Advisory Committee

(Project Director, Naripokkho)

Samia Afrin, presently working as Project Director for Sexual health and Reproductive Rights (SRHR) project of Naripokkho and working since 1997. She also member of Naripokkho. She is working with local NGOs and conducting trainings, workshops, seminars and coordinating among National, Regional and International organizations. She also involved in policy advocacy on women’s sexual reproductive health and rights. Currently she is conducting the project named “Claiming the right to safe abortion: Strategic Partnership in Asia”. She has also responsible in a project named “Right Here Right Now (RHRN)” as Project Coordinator (honorary) funded by Rutgers (Netherlands) and ARROW (Malaysia). Her major responsibilities are policy advocacy with relevant Ministries and other stakeholders both in national, regional and international level, supervising, monitoring and coordination.

From last 27 years she has been involved in Women’s rights-based continuum of Quality Care, Human Rights, Gender, Women and Children Rights and SRHR issues. She also the Founder member and executive committee member of the organization of “Breaking the Silence” from 1993 to till now and actively involved with People’s Health movement (PHM) Bangladesh as a Co-Chairman. She has also experience in various researches on reproductive health right issues.

(Program Manager, Youth Health and Advocacy Program, RHAC)

Somolireasmey is currently working as a program manager of Youth Health and Advocacy Program, Reproductive Health Association of Cambodia. Her major responsibilities are related to coordination and provision of platform for the effective implementation of the YHAP and advocacy for SRHR and build up youth focal points capacity of technical knowledge and skills on Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in order to ensure that better support government counterparts at national and provincial level.

Despite of serving the communities through her works at RHAC, Reasmey is also a professor at the Royal University of Phnom Penh in majoring Philosophy. Base on her teaching experiences and doing researches on philosophical issues, she involves extensively in promoting gender equality through her consultative works with the state agencies and NGOs after obtaining her Ph.D in Gender and Diversity in Spain on “The self-invisibility of women in Modern Age: Perspective of Cambodian Society”.

Reasmey also has worked as a consultant on Gender and Climate Change to build up capacity in both government officials and beneficiaries in the targeted communities to understand about mainstreaming gender equality into daily lives and investment projects and ensure gender equality perspective into sectoral is included into action plans, strategic plans of institutional level.

(Chair, Beyond Beijing Committee (BBC), Nepal)

Ms Shanta Laxmi Shrestha is an educationist and has acquired MPhil Degree in Development Studies from School of Education, Kathmandu University in 2013. Over the past 30 years, she has worked at all levels both in the government and the non-government. She has worked as the first Women Development Officer of the government of Nepal in Kabhre District, then the Program Officer of the Women Development Section of the Ministry of Panchyat and Local Development at the national level.

She had served the Norwegian Safe the Children as the chief of the Training Section. Then she shifted to the Lutheran World Federation, where she had served Deputy Country Representative for 6 years and then moved to Eritrea -program as an expatriate staff to lead development program. From Eritrea program moved to Tanzania and worked as a Staff of DanChurchuAid to work in the EU funded “Local Community Competence Building Programme in Tanzania and Zambia”. Working abroad for seven years in the Horn of Africa – Eritrea, Tanzania and Zambia, went back to Nepal and took the lead in the ADB funded Technical Assistance for ” Capacity Building for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (CBGEEOW) program of the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare.

Since, 2014, Shrestha is shouldering the responsibility of Chair- ship of the Beyond Beijing Committee -Nepal, the Women’s Human Rights organization established in 1995. She is the first female National Coordinator of Human Rights National Magna Meet (HRNMM 2015) and established an award ‘Shanta Laxmi Shrestha Women’s Human Rights’ to be awarded to a woman every year during Human Rights National Magna Meet (HRNMM) on 10th December “International Human Rights Day” to a women human rights activist. She is a member of the CSOs Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) Asia Coordination Committee and also a member of the Feminist Group. She is an executive member of the Asia Pacific Women Watch (APWW). She is the convener of women and girl’s constituency of Nepal SDGs Forum and Women Major Group for Sustainable Development in Nepal. She has built the capacities of thousands of women and men by facilitating in training.

Executive Director of ARROW

Before joining ARROW, she explored different career choices in her life, which included teaching at a university, running a magazine across three countries and working for the United Nations. These different opportunities helped her discover her passion for writing and learning and form her ideals of working in partnerships and respecting diversity. She has co-written and edited books on sustainable development and urbanization as part of her work with the Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI), a regional project of UNDP. She was also a committee member of the Women’s Candidacy Initiative (WCI), which ran candidates on a women’s rights issues platform.

Siva co-authored ARROW’s ICPD+15 and ICPD+20 Asia-Pacific monitoring reports and has written numerous articles and presented papers on women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. She has been able to expand the work of ARROW to examine more closely the inter-linkages of sexual and reproductive health and rights with critical development issues such as poverty, food security, climate change and migration. Under Siva’s leadership, the organization’s working partnerships have expanded to 17 countries in the region as well as regional and global networks and organizations. She occasionally writes for local newspapers on issues that she thinks are of crucial importance in her country and views this as her contribution to the society in which she lives

(Executive Secretary of the Latin American Consortium Against Unsafe Abortion (CLACAI), Director Center for the Promotion and Defense of Sexual and Reproductive Rights (PROMSEX) and Member, Global Campaign for Safe Abortion)

Susana Chávez, Master in Public Health graduated from the Cayetano Heredia University. Obstetrician, graduated from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and specialist in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Public Policy, certified by The Institute for Health Policy and Social Science of the University of California, San Francisco.

Her expertise is focused on the development of public policies on sexual and reproductive health based on human rights and with a gender perspective. With extensive experience in conducting programs and projects related to sexual and reproductive health, gender and gender-based violence. She has led and participated in national projects within the framework of Bilateral Cooperation, at the level of government and international organizations, being in charge of preparing some National Plans or being included in Special Expert Commissions for policy formulation.

She has conducted various studies and research in the field of sexual and reproductive health and developed various publications and articles. She is currently Executive Secretary of the Latin American Consortium Against Unsafe Abortion – Clacai. She is a founding member of Promsex, President of the Steering Committee and currently Director General of that institution