Catherine Anite is the Senior Programme Officer, Media, Safety and Protection at ARTICLE 19 Eastern Africa. She previously worked with Danish Refugee Council, Association of Female Lawyers (FIDA) and Uganda Human Rights Commission. Currently, her focus as a human rights advocate is on freedom of expression and the media. From 2012 to 2015 she was Chief Legal Officer at the Human Rights Network for Journalists in Uganda, where she engaged in public interest litigation on free speech issues, represented journalists, pursued policy analysis, and spearheaded national and regional advocacy campaigns on behalf of journalists and other media practitioners. She successfully argued a case which created new jurisprudence on open justice for journalists in Uganda and is at the fore of litigation in the East African Court attempting to decriminalize defamation.  She has served as a senior judge at the International media law moot court at the University of Oxford, and received a Mandela Washington Fellowship from the U.S. State Department in 2014, where she studied civic leadership at the University of Delaware and attended President Obama’s summit for young African leaders in Washington D.C.  In 2016, she was a Legal Fellow at the Centre for Law and Democracy in Canada, and at the International Centre for Not for Profit Law in Washington D.C. She is also a researcher for the Global Freedom of Expression project at Columbia University.

Catherine earned an LLM in International Human Rights Law from Notre Dame University, USA graduating Magna Cum Laude, an LLB with honors from Makerere University, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the Law Development Centre, Kampala, Uganda.

Dario Milo is a partner in the Dispute Resolution Practice at Webber Wentzel, where he leads a team on communications and information law. Dario obtained BComm, LLB and LLM degrees in Company Law and Constitutional Law from the University of the Witwatersrand. After working as an associate in the Media Law Department, Dario studied for an LLM degree in Communications Law at University College London. Thereafter, he received a PhD at University College London. His thesis examined privacy, reputation and freedom of the media in the context of the law of defamation and privacy, focusing on South African, English and US law.

Dario is also qualified as a solicitor of the High Court of England and Wales, and taught Media and Entertainment Law at University College London and BPP Professional Education plc. Dario teaches media law, access to information law, and privacy law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he is a visiting associate professor. He is the author of Defamation and Freedom of Speech, and co-author of the forthcoming book, A Practical Guide to Media Law. Dario and his team had been commissioned to write a guide on the Protection of Personal Information Bill when it became law.

Heba Morayef is the MENA Regional Director at Amnesty International, Formerly, she was the Egypt Director at Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading non-profit organizations for defending and protecting against human rights violations. She produces reports, news releases and op-eds based on her findings and conducts local and international advocacy. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Morayef worked at Amnesty International’s international secretariat in London as campaigner on Libya and Tunisia. She speaks English, Arabic, and French. In a Spring 2013 poll conducted by TIME magazine, 88% of readers counted Morayef among the 100 most influential people on the planet for her work in Egypt.

Fatou Jagne Senghor has more than 10 years of experience working on human rights and freedom of expression around Africa. She is based in Senegal, worked and lived in France, Gambia, UK and South Africa. She joined ARTICLE 19 in February 2002 and worked in the Africa office in Johannesburg, South Africa until 2004. She is currently based in Senegal where she established and heads ARTICLE19 West Africa regional office in 2010. She works with governments, African intergovernmental bodies and NGOs on media law/ policies and freedom of expression issues in Africa, conducting investigative missions, conducting national and regional training, advocacy, litigate on behalf of victims of human rights violations and writes on human rights and Freedom of expression in Africa. Fatou coordinated the advocacy work for the adoption of the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in African by the African Commission on Human Rights in 2002 and has spearheaded the development of the framework for the establishment of the mechanisms of a Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression in Africa (2005). She also chaired the Working group on access to information in African (2011 to 2013). She led the coordination and drafting of many NGOs recommendations and resolutions before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. She was programme adviser on the reform of the National Media Commission of Ghana (from August 2012 to January 2014).