Our largest and most competitive applicant pool on record, this group was selected from among 561 global applicants for their professional track records of success, the impact they have made on democratic development and their leadership skills. Fellows will arrive to Stanford in July to begin the three-week program taught by Stanford faculty, policymakers and thought-leaders in the technology sector.

As human rights defenders in Bahrain, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Egypt, Georgia and Uganda, our fellows are supporting victims' rights, promoting gender justice, keeping governments accountable and reporting these abuses to the international community.

In Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Jordan, India, Nigeria and Zambia, our fellows are working to strengthen the rule of law to provide legal services to the poor, protect refugee rights, prosecute corruption and advance police reform.

Fellows are using innovative ICT tools and online platforms in Cuba, Kenya, Nigeria and Ukraine to increase transparency, build virtual communities and magnify their reach.

Social entrepreneurs in Bhutan, Paraguay and Tunisia are supporting rural communities and incubating new start-up initiatives to spread the culture of entrepreneurship among youth. And lastly, activists in Belarus, Burma and Thailand are working to promote democratic reforms to support their country’s political development.

The 2015 class will mark the 11th cohort of the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program and this will join the Omidyar Network Leadership Forum, a community of 250 alumni in 70 countries worldwide.

Please join us in congratulating this remarkable group of democracy leaders and welcoming them to the Stanford community.

More information on the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program can be found here.

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Silvina Rivarola is a criminal prosecutor with the Attorney General’s office for the City of Buenos Aires where she is in charge of the cybercrime unit. Rivarola has devoted her 25-year career to advancing the rule of law in Argentina’s judicial branch where she previously served as a criminal judge.

Aleś Łahviniec is the vice-chair of the Movement for Freedom, one of Belarus’ leading democratic opposition organizations working to advance democracy and develop civil society. Łahviniec ran for parliamentary and local elections. As an instructor, he is leading several education programs for young people. He is also a political commentator in Belarusian independent media. 

Thinley Choden is an independent consultant, social entrepreneur and an advocate for education and women’s leadership. She also founded READ Bhutan, the first organization to establish a network of community libraries and resource centers in rural areas. To date, READ programs serve over 35,000 Bhutanese and help to instill democratic practices on a grassroots level.

Sumeja Tulic is a researcher for Amnesty International responsible for monitoring, researching, investigating and analyzing human rights developments for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia. As an activist is the Balkans, Tulic helped launch networks to combat hate crimes and speech and has also used photography as a tool for human rights outreach.

Myat Ko is the co-founder of the Yangon School of Political Science where he directs their political education department working to train and empower citizens with political knowledge to support Burma’s political development. Ko works with ethnic groups and opposition parties to engage them in Burma’s transition.

Terith Chy is the executive officer of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an organization that documents the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge regime to help bring justice to the millions of victims and survivors. Chy’s work in transitional justice has made him one of Asia’s leading experts on victim participation in mass crimes proceedings.

Laura Gil is a senior advisor to the Minister of Interior in Colombia where she has worked on drafting and implementing law to support the peace process and reparations for victims. Working with government and civil society, Gil has sought government action to aid in the peaceful resolution of internal armed conflicts.

Karina Sarmiento is the regional director for Asylum Access Latin America, an international organization working to support refugee rights. Sarmiento leads the organization’s growth and implementation strategy for refugee legal aid clinics, strategic litigation, community legal empowerment and national policy advocacy across Latin America.

Heba Morayef is an Egyptian human rights defender based in Cairo. As Human Rights Watch’s Egypt director for six years, Morayef focused on documenting human rights violations, publicizing them, and lobbying decision-makers. Most recently, she served as a senior Egypt analyst for the International Crisis Group until the authorities shut down the Cairo office.

Giorgi Gogia is a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch where he researches, monitors and documents human rights abuses in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Gogia’s work on criminal justice reform in Georgia led to an amendment overhauling the government’s flawed system of administrative detention in 2014.

Mukul Saxena is a colonel with the Indian Army who has 11 years of service in conflict regions of the country. As a passionate human rights advocate, Saxena is working within the Indian army on human rights issues pertaining to children's rights in areas of civil unrest.

Navaz Kotwal works for the United Nations Development Program leading a project to provide legal empowerment for the poor, while working on broader issues of justice delivery and reform. Kotwal’s involvement in rights work began in the aftermath of the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat, India, where she helped obtain justice for survivors.

May Al-Taher is a researcher and the founder of the Vision Institute for Civil Society Studies, a policy research institute that works on legislative reform and monitors legal implementation in Jordan. Most recently, Vision Institute led the Jordan Local Governance Watch, which conducted an assessment of the state of local democracy in Jordan.

Teddy Warria is a Kenyan entrepreneur and the CEO of Africa 2.0 Kenya, an action-oriented community of young and emerging leaders from Africa who share a collective vision for the future. Warria is also the director of Africa’s Talking Limited, a mobile telecommunications company working to close the information poverty gap in Kenya.

Roukaya Kasenally is a senior advisor with the African Media Initiative, an organization supporting independent media on the African continent. Kasenally has served as a researcher for a number of pan-African democratic and governance institutions and co-founded an advocacy organization to engage the Mauritian public in democratic development. Kasenally also teaches at the University of Mauritius.

Oludotun Babayemi is the co-founder of Connected Development [CODE], an organization that uses online and offline tools to put pressure on governments and organizations in Nigeria to be more accountable and transparent. Their “Follow the Money” campaign has helped to monitor and track public resource allocation so marginalized communities receive government provisions and services. 

Bruno Defelippe is a social entrepreneur who has launched several social initiatives to engage young people to solve social and environmental challenges in Paraguay. He is the co-founder and CEO of Koga Social Business Lab, which incubates social businesses and provides a strong ecosystem for social entrepreneurs to thrive.

Kornchanok Raksaseri is a journalist, educator and activist working on media reform to support Thailand’s democratic development. Raksaseri is a member of the Thai Journalists Association and a vice president of the ASEAN Journalists Club where she promotes professionalism of the media, freedom of the press and the welfare of journalists.

Houssem Aoudi is the founder of Wasabi, a media and communications company working to promote the freedom of expression and entrepreneurship in Tunisia. Aoudi served as the director of the Media Center for the 2014 Tunisian parliamentary and presidential elections, and is the co-founder of a hub and community space for entrepreneurs.

Irene Caroline Ovonji-Odida is the CEO of the Uganda Association of Women Lawyers, which works to use the law to advance human rights and social justice for women and children. Ovonji-Odida has dedicated 25 years of her career to advancing gender equality and justice as a policymaker, activist and legislator.

Maksym Savanevskyi is the founder of Watcher, an online news platform that explores and analyzes the impact of digital communications on society in Ukraine. He co-founded the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, which was set up in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, to provide objective information about developments in Ukraine.

Catherine Phiri is a public prosecutor for the government of Zambia where she prosecutes cases of corrupt practices, abuse of authority and money laundering that undermine the rule of law. Through her work she has helped implement systems that enhance the efficient and effective flow of cases.

As part of the Arab Reform and Democracy Program's speaker series, George Mason University scholar Noura Erakat examined the political and legal contexts for the 2014 Gaza war. In July and August of 2014, hostilities in the Gaza Strip left 2,131 Palestinians and 71 Israelis dead, including 501 Palestinian children and one Israeli child. Of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents, 475,000 are living in temporary shelters or with other families because their homes have been severely damaged. The extent of destruction has raised questions around culpability for war crimes on all sides of the conflict.

As part of the Arab Reform and Democracy Program's speaker series, UC Santa Barbara Political Scientist Paul Amar discussed his book The Security Archipelago, winner of the 2014 Charles Taylor Book Award of the American Political Science Association. The book provides an alternative historical and theoretical framing of the refashioning of free-market states and the rise of humanitarian security regimes in the Global South by examining the pivotal, trendsetting cases of Brazil and Egypt. Addressing gaps in the study of neoliberalism and biopolitics, Amar describes how coercive security operations and cultural rescue campaigns confronting waves of resistance have appropriated progressive, antimarket discourses around morality, sexuality, and labor. Homing in on Cairo and Rio de Janeiro, Amar reveals the innovative resistances and unexpected alliances that have coalesced in new polities emerging from the Arab Spring and South America's Pink Tide. These have generated a shared modern governance model that he terms the "human-security state."

Israel's next chapter awaits the fallout from a contentious election unrivaled in that country's history, say Stanford faculty experts.

Benjamin Netanyahu's center-right Likud party won a narrow victory this week over its principal rival, the center-left Zionist Union. The next step is for Netanyahu to form a coalition government after an election characterized by heated rhetoric and issues of existential importance to Israel.

Russell Berman, a Stanford professor of German studies and of comparative literature, said that Netanyahu's nearly single-minded focus on security issues won him votes that would have otherwise gone to smaller right-wing parties.

"The conservative political spectrum, in total, fared less well than it did in the previous election, although Likud now emerges as the uncontested leader of that camp," said Berman.

He said the center-left spectrum suffered from candidates without charisma as well as a split among its multiple parties: "Beyond this partisan political arithmetic, it is clear that security concerns were the key to the election and Netanyahu articulated them more effectively than his competition."

As for Israel's stance against Iran's nuclear program, Berman said that the real issue is not Israel's stance but America's strategy in the Middle East.

"The consistent U.S. policy of reducing its footprint throughout the region has caused regional actors to begin to behave differently with greater attention to their own security. The real question is whether giving up on Pax Americana will also mean giving up on Pax," said Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

He explained that during the Cold War, some Europeans doubted the credibility of the American nuclear shield, asking whether the United States would risk nuclear war with Russia in order to defend West Germany. Recent events in Ukraine have revived these concerns in the Baltic states and Poland, he added.

"This lesson is not lost in Israel, as Iran acquires enrichment capacity, all the while expanding its ballistic missile capacity," he said.

Berman believes the Israeli elections have had no impact on the possible reality of a nuclear Iran. "If Isaac Herzog [from the Zionist Union] had won, the Iranian nuclear enrichment would not have disappeared."

Political, religious, social divisions

This was arguably the most contentious election in Israel's history, said Reut Itzkovitch-Malka, a visiting scholar at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. A researcher from the Israel Institute, she studies political representation, gender and politics, political parties and elections.

"It means more of the same," said Itzkovitch-Malka, referring to the Netanyahu victory. "He has no reason and no incentive to change his policy, especially in regard to Iran. This is an issue he feels very strongly about, as well as one which, most likely, bought him some of the electoral revenues he got."

Depending on how the nuclear talks with Iran progress, she said, this could become a substantial problem for Israel, one with serious implications for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

The election exposed serious fault lines in Israeli society between the religious and the secular, and the right and the left, said Itzkovitch-Malka. She said Israel is composed of different social groups with distinct national, communal and religious elements.

"Group identities that are prominent in national politics reflect the rifts between Jewish and Arab citizens, between religious [Orthodox] and non-religious Jews; and between Ashkenazi Jews [whose origins are in Europe] and Mizrahi Jews [whose origins are in North Africa and Asia]," she said.

In the last two decades, Israeli society has become more fragmented than ever, said Itzkovitch-Malka. Some of the recent campaign rhetoric reflected an "us or them" mentality, portraying the other side as demonic and destructive for Israeli society, she said. Racism against Arabs was also used in the politicking, she said.

And so, domestic and economic issues have almost taken a backseat to the focus on security and group-minded politics, said Itzkovitch-Malka.

"To some extent, it is hard or even impossible to talk about a common feeling or common mood, given the deep divisions in Israeli society," she said. The country's pressing concerns are the Palestinian issue, the growing cost of living, the deepening social cleavages and racism, she noted.

Two-state solution?

Stephen Krasner, Stanford's Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said that Netanyahu's apparent rejection of a two-state solution for now is a tactical mistake.

"Even if a two-state agreement is not likely, there is nothing else on offer for now, and Israel loses nothing by keeping it on the table but risks alienating international support if it takes it off the table," he said.

Krasner said the outlines of a two-state solution have been on the table at least since the Camp David meetings at the end of the Clinton administration.

"The fundamental impediment to reaching this settlement has been spoilers, especially but not exclusively on the Palestinian side, and the involvement of external actors," he said.

Krasner said he believes it would not be hard for the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to an agreement if "somehow the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea could be isolated from the rest of the world."

As it stands now, it is much harder to reach a two-state solution agreement since neither side is able to assess its relative power, he noted.

In regard to the Iranian nuclear issue, Krasner described it as a threat to the stability of the Middle East and the world: "The only durable solution is regime change in Iran but this can only come from within Iran. It may or may not happen."