Shanthi Dairiam. Founding member and former Executive Director of IWRAW Asia Pacific. Shanthi has extensive experience in managing women’s rights programmes and has been involved in building capacity for women’s rights advocacy for over 20 years, both with Malaysian organisations and also at the regional and international levels. She has served as an expert assisting key UN agencies such as APGEN, the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and UNIFEM. She holds a Masters in Literature from the University of Madras, India and a Masters in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. Shanthi is currently serving a four-year term (2005-2009) as an expert member of the CEDAW Committee.

Noor Farida Ariffin is the Malaysian Ambassador to the Netherlands. She is a founding member and former Vice-President of Women's Aid Organisation in Malaysia, and a former council member of the National Advisory Council for the Integration of Women in Development (NACIWID). She has also been a Steering Committee member of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), the former Director of the Women and Development Programme of the Commonwealth Secretariat based in London, and the former President of the Association of Women Lawyers in Malaysia.

Sapana Pradhan Malla is the president of the Forum for Women, Law and Development, Nepal , an organisation that is working to implement CEDAW in the National context. A legal advocate and women’s human rights activist, Sapana has extensive experience in women’s human rights, legal advocacy, law reform, public interest litigation and has worked with many international agencies and NGOs in women’s rights implementation strategies. Sapana has also been an Advisory Board Member for IWRAW Asia Pacific since 1998.

Ivy Josiah is the Executive Director of Women's Aid Organisation, Malaysia. She is a Steering Committee member of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and a member of its Taskforce on Violence Against Women. Ivy is also a member of the WHO Steering Committee of the Multi-Country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence. She has also previously served as the Co-Chair of the National Steering Committee on Violence Against Women set-up by the Ministry of Women and Family Development, Malaysia.

Maznah Mohamad is currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. She was formerly an Associate Professor at the School of Social Sciences , Universiti Sains Malaysia , Penang . She has served since 1992, in various positions, from president to ordinary member of the general committee of the Women's Centre for Change (WCC), Penang . She has participated in various research projects and written on subjects ranging from feminism and Islam to governance and democracy. She co-author the book, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia: An Unsung (R)evolution, published in 2006.

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This page was last updated on June 25, 2007

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