Abid Raja is a Member of Parliament of the Parliament of Norway (Stortinget) and the current Chair of the IPPFoRB Steering Group. Previously, Raja has been the Minister of Culture and Equality (2020-2021) in the Norwegian government. First elected in 2013 in the Norwegian Parliament, currently, Abid is a member of the Norwegian Parliament delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and a member of the Education and Research Committee in the parliament. With a background in law, educated from University of Oslo and Oxford, he worked many years as civil rights lawyer, and was also board leader of Norwegian Immigration Appeals board. Abid establish the political think tank Minotenk.

He has long been a defender of freedom of religion or belief, both in Norway and internationally. In addition to being one of the founding members of IPPFoRB, he was a member of the IPPFoRB Steering Group until 2020. In Norway, Abid has contributed to discussions on integration, equality and immigration and in relation to his work with the youth, he received the Fritt Ord prize in 2010. He was also awarded the International Religious Liberty Association Award in 2017. Abid has authored three books (Spokesman, 2008; Dialogue, 2010 and My Fault, 2021) and been active in debates on freedom of religion or belief, integration, and justice.

David Anderson is a Former (Retired) Member of Parliament from the Saskatchewan region of Cypress Hills–Grasslands. David was first elected in 2000 and subsequently re-elected five times. He has served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and for the Canadian Wheat Board, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Consular. He also served as Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Human Rights and Religious Freedom.

He has been committed to raising awareness of the need to protect religious freedom around the world, hosting Parliamentary Forums on Religious Freedom, and also worked to pass Motion 382, which unanimously declared the Parliament of Canada’s support for religious freedom around the world. David is a founding member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief.

YB Kasthuriraani Patto is a Member of Parliament of the Parliament of Malaysia representing the Batu Kawan constituency in Penang and is an active member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR). She is a member of the Parliamentary Special Select Committee on Human Rights and Gender Equality and is the Secretary of the Malaysian Chapter of Parliamentarians for Global Action. She is known for fighting for the abolition of the death penalty, ending child marriages, stopping sexual violence against children and women, and the right to freedom of religion and belief.

A microbiology graduate from the University of Malaya, YB Kasthuri has constantly pushed for a resolution on stateless children and foreign spouses as well as accessible healthcare to be available to Malaysians at an affordable cost, especially for the natives and aborigines. She is a fierce proponent of human rights and civil liberties.

Dr. Aykan Erdemir is a former member of the Turkish Parliament (2011-2015) who is currently the Senior Director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute. During his time as a legislator, he served in the European Union-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and co-drafted Turkey’s first hate crimes bill. Dr. Erdemir serves on the Anti-Defamation League’s Task Force on Middle East Minorities and was awarded the Stefanus Prize for Religious Freedom in 2016 and the First Freedom Award of the Hellenic Leadership Council of America in 2019 in recognition of his advocacy for minority rights and religious freedoms.

He has a BA in International Relations from Bilkent University, an MA in Middle Eastern Studies and a PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. He is a co-author of Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces (Routledge).

His current work at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies can be viewed here. His legislator website at the Turkish Parliament can be viewed here.

Nqabayomzi Kwankwa is a Member of Parliament of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa since August 2013, the Chief Whip of the United Democratic Movement (UDM) since May 2014 and the Deputy President of the UDM since December 2016. He joined the UDM in 2007 and was elected the party’s Deputy Secretary-General at its National Congress in December 2010, and serves as the UDM’s media spokesperson.

Kwankwa is the Chair of the Steering Committee of the African Parliamentarian Association for Human Rights (AfriPAHR), which is an independent, non-partisan network of parliamentarians from the African continent that works to advance democracy, freedom of religion or belief and human rights to build a fairer and inclusive Africa, through diplomacy and fostering strategic alliances between nations.

Farahnaz Ispahani is a Former Member of Parliament and Media Advisor to the President of Pakistan from 2008-2012. While in parliament she was a member of the Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Committees and a member of the first Women’s Parliamentary Caucus. She is a human rights, gender rights and religious freedom advocate. She is the co-chair of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Task Force on Middle East Minorities and a Senior Fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute. She is concurrently a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Ispahani has authored Purifying the Land of the Pure: A History of Pakistan’s Religious Minorities (Oxford University Press, 2017) and the forthcoming book Dominating Through Hate: Politics of Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia (Harper-Collins, 2022). In 2012 she was listed among Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, as well as Newsweek Pakistan’s Top 100 Women Who Matter. She has published over 50 newspaper opinion editorials as well as scholarly research papers.