Truth Commissioners
About the Commissioners of the Community-Based Truth Commission (CBTC) for the Ezidi Genocide.
The Commissioners
Baroness Helena Kennedy LT KC (Chair)
Member of the House of Lords and Director, International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute
Baroness Helena Kennedy of The Shaws LT KC is one of the world’s leading international lawyer and a lifelong champion of civil liberties and human rights. A barrister and founding member of Doughty Street Chambers, she has acted in many of the most prominent cases of recent decades, including the Guildford Four appeal, and is recognised internationally as an authority on violence against women and children. A member of the House of Lords since 1997, she has served as Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute since 2019, leading programmes to protect lawyers, judges and human rights defenders at risk around the world. She chairs the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom and serves as Co-Chair of the international expert group Bring Kids Back UA, established to secure the return of children deported from Ukraine. In 2025 she became the first person from the UK to be awarded the Order of Merit of Ukraine by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Max Lucks MdB
Member of the German Bundestag (Alliance 90/The Greens)
Max Lucks has been a Member of the German Bundestag for Alliance 90/The Greens since 2021, representing North Rhine-Westphalia. He serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee and is his parliamentary group’s spokesperson on the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, where human rights and foreign policy form the centre of his parliamentary work. Since 2022 he has been a member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and chairs the German-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Group. He has been a consistent voice in the Bundestag for accountability for the genocide against the Ezidis, including co-hosting a major parliamentary event marking ten years since the genocide, and has travelled to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to engage directly with survivors, civil society and regional authorities on the humanitarian situation.
Professor Jean-Pierre Massias
Professor of Public Law and President, IFJD - Institut Louis Joinet
Jean-Pierre Massias is Professor of Public Law at the University of Pau and the Adour Region (Universite de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour) and President of the Institut Francophone pour la Justice et la Democratie - Institut Louis Joinet (IFJD), which he founded in 2013. A leading specialist in democratic transitions and transitional justice, his early research focused on constitutional justice and democratic transition in Eastern Europe, before broadening to peace processes, truth commissions and the fight against impunity for mass violence worldwide. He has served as an expert to the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission and directs the journal Est Europa. Alongside his academic work, he is actively engaged in transitional justice processes on the ground, including in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and the Palestinian territories, with a particular commitment to the inclusion of vulnerable groups and the response to sexual violence. He initiated the exploratory process towards a truth commission concerning the ‘homes indiens’ in French Guiana.
Oleksandra Matviichuk
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Head, Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine)
Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer and Head of the Center for Civil Liberties, which in 2022 became the first Ukrainian organisation to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Her work focuses on protecting human rights and strengthening democracy in Ukraine and the wider OSCE region through legislative reform, public oversight of law enforcement and the judiciary, and education. She coordinates the Euromaidan SOS initiative and, following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, co-founded the ‘Tribunal for Putin’ initiative to document international crimes committed across all regions of Ukraine under attack. She is the author of numerous submissions to United Nations bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court. Her recognitions include the 2022 Right Livelihood Award, being named one of the 25 most influential women in the world by the Financial Times in 2022, and inclusion in TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2023.
Brendan O’Hara MP
Member of the House of Commons (SNP), MP for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber
Brendan O’Hara has been a Member of the UK Parliament since 2015, representing Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber for the Scottish National Party (and its predecessor constituency, Argyll and Bute, from 2015 to 2024). He is a longstanding parliamentary advocate for international justice and atrocity prevention, serving as Chair of the (former) All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Yazidis and of the APPG on International Law, Justice and Accountability. In these capacities he played a prominent part in the campaign that led the UK Government in 2023 to formally acknowledge the Daesh atrocities against the Ezidis as genocide, and he has visited camps for internally displaced people in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to engage directly with survivors. During his time in Parliament he has held a series of frontbench roles for the SNP, including spokesperson for foreign affairs, international development and defence.
Judge Navi Pillay
Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; ad hoc Judge at the International Court of Justice; President, International Commission Against the Death Penalty
Judge Navanethem (Navi) Pillay is a South African jurist and one of the world’s most respected figures in international human rights and international criminal justice. The first non-white woman to serve as a judge of the High Court of South Africa, she went on to serve as a judge and then President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and as a judge of the Appeals Division of the International Criminal Court from 2003 to 2008. She served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. She currently serves as Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice in The Gambia v Myanmar, concerning the application of the Genocide Convention, and is President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty and President of the Advisory Council of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy. She chaired the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, and has led and contributed to numerous international inquiries into grave human rights violations.
Dr Sima Samar
Human rights advocate and former Minister of Women’s Affairs of Afghanistan
Dr Sima Samar is an Afghan medical doctor and one of the world’s foremost advocates for human rights, particularly the rights of women and girls. She founded the Shuhada Organization, which has provided education and healthcare to hundreds of thousands of Afghans through its network of schools, clinics and hospitals, with a particular focus on women and girls. Following the fall of the Taliban regime, she served as Vice-Chair of the Interim Administration of Afghanistan and became the country’s first Minister of Women’s Affairs (2002). Subsequently, she chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission from July 2002 to 2019, holding perpetrators of human rights violations to account at considerable personal risk, and served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan from 2005 to 2009. She has since served on the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement and High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation. Currently, she is a Visiting Scholar at Fletcher School at Tufts University. Her many honours include the Right Livelihood Award (2012) and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership (1994). Dr Samar is the author of OUTSPOKEN, my fight for freedom and human rights in Afghanistan.
