Displaced civilians near Mosul, May 2017. (Maranie R. Staab)
As a UK-registered not for profit company limited by guarantee, Airwars is run day-to-day by its Director. Their activities are overseen by a volunteer Executive Board, who are accountable to their staff and volunteers.
The leadership team can also call on the expertise of the Advisory Board – a pool of high-skill, pro bono advisers.
Jessica Dorsey is based in the Netherlands where she is the voluntary Chair of Airwars Stichting and is also seconded to the UK Board. She is an Assistant Professor of International and European Law at Utrecht University, an Associate Fellow at the International Center for Counter-Terrorism—The Hague and Managing Editor of the international law blog Opinio Juris. Jessica is an expert in many academic and policy networks focused on the use of armed drones, with a specific emphasis on the use of force, and the interplay of humanitarian law and human rights with efforts to counter terrorism. In 2017 for example, the European Parliament contracted Jessica to publish a study outlining policy guidance for the use of armed drones for Member States.
Aditi Gupta is the Director of Policy for Protection Approaches, a UK based organisation dedicated to tackling identity-based violence. She is also the co-founder of the Minorities in Peace and Security Network, and was formerly the Director of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Conflict. Aditi is a recognised leader in the fight against intersectional inequalities endemic in the professional fields of peace, security and prevention.
Ayah Al Zayat has a decade of experience in the humanitarian field, both as a researcher specialising in migration, and in senior positions leading research teams in conflict-affected countries to improve aid delivery. Ayah has worked in advocacy, particularly on Libya and refugee protection, influencing key decision-makers through research and building accountability into the work. After 6 years of experience leading teams in North and West Africa at IMPACT Initiative and providing strategic and technical advice to country teams, Ayah is currently an Accountability Specialist at IMPACT Initiatives in Geneva, working on mainstreaming inclusive and participatory research design processes. Ayah assists the board with human resources strategy.
Craig Lind is a retired academic lawyer who remains an honorary researcher at the University of Sussex in Brighton. Although his research is in the realms of family law, he has degrees in Accounting and Economics and Law, and taught Public Law and Politics for most of his teaching career.
Jesse is a Senior Director at Videre Est Credere, a non-profit organisation supporting persecuted communities to use customised technology to document human rights violations. Prior to this he held positions in both London and Washington D.C. with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, focusing on promoting freedom of expression and access to information in conflict-affected and closed societies. He began his career in human rights with Global Witness, and worked in Sri Lanka for the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust during the final stages of the country’s civil war to protect local human rights defenders and support civil society development. Jesse holds a MA in International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.
Katy Dent has over 25 years’ experience of providing Human Resources leadership in a range of not-for-profit organisations, including homelessness charities Centrepoint and St Mungo’s Community Housing Association; international aid NGO MERLIN and the South Bank Centre. For ten years she was Human Resources Director of Arts Council England, and currently works as an HR Transformation Consultant for a variety of charities. She has been a Trustee for a variety of counselling, health and arts charities: at present she is a Trustee of Anti-Slavery International. Currently she sits as an Employment Tribunal Panel Member and is a Fellow and member of the HR Leaders’ Network of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Raed Jarrar is an Iraqi-American conflict casualty expert, who is currently Director of Advocacy at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). He has previously worked as the Middle East and North Africa Advocacy Director at Amnesty International USA. Since moving to the US in 2005, he has worked on political and cultural issues pertaining to US engagement in the Arab and Muslim worlds. During 2003 whilst working for CIVIC in Baghdad, he conducted a survey of civilian casualties from the invasion of Iraq.
Christopher Kolenda is a protection of civilians specialist, with a military background. Founder of the Strategic Leadership Academy, he recently served as the Senior Advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan to US Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy, and three 4-star Generals in Afghanistan. He was decorated with the Department of Defense’s highest civilian award for his work on strategy. A veteran of four combat tours in Afghanistan, Chris holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College, London: his dissertation is a critical analysis of American strategic leadership in post-9/11wars.
Frederik Rosén is a collateral damage expert, and was most recently a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. He is the author of Collateral Damage. A Candid History of a Peculiar Form of Death (Hurst , 2016), which offers a comprehensive perspective on the question of State responsibility for collateral damage victims. He has written widely on global security, and is currently directing a larger policy development project for NATO.
Basile Simon is a multi-disciplinary researcher bridging between engineering, law, and journalism in promoting accountability for causing harm to civilians. He leads the law program at the Starling Lab for Data Integrity out of Stanford and USC, and is a resident with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in the cross-NGO investigative group Forensis.
He co-founded Airwars alongside Chris Woods in the first few weeks after the commencement of the Coalition’s bombing campaign in 2014, and now provides strategic and technical advice to the organisation.
Rim Turkmani is a Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Civil Society where she contributes research to the Conflict Research Programme on the Syrian war economy, and the role of Syrian civil society in brokering peace and creating stability from the bottom up. She is active in Syrian civil society circles, where she works to promote peace and democratic transition in Syria. She previously directed the project Crowd-sourcing Conflict and Peace ‘Events’ in the Syrian conflict which produced a detailed database of instances of violence and peace-making. Dr Turkmani is an Astrophysicist by training and was formerly at Imperial College and a fellow of the Royal Society. Her wider research interests include the history of Islamic science and culture and the impact of Arabic/Islamic science on the scientific revolution of the 17th century.
Chris Cobb-Smith is a munitions and security expert who served in the British Army from 1975 until 1995. In 1996 he joined UNSCOM where he led the investigation team in the search for claimed WMDs in Iraq. In 1998 Chris deployed with the OSCE to Kosovo, where he conducted investigations into potential war crimes. Chris now advises senior media management on safety and security policy and training, and has set up Chiron Resources to provide support to news crews on assignments. He has conducted a number of high profile investigations for the media into combat related events, particularly those culminating in the deaths of journalists, and for NGOs into alleged war crimes and human rights violations.