Stanford University

Tackling development challenges in Africa, three social entrepreneurs join Stanford community

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Africa is witnessing a period of impressive economic transformation. Small business growth and technological innovation are bridging the development divide and lifting many out of poverty. Foreign investment has been pouring into the continent, viewed by analysts as one of the few remaining emerging market economies. Google's Eric Schmidt recently traveled to Africa on a technology tour citing Kenya's impressive gains in the ICT sector.

But the headlines and statistics fail to account for the large number left behind in the continent's race to develop. Social problems continue to plague African societies and threaten to reignite tensions, stalling long-term progress.

To address these challenges, grassroots leaders are working across Africa to introduce new models and practices to give voice and representation to marginalized groups, many of which include: women, children, and rural populations.

Referred to as "social entrepreneurs" these individuals work in partnership with local communities to use non-conventional approaches and innovative designs to address development challenges. Unlike traditional business entrepreneurs, their goal is not financial profit but societal gain.

In an effort to harness the collective expertise of these global change-makers, Stanford University's Program on Social Entrepreneurship was launched in 2011 to bring practitioners inside the classroom and on campus.

In April, three social entrepreneurs working to advance social, economic, and political change in Africa will spend the spring quarter in residency at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Turning justice on its head

After emerging from a decade-long civil war, Sierra Leone has been cited as a successful model of post-conflict development and stability. However, the formal justice system has continued to exclude large numbers of the country's rural population who continue to seek customary legal systems of representation. Recognizing this problem, Simeon Koroma co-founded Timap (which translates to "Stand Up" in the national Krio language) for Justice in 2003 to combine the best of both systems.

Through a network of highly trained paralegals and mediators located in 19 offices across Sierra Leone, Timap for Justice is helping clients navigate both systems to seek justice and address community-level concerns. To date, Timap for Justice has represented over 20,000 clients who are often the victims of human rights abuses at the hands of multinational corporations. Their innovative grassroots justice model together with Koroma's efforts to grow the organization has led Timap for Justice to be recognized on a national and regional level.

Transforming ripples into waves

Gemma Bulos - a California native - did not know the impact water would have on her life until she witnessed the world water crisis first-hand while traveling the world on a global peace campaign. A self described "accidental social entrepreneur," Bulos learned by actively listening to the needs of the local community and learning from their experiences. She co-founded A Single Drop for Safe Water in the Philippines to empower local communities to plan, implement, and manage community-driven water and sanitation solutions.

Recognizing the important role women play in the success of water projects, Bulos started her second entrepreneurial venture - the Global Women's Water Initiative (GWWI) - to work with rural women in East Africa to build simple water and sanitation technologies. Tailoring each project to the community's needs, GWWI equips women with the technical skills to build rainwater harvesting tanks, water treatment technologies, and toilets. All projects are constructed using locally appropriate and affordable technologies. Trainings have helped to spur micro-enterprise development, and have provided over 15,000 people with clean water and sanitation solutions.

Putting children's rights first

Malawi made international headlines as the destination for pop singer Madonna's adoption of two young children, but the country has made little progress in protecting the rights of their youngest citizens. Maxwell Matewere founded the organization, Eye of the Child, to advocate for children who are victims of forced marriage, child labor, abuse, and sexual exploitation.

Matewere's innovative model uses litigation, public and policy advocacy, and training of community organizations to lead national campaigns against child abuse. Since 2010, the organization has provided free legal aid to 47 cases of forced marriages, 13 cases of arranged marriages, and rescued 21 children from early marriages.

Through his work leading Eye of the Child, Matewere has challenged powerful actors in business and government to advocate for new practices and legislation to protect the interests and well-being of young children. In recognition of his work, Matewere was appointed as Malawi's special law commissioner to develop a national policy for anti-human trafficking and adoption.

Informing theory with practice

During the spring quarter, the three social entrepreneurs will participate in an undergraduate course (IR142) examining how social entrepreneurs advance democracy, development, and justice. Taught by Kathleen Kelly Janus, a lecturer at Stanford, the course will combine academic theory with the social entrepreneurs practical experience to present a more inclusive model of social change. Students will also be encouraged to partner with social entrepreneurs on service learning projects.

Social entrepreneurs will engage the broader Stanford community through a series of speaking roles on campus during the academic quarter. They will also have the time and space to pursue their own research initiatives, contemplate the next steps on their journey as social change leaders, and document their own models of social change.

CDDRL's Program on Social Entrepreneurship was founded in 2011 by Kavita Ramdas, the former head of the Global Fund for Women and the current representative of the Ford Foundation in India. The program is now led by Faculty Director Deborah L. Rhode, a professor of law at Stanford Law School and affiliate faculty member at CDDRL.

This spring marks the third cycle of the program, which has welcomed previous social entrepreneurs from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Malaysia, Palestine, South Africa, and the San Francisco Bay Area, who together work on critical problems of democracy, development, and social justice in their communities.

For more information on the program, please visit: pse.stanford.edu.

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Shui Yung Chang

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Shui Yung Chang (張水庸) is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan). 

Mr. Chang is a career diplomat who joined the Foreign Service in 1992 and has served in various capacities in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia and America. His overseas posts for the Foreign Service include Vice Consul in Johannesburg, South Africa; First Secretary in New Delhi, India; and Director in Miami, Florida, United States. In Taipei he held the positions of Desk Officer of African Affairs; Section Chief of the Institute of Diplomacy and International Affairs (formerly known as Foreign Service Institute); Secretary of the Coordination Council of North American Affairs; Director of the Public Diplomacy Coordination Council on home assignment and served as the External Affairs Officer and translator to the Premier Office of Executive Yuan, R.O.C.

Mr. Chang graduated from National Taiwan University with a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Languages and Literatures in 1991. He continued his education on History of Art at University of Pretoria, South Africa 1996-1997, and obtained Master of Arts in Strategic Studies from Australian National University, Australia in 2005. He also received his certificate on diplomacy from Oxford University, United Kingdom in 1995. 

Mr. Chang speaks fluent Taiwanese, Mandarin and English. His research interests include Asia studies, International Affairs, Taiwan Foreign Policy, Public Diplomacy, Democracy and Development. In his career he also actively involved in the promotion of culture, academy and humanitarian work for Taiwan. Over the years, Mr. Chang has travelled widely across countries and continents on his official trips and personal tours with family. He is married to Ms Maya Chen and has two children, Sonia and Sophia Chang. They currently reside in Taiwan.

Going Beyond Form-Based Governance Indicators and 'Reforms as Signals' in Development

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Abstract:

The last few decades have seen a growth in the number and influence of governance indicators in development. These indicators shape the institutional reform agenda in many countries. They create pressure for 'reforms as signals', however, which are often limited to changes in form and not function: governments look better after reforms but are not actually better. Given evidence that this is indeed the case, the question is how to construct governance indicators and promote reforms that actually make governments more functional. Select experiences show that this is possible and suggest a new set of principles that could be used to guide institutional reforms in the future. 

 

Speaker Bio:

Matt Andrews is Associate Professor of Public Policy. His research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance in developing and transitional governments. Recent articles focus on forging a theoretical understanding of the nontechnical factors influencing success in reform processes. Specific emphasis lies on the informal institutional context of reform, as well as leadership structures within government-wide networks. This research developed out of his work in the provincial government of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa and more recently from his tenure as a Public Sector Specialist working in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. He brings this experience to courses on public management and development. He holds a BCom (Hons) degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

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Francis Fukuyama

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Victims' Reparation: What Lessons Can We Take From the International Criminal Court?

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In a piece for the The Stanford Daily, Nadejda Marques, manager of the Program on Human Rights at the CDDRL, writes about victims' reparations and the experience at the International Criminal Court.

As explained by Professor Cherif Bassiouni on Jan. 29 at the CDDRL Program on Human Rights Sanela Diana Jenkins Speakers Series, victims before the International Criminal Court (the ICC) have rights that combine the practice in proceedings of two different legal systems: the Civil Law and the Common Law system.

Through direct victim representation, an important aspect of the civil law system, those who have suffered severe abuses may present to the ICC their points of view to the judges. In the civil system, this is important because it allows the prosecutor to assess harm and damages suffered and request corresponding reparations. In common law systems, victim representation is more central in civil cases, though increasingly the perspective of victims has been relevant during criminal sentencing.

In the ICC, victims are not required to participate in the court proceedings and the court may even decide on its own to make an award for reparations. That is, independent of any motion by the prosecutor, the victim may also seek reparation directly from the ICC through the Trust Fund for Victims, an independent body of the court charged with implementing the court’s decisions and providing physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and material support to victims of crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC. Furthermore, the Trust Fund for Victims at the ICC can also act to benefit victims of crimes even when there is no conviction.

Why is this a valuable lesson? Suppose that the defendant accused of horrendous crimes does not have sufficient assets to cover the damages imposed onto the victim? In many countries including the United States, reparations are often based on the defendant’s ability to pay. Apart from a few cases of restitution for sex crimes in the United States, governments seldom take responsibility for losses and suffering caused by private individuals, leaving victims to their own resources, their personal insurance and their own means to recover and rehabilitate. When that happens, is justice done?

What do victims want? From years of researching and working with victims of human rights abuse including victims of war crimes in the context of Angola and, more recently, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the sentencing of perpetrators is only one of the elements of justice as understood by victims. Victims and survivors usually ask for guarantees that the crimes and violation of rights will not take place again. They want restitution to re-establish the lives they had before the violations took place, and they need support so they and their communities can work to overcome the severe psychological consequences affecting generations of victims’ descendants.

The ICC Trust Fund for Victims needs to raise funds to support the reparations it grants. Contributors to the fund are states, private donors, foundations and individuals that wish to support victims and communities that see the ICC as last resort. The Trust Fund for Victims is far from perfect. It struggles to ensure sufficient funds to sustain victims’ requested reparations, and it is not well equipped to establish reparations in cases of collective application. However, as the idealism that created the ICC in the first place, the ICC Trust Fund sends a signal of great relevance: reparations are an important representation of the justice process for victims of human rights abuse.

When the International Criminal Court (the ICC) issued its first decision on reparations of victims – in the case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, convicted in March of 2012 for conscripting, enlisting and using child soldiers in the DRC – it established an important precedent in victims’ agency in the identification of needs and in the design of reparations. This precedent can be a valuable lesson to the justice systems in many countries including the United States. As the ICC enters its second decade, let us learn the lessons that can become pillars in the expansion of international justice and may one day establish jurisprudence that benefits victims within the countries.

Nadejda Marques
Manager of the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)

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Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy

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Larry Diamond
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This book originated in a conference on "Liberation Technology in Authoritarian Regimes" held at Stanford University in Oct. 2010. 

The revolutions sweeping the Middle East provide dramatic evidence of the role that technology plays in mobilizing citizen protest and upending seemingly invulnerable authoritarian regimes. A grainy cell phone video of a Tunisian street vendor’s self-immolation helped spark the massive protests that toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egypt’s "Facebook revolution" forced the ruling regime out of power and into exile.

While such "liberation technology" has been instrumental in freeing Egypt and Tunisia, other cases—such as China and Iran—demonstrate that it can be deployed just as effectively by authoritarian regimes seeking to control the Internet, stifle protest, and target dissenters. This two-sided dynamic has set off an intense technological race between "netizens" demanding freedom and authoritarians determined to retain their grip on power.

Liberation Technology brings together cutting-edge scholarship from scholars and practitioners at the forefront of this burgeoning field of study. An introductory section defines the debate with a foundational piece on liberation technology and is then followed by essays discussing the popular dichotomy of "liberation" versus "control" with regard to the Internet and the sociopolitical dimensions of such controls. Additional chapters delve into the cases of individual countries: China, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia.

This book also includes in-depth analysis of specific technologies such as Ushahidi—a platform developed to document human-rights abuses in the wake of Kenya’s 2007 elections—and alkasir—a tool that has been used widely throughout the Middle East to circumvent cyber-censorship.

Liberation Technology will prove an essential resource for all students seeking to understand the intersection of information and communications technology and the global struggle for democracy.

Contributors: Walid Al-Saqaf, Daniel Calingaert, Ronald Deibert, Larry Diamond, Elham Gheytanchi, Philip N. Howard, Muzammil M. Hussain, Rebecca MacKinnon, Patrick Meier, Evgeny Morozov, Xiao Qiang, Rafal Rohozinski, Mehdi Yahyanejad

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Failure to protect democracy in Mali opened path for grave atrocities

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Landry Signé
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As French troops deployed to Mali this week to push back Islamist rebels, CDDRL Post-Doctoral Fellow Landry Signé writes in the New York Times that the failure to restore democracy sooner has descended the country into a devilish civil war with grave humanitarian consequences. Signé argues that Mali's West African neighbors and the international community should have acted earlier to restore peace and security to a country long recognized for its democratic stability.
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The Limitations of Information in Fostering Civic Activity: Experimental Evidence from Mali

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Abstract:

Civic engagement underpins a healthy democracy when it provides channels outside of elections for citizens to express preferences and demands to politicians. This mechanism of democratic accountability is undermined when groups of citizens face differential access or barriers to participation. It is well-documented that marginalized groups participate less, particularly in developing countries where economic and social inequalities are higher. I discuss two primary constraints: marginalized groups face higher material and social costs, and they are less likely to have the information and knowledge necessary for engagement. I test the second of these two explanations in the West African country of Mali with a field experiment that randomly assigned an information intervention to some localities and not others. An exogenous increase in civic and political information had no net effect on treated communities, but had significant effects conditional on gender: men participated significantly more in civic activity while women participated less. I show this disparity is not driven by pre-existing differences in knowledge or skills but rather higher social costs faced by women. However, it appears the increase in civic activity among men is driven by individuals more dissatisfied with government and the decrease among women is driven by more satisfied individuals dropping out. Together, these findings suggest that citizens face an information constraint to civic participation that can be addressed, in part, by improving information, but that information alone cannot overcome inegalitarian social norms – and may even exacerbate them.

Speaker bio:

Jessica Gottlieb is a 2012-2013 CDDRL pre-doctoral fellow and a PhD Candidate at Stanford University. She studies political behavior, institutions, and government performance in developing countries with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Her dissertation demonstrates how low voter expectations, collusion among political parties, and social inequalities together undermine electoral accountability in Mali. In her past and current research, Gottlieb combines extensive field work, sound research design and rigorous methods such as field, survey and behavioral experiments. She received an MA in Economics from Stanford in 2011 and expects to complete the PhD in Political Science by June 2013.

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Jessica Gottlieb

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CDDRL Pre-doctoral Fellow 2012-13
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Jessica Gottlieb is a 2012-2013 CDDRL pre-doctoral fellow and a PhD Candidate at Stanford University. She studies political behavior, institutions, and government performance in developing countries with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Her dissertation demonstrates how low voter expectations, collusion among political parties, and social inequalities together undermine electoral accountability in Mali. In her past and current research, Gottlieb combines extensive field work, sound research design and rigorous methods such as field, survey and behavioral experiments. She received an MA in Economics from Stanford in 2011 and expects to complete the PhD in Political Science by June 2013.

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Jessica Gottlieb 2012-2013 CDDRL pre-doctoral fellow and a PhD Candidate Speaker Stanford University
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Round table with Internet Freedom Fellows

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The Internet Freedom Fellows program brings human rights activists from across the globe to Geneva, Washington, and Silicon Valley to meet with fellow activists, U.S. and international government leaders, and members of civil society and the private sector engaged in technology and human rights. A key goal of the program is to share experiences and lessons learned on the importance of a free Internet to the promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly as fundamental human rights.  As a part of the Silicon Valey tour, the six fellows for this year will stop at Stanford for a round table discussion. 

The fellows will present their work pertaining to internet freedom and challenges they face, that we will have a chance to discuss.  The event is free and open to the public.
You can find more information about the fellowship program at:

 

The internet freedom fellows for this year are:

 

Mac-Jordan Disu-Degadjor

@MacJordaN

 

A co-founder and executive of the sole blogging association in Ghana, Blogging Ghana, Mr. Disu-Degadjor promotes the freedom of expression through blogs and social media both on and off-line. Starting in 2009, Mac-Jordan and other young Ghanaians organized 18 BarCamps across Ghana, providing aspiring Ghanaian bloggers with technical help and networking opportunities. These conferences are designed to inspire youth to get on-line wherever and however they can.

On several occasions, Mac-Jordan has presented on the need to use blogs and other social media to amplify youth voices. In 2009, Global Voices appointed him as their aggregator for Ghana, and Dr. Dorothy Gordon, the Director-General of Ghana's Advanced Information Technology Institute, stated that he was a critical and necessary voice for the advancement of the nation.

Michael Anti

@mranti

 

Michael Anti was a computer programmer before turning to journalism in 2001. He is a longstanding advocate for a freer internet in China, noting that social media is the force that may ultimately challenge the political foundation of the country. Mr. Anti believes that the internet will facilitate a new conception of civic participation, inspiring the Chinese to see freedom of speech as a fundamental right. Microsoft MSN was forced to delete his award winning blog under pressure from the Chinese government, causing a media uproar in 2005. He has been an advocate of Virtual Private Networks for Chinese citizens, stating that those who don’t use them are “second-class citizens in the world of the internet.” Mr. Anti is known for his prolific career as a journalist, his 2012 Ted Talk, and his commitment to a freer China.

Edetaen Ojo

@EdetOjo; @MRA_ Nigeria

 

Edetaen Ojo is the director of The Media Rights Agenda, an organization that promotes excellence and professionalism in journalism. He spearheaded and orchestrated the movement that led the Nigerian legislature to pass the Freedom of Information Act, which empowers journalists to seek and access information from government establishments.

Mr. Ojo holds over twenty years of experience promoting and defending internet freedom as part of the broader right to freedom of expression, through monitoring transgressions and limitations on freedom and human rights online. His involvement in international human rights includes positions on the advisory group for the BBC World Service Trust-led Africa Media Development Initiative (AMDI) and the Task Force of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Mr. Ojo also serves as Convenor (Chair) of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), a global network of organizations with its secretariat in Toronto, Canada.

Grigory Okhotin

@okhotin; @OvdInfo

 

Grigory Okhotin is a prominent journalist and human rights activist in Russia. Previously the director of the news site Inosmi.RU, Mr. Okhotin resigned in protest of the censorship imposed upon public media in Russia. After his resignation, Mr. Okhotin began writing publically about censorship and human rights violations in Russia.

After experiencing detainment himself, Mr. Okhotin co-founded the portal ovdinfo.org to provide a public forum for sharing information about Russian citizens detained while exercising their right to freedom of assembly. Mr. Okhotin’s website is unique in that it provides real-time detailed information about those who have been detained, and features mini-interviews in which activists describe the manner of their arrest and the conditions of their confinement. According to Mr. Okhotin, “That helps us to understand what happens behind closed doors.”

 

Usamah Mohamed

@simsimt

 

Usamah Mohamed is a computer programmer and human rights activist, who currently owns and operates an IT business in Khartoum. During the recent wave of anti-government demonstrations in Sudan, Mr. Mohamed organized peaceful demonstrations from the Twitter page he supervises and supplied international media with fresh pictures and news on demonstrations across the country. The government took several steps to halt Mr. Mohamed’s work, including subjecting him to a period of detention. Undeterred, Mr. Mohamed continues to use social media to promote human rights in Sudan. The U.S. Embassy follows his blog daily, considering it an important source of news and opinions about Sudan. In April 2012, Usamah was chosen to be a part of the Sudan Social Media Team to meet with the U.S. Department of State’s special representative to Muslim communities, Farah Pandith.

Mr. Mohamed currently trains activists to use online tools effectively and efficiently. This includes training on blogging, bypassing online censorship, using circumvention tools, digital and online security, citizen journalism, effective audio and video recording, and live-tweeting for the coverage of events such as protests, sit-ins, and forums.

 

Bronwen Robertson

 

Bronwen Robertson is the Director of Operations for a London based NGO called Small Media. While in Iran working on a PhD in music, Ms. Robertson became interested in working for the rights of repressed Iranians, especially homosexuals. In Iran, Ms. Roberson spearheaded a research project and report entitled “LGBT Republic of Iran: An Online Reality?” The report, published in May of this year, led to a number of projects that connect Farsi speaking communities worldwide. One such project is a website called Degarvajeh, which gives online support to the LGBT community by providing general information and the proper Farsi vocabulary to discuss LGBT issues in a non-derogatory fashion.

Through Small Media, Ms. Robertson works to counter Iran’s efforts to block websites and censor information. Small Media spends much of its time working on creating new and innovative ways to make the internet safe and useful for Iranians. The group holds numerous online training sessions in personal online security, citizen journalism, and general information. They also report on related issues such as cultural censorship in Iran, Iranian women sports, and struggles faced by Iranian Bloggers. Recently, the group held an awareness raising workshop to demonstrate the challenges faced by Iranians using the internet under oppression.

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Panel Discussions

Delivering Justice to the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia

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Abstract: 

CDDRL post-doctoral fellow Bilal Siddiqi will address the question of whether progressive, statutory legal reform can meaningfully affect the lives of the poor, using observational and experimental evidence from Liberia in a new study co-authored with Justin Sandefur at the Center for Global Development. The authors develop a simple model of forum choice and test it using new survey data on over 4,500 legal disputes taken to a range of customary and formal legal institutions in rural Liberia. Their results suggest that the poor would benefit most from access to low-cost, remedial justice that incorporates the progressive features of the formal law. They then present the results of a randomized controlled trial of a legal empowerment intervention in Liberia providing pro bono mediation and advocacy services, using community paralegals trained in the formal law. The authors find strong and robust impacts on justice outcomes, as well as significant downstream welfare benefits—including increases in household and child food security of 0.24 and 0.38 standard deviations, respectively. They interpret these results as preliminary evidence that there are large socioeconomic gains to be had from improving access to justice, not by bringing the rural poor into the formal domain of magistrates’ courts, government offices, and police stations, but by bringing the formal law into the organizational forms of the custom through third-party mediation and advocacy.

About the Speaker: 

Bilal Siddiqi is a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project (esoc.princeton.edu). His research focuses on micro-institutions, formal and informal legal systems, peace-building and state accountability in post-conflict settings. He is currently involved in several field experiments in Sierra Leone and Liberia, including a randomized controlled trial of two non-financial incentive mechanisms in Sierra Leone’s public health sector; experimental evaluations of community-based paralegal programs in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and a randomized controlled trial of a community reconciliation program in Sierra Leone. 

Bilal received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Stanford, he was based at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm as a Marie Curie / AMID Scholar; and has also spent time at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, where he worked on aid effectiveness in global health. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons) from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan.

 

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Bilal Siddiqi

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow (ESOC Project)
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Bilal Siddiqi is a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project (esoc.princeton.edu). His research focuses on micro-institutions, formal and informal legal systems, peace-building and state accountability in post-conflict settings. He is currently involved in several field experiments in Sierra Leone and Liberia, including a randomized controlled trial of two non-financial incentive mechanisms in Sierra Leone’s public health sector; experimental evaluations of community-based paralegal programs in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and a randomized controlled trial of a community reconciliation program in Sierra Leone.

Bilal received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Stanford, he was based at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm as a Marie Curie / AMID Scholar; and has also spent time at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, where he worked on aid effectiveness in global health. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons) from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan.

Bilal Siddiqi Post-doctoral fellow Speaker CDDRL
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ICC Speaker Series- Shamila Batohi

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Ms. Shamila Batohi is Senior Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor at the ICC, and former Director of Public Prosecutions in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. In 1995, Ms. Batohi was part of a multi-disciplinary team mandated by President Mandela to investigate hit squad activities in the police during the apartheid years. As head of the Directorate of Special Operations, the unit that is better known as the ‘Scorpions’, Batohi was tasked with investigating serious organized crime. Famously, in 2000, Batohi was appointed to lead evidence in the King Commission hearings to investigate cricket match-fixing allegations involving Hansie Cronje.

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Shamila Batohi Senior Legal Advisor Speaker Office of the Prosecutor, ICC
Lectures
Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Series on the International Criminal Court
Program on Human Rights
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