sexual violence; victims and survivors of communal massacre, extrajudicial killings and custodial torture; sexual minorities; trade unions; and social activists.
Prof. Babu Mathew
Prof. Babu Mathew was the former Registrar and Faculty at the National Law School of India University and currently a Visiting Professor teaching Master of Public Policy Programme. He is the former Country Director of Action Aid International India and Vice President of the Trade Union International affiliated to the World Federation of Trade Unions. Prof. Babu has contributed immensely to labour law reforms, child rights and in protecting the rights of working people.
Mr. Miloon Kothari
Mr. Miloon Kothari is a former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, with extensive experience in the area of housing and land rights. He was convenor of the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR) from 2009 to 2014, an Indian human rights coalition that notably focuses on the Universal Periodic Review. Since 2015, he has been appointed President of the international organisation UPR Info. He was also a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the founder and former coordinator of the South Asian Regional Programme of the Habitat International Coalition’s Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) and also a founding member of Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment (INCHRITI). In recent years, he has been particularly active on issues such as women’s rights to land, inheritance, property, housing and globalization, trade liberalization and its impact on human rights and focusses on UPR.
