Speakers

Professor Surya Deva is an Associate Professor at the School of Law of City University of Hong Kong, and a Member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights.  Deva’s primary research interests lie in Business and Human Rights, India-China Constitutional Law, and Sustainable Development.  He has published extensively in these areas, and has advised the UN/EU bodies, states, multinational corporations and civil society organisations on matters related to business and human rights.  His books include Building a Treaty on Business and Human Rights: Context and Contours (co-editor with David Bilchitz) (CUP, forthcoming in 2017); Socio-Economic Rights in Emerging Free Markets: Comparative Insights from India and China (editor) (Routledge, 2015); Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate Responsibility to Respect? (co-editor with David Bilchitz) (CUP, 2013); Confronting Capital Punishment in Asia: Human Rights, Politics, Public Opinion and Practices (co-editor with Roger Hood) (OUP, 2013); and Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations: Humanizing Business (Routledge, 2012).  Prof Deva has also prepared reports for the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI).  He is one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of the Business and Human Rights Journal (CUP), and sits on the Editorial/Advisory Board of the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, and the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law.  In 2014, Prof Deva was elected a Member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law.



Pascal Durand (MEP), as a French lawyer, has closely followed the developments in France on the due vigilance of parent companies. Since he became Member of the Juri Committee in the European Parliament, he has pushed for CSR-related criteria in the context of the legislative work on Shareholders' right and fought for a Public Country-By-Country Reporting to enhance Corporate tax transparency which he is also following in the PANA committee on tax evasion."

 



 Heidi Hautala (MEP) is a Member of the European Parliament and former Minister for International Development and State Ownership Steering of Finland (2011-2013). Currently she is the Vice-President of her group (Greens/EFA) and Co-President of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly (Eastern Partnership). She is a member of the Development and Legal Affairs Committees and former chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights. In addition to the ongoing parliamentary term, she was also an MEP during the years 1995-2003 and 2009-2011. She was previously also a Member of the Finnish Parliament (1991-1995) and a presidential candidate for the Finnish Green Party in 2000 and 2006.


Dr. Christopher Mubeteneh Tankou works at the University of Dschang, Cameroon Institute for Crop Science as a lecturer in the Department of Crop Science in the Faculty of Agronomy and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Dschang. His research interests are in the domains of human mobility and conservation agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa in general and Cameroon in particular.

 


Lettemieke Mulder is the Director of Sustainability & Product Policy at EuroCommerce, the voice of the retail and wholesale sector in Brussels. At EuroCommerce, Lettemieke leads on sustainability issues including the Circular Economy, energy efficiency, waste management, product sustainability profiles and consumer engagement, and responsible supply chains. Before joining EuroCommerce, Lettemieke has led sustainability programs for global brands Unilever, Tetra Pak, First Solar and Sony.

She also worked as a consultant helping organizations including CSR Europe, Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform and Global Compact Belgium, to design and implement sustainability and partnering strategies and identify opportunities. Lettemieke, a Dutch living in Belgium, has a Master of Arts in International Relations from the University of Groningen and a Masters of Science in Environmental Management and Auditing from the University of Aberystwyth.


Alyssa Jade McDonald-Bärtl grew up in a family of social entrepreneurs, who cared for rubber forests and raised cattle in the wild hills of Papua New Guinea and Australia. After university education and a decade in corporate strategy, she returned to her family roots and created BLYSS chocolate, which harvests organic cacao with over 1000 families in Ecuador, Philippines and Papua New Guinea. The enterprise works on the principles of agroecology and carries with it the traditions from 100 years of working with evolving communities that she learned from her family. The results are deeply berrynuanced chocolate vintages from multiple terroirs, and an assurance that they ARE the change their customers wish to see. During her time creating BLYSS, she was asked by other cacao farmers and chocolatiers to teach them about cacao, so she created the CACAO.academy a detailed training for farmers and chefs, industry bodies and regulators across the industry which has been delivered from Europe to Asia to Australia.

The 10 points are Genetics, Origin, Growing, Transforming, Trading, Producing, Regulation, Trends, History and Profiling, from this, quality standards on farms have increased, direct trades made and also an influence in more organic farming practices. So far, over 2000 people have been trained in this way, and producing cacao for the world market and making chocolate according to classic and ethical principles again.


Klementina Dukoska brings six years of experience in the Global Supply Chain sector, where she has also worked on ‘circular economy’ strategy and solutions. Klementina is a Development consultant, empowering environmental NGOs and renewable energy Start-ups. She is part of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps, as part of the Climate Reality Project, spreading awareness of the climate crisis and working for solutions to the greatest challenge of our time. Klementina’s passion is to develop solutions that will minimize the climate crisis and improve the wellbeing of people.

 


Jerome Chaplier is the coordinator of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ). He has a Master's degree in political sciences from the University of Louvain, Belgium. Among his previous positions, he conducted field research in several African and Asian countries and was director in charge of research, campaigning, advocacy and education at Oxfam in Belgium, with a strong policy focus on economic justice. ECCJ promotes corporate accountability by bringing together national platforms of civil society organizations, including NGOs, trade unions, consumer groups and academic institutions. ECCJ represents over 250 civil society organizations present in 15 European countries. It aims to increase European cooperation among NGOs working on corporate accountability and promote a consistent viewpoint from civil society in order to influence policies within the EU and its member states.

 


Saskia Luutsche Ozinga is the facilitator of the Forest Movement Europe (FME) and the co-founder of the NGO FERN, of which she is currently the campaigns coordinator. FERN is a non-governmental organisation aimed at making the EU work for forests and people, who depend on them.
Saskia Ozinga holds Masters degrees in Biology from Wageningen University and Healthcare from the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. After working as a teacher for environmental sciences at the University in Utrecht, Saskia Ozinga joined Friends of the Earth. She worked as an education officer for Friends of the Earth Netherlands from 1987 until 1990, when she took on the position of forest campaigner. In 1991, Saskia took on the role of facilitator of the newly created Forest Movement Europe (FME), role that she still hosts at present.

 


Sandra Dusch Silva has worked for the Christliche Intiative Romero in different areas since 2003. Currently Sandra coordinates the international Supply Cha!nge project. She has authored a number of reports and campaign materials about labor right and certification issues in global fashion and food supply chain. Sandra works closely with union networks to improve working conditions and  bring about real change for workers on the ground. She graduated from the University of Berlin in Political Science.

 


Martin Wildenberg works at the Austrian environmental NGO GLOBAL 2000 (Friends of the Earth Austria) on the topic of sustainable agricultural production. He is also a PhD research fellow at the Institute of Social - Ecology in Vienna. His focus is on modeling local social - ecological systems under transition. He was involved in ALTER-Net where he mainly worked on an agent-based land-use change model of three European LTSER sites and the evaluation of fuzzy cognitive mapping for its usability in integrated conservation research and management.

Beside the work for ALTER-Net he has also worked in a project concerned with the development and rebuilding of the Nicobar Islands after the 2004 Tsunami and a participative agent-based modeling project, focusing on a rural Austrian municipality. He is especially interested in using participative modeling and mapping approaches in applied settings and in understanding the complex dynamics of change driving local social-ecological systems.



Milan Pajić graduated from the European Documentation and Research Centre at the University of Malta with Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts diplomas in European Studies. After the studies, he worked for three years as an EU Funding Consultant and Project Manager in Malta. In 2011, he moved to Belgium to follow a Master of Arts course at the College of Europe in Bruges. Prior to joining the Foreign Trade Association in 2015, he worked as an Economic Policy Advisor at the South Korean Mission to the European Union in Brussels.

 


Florent Marcellesi is MEP from Spain (EQUO) integrated in the Greens/EFA group. He has been representing EQUO in the European Parliament since May 2014. He’s a member of the agricultural committee, development committee and gender equality committee. Besides his diploma of civil engineer and urban planner that he obtained in France, he is also a specialist in international cooperation. Florent is member of the think Tank EcoPolítica and author among other titles of “Which Europe do we want?” (Icaria, 2014) and “Goodbye to growth. Living well in a world of solidarity and sustainability” (El Viejo Topo, 2013).

 



 Patrizia Heidegger is Director of Global Policies and Sustainability at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). She leads on the EEB's work on sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and follows intergovernmental processes for Europe’s largest federation of environmental citizens’ organisations. She serves as a member of the Steering Group of SDG Watch Europe, a cross-sectorial civil society coalition promoting the ambitious implementation of the SDGs by and in the EU. Patrizia Heidegger is a human rights expert with a focus on environmental justice, corporate accountability and sustainable development with field experience in South Asia.