Aruna Gamini Aluthge is a distinguished attorney and senior partner at a leading Beijing law firm, renowned for his commitment to public interest law, particularly in environmental protection, smoking control, and minority rights advocacy. A graduate of the Central University of Finance and Economics of China, Hao’s international leadership is notable, having participated in Japan’s Youth Leadership Program and undertaken initiatives in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region with support from the Rollen Valenburg Foundation, where he provided legal aid to underserved communities. In 2021, he was selected by the U.S. State Department to take part in the Professional Fellows Program (PFP). During his fellowship, where he collaborated with Tubman, a renowned NGO in Minnesota, deepening his expertise in minority rights and economic development, and broadening his understanding of international human rights and social justice issues. Hao’s exceptional contributions were recognized in October 2023 when he became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Alumni Impact Award from the U.S. State Department. As a Humphrey Fellow, he will focus his research on the protection of minority rights and their right to economic development.
2010 - 2011 Humphrey Fellows
Eniola Adejare Fabamwo studied law at the University of Buckingham in the UK and currently is chief magistrate at the Lagos state judiciary in Lagos, Nigeria. Her area of specialization is the preservation of trial rights and prison reform for all categories of offenders. During her Humphrey year, Fabamwo wants to design a program in comparative criminal justice policy with regard to noncustodial sentencing options and pretrial rights of accused persons and their rights to bail; she will focus to some extent on women and children who are in either institutional care or serving custodial sentences. She hopes to achieve her goal by analyzing policies and procedures relating to imprisonment of different categories of offenders.
Guogang Li is a distinguished attorney and senior partner at a leading Beijing law firm, renowned for his commitment to public interest law, particularly in environmental protection, smoking control, and minority rights advocacy. A graduate of the Central University of Finance and Economics of China, Hao’s international leadership is notable, having participated in Japan’s Youth Leadership Program and undertaken initiatives in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region with support from the Rollen Valenburg Foundation, where he provided legal aid to underserved communities. In 2021, he was selected by the U.S. State Department to take part in the Professional Fellows Program (PFP). During his fellowship, where he collaborated with Tubman, a renowned NGO in Minnesota, deepening his expertise in minority rights and economic development, and broadening his understanding of international human rights and social justice issues. Hao’s exceptional contributions were recognized in October 2023 when he became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Alumni Impact Award from the U.S. State Department. As a Humphrey Fellow, he will focus his research on the protection of minority rights and their right to economic development.
Thulani Rudolf Maseko studied law atthe University of Swaziland and human rights and democracy at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He currently is a managing director at T. R. Maseko Swaziland Attorneys in Swaziland, where he focuses on human rights and constitutional development. During his Humphrey year, Maseko hopes to study the U.S. Bill of Rights and the mechanisms used by the U.S. Supreme Court to interpret and uphold fundamental human rights and freedoms. He will then use this knowledge to design a program for Swaziland to help interpret its constitution to give meaning and value to its own bill of rights.
Charles Ameyaw has a background and multiple degrees in counseling and psychology. Ameyaw currently is a deputy superintendent of prisons for the Ghana Prisons Service in Accra, Ghana. He specializes in the area of human rights of prison inmates and inmate rehabilitation, and he strives to continue learning about how to better uphold the basic human rights of inmates. While in Washington, D.C., he would like to study law and human rights under the criminal justice system. Ameyaw wants to be able to design programs supporting prison inmates who have been denied access to justice and have overstayed their sentences. He also wants to involve all critical stakeholders to support the reformation and rehabilitation of prisoners in Ghana.
José Paulo Baltazar Jr. holds multiple
degrees in law and currently is a federal judge for the Brazilian federal judiciary in Brasilia. Baltazar focuses largely on organized crime, money laundering, and anticorruption and will use his Humphrey year to study how courts and other prosecuting bodies in the United States handle this issue. He will also combine academic study and professional experience to learn about the compatibility of criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law with human rights protection and effective criminal justice and apply principles from these areas to the Brazilian courts.
Hristo Lyubomirov Ivanov studied law at the Sofia University and is finalizing his PhD in philosophy of law. He helped establish the Bulgarian Institute for Legal Initiatives and currently is its program manager. Ivanov focuses largely on the area of establishing reliable quantitative reporting and evaluation programs for the Bulgarian judicial sector as a means of fostering effectiveness, accountability, and integrity. During his Humphrey Fellowship, he hopes to combine academic and professional development to design more efficient quantitative methods for evaluating legal policy and practice in budgeting, court management, and political debate. Upon his return to Bulgaria, he hopes to implement these mechanisms to collect actual data on legal institutions and their social impact in order to initiate dialogues on legal policy in Bulgaria.
Koku Dzifa Kokoroko holds multiple degrees in business law and the judiciary and currently is a judge for the Togolese State Justice Department in Lomé, Togo. Kokoroko’s primary interests are democratization and establishing independence and respect for the judicial system in Togo. As a Humphrey Fellow, he will combine academic and professional experience to help Togo establish an independent and well-respected judiciary that guarantees to uphold human rights. Kokoroko hopes to use the U.S. government’s model of an independent judiciary, regulation, and separation of powers to help Togo develop a sustainable democracy and lasting development.
Yongjie Li holds degrees in both English and law and currently is director of the Division of WTO Legal Affairs for the Department of Treaty and Law, Ministry of Commerce, in China, where she focuses on WTO dispute settlement cases. Her interest is transparency in international trade policy-making process. Li will combine coursework in public international law and international economic law with leadership skills training in management and strategic planning. As a Humphrey Fellow, she hopes to better understand how the U.S. government makes trade policy decisions with respect to different stakeholder’s interests. She would also like to better understand the U.S. views on strategic reform of the WTO and U.S.-China trade relations in response to globalization and sustainable development.
Cynthia Marcial has an international relations background and achieved her specialization in political violence and complex internal conflicts at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. She is a doctoral candidate in political science at the Pontifical Catholic University in Argentina and currently is senior advisor in the public sector. She is also a lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires and in other public institutions dedicated to the study of defense and security. As a Humphrey Fellow, Marcial hopes to receive training in anticipating transnational organized crime activities and learn how to advance a design of effective public policies against them, particularly as related to human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and money laundering.
Viengsavanh Phanthaly holds multipledegrees in law from Hanoi Law University in Vietnam and Nagoya University in Japan. He currently is a legal advisor and lawyer at the Mekong Law Group in Laos Vientiane, Laos. His primary focus is on corporate anti-corruption and anti-bribery and responsible investment in securities markets. Because Laos will establish a securities market in 2010, Phanthaly wants to devote his Humphrey year to learning about the structure and function of the U.S. stock market through academic study and professional training with lawyers who work in securities markets. This knowledge will allow him to better serve the citizens of Laos affected by the new securities market.
José Sebastián Roa studied law at the Universidad de Chile and received an MBA from the Universidad Diego Portales, in Santiago, Chile. He was the national director of the National Consumer Service in Santiago and focuses on the development and implementation of legal institutions and public policy that protect citizens’ rights. Roa will use his Humphrey year to develop a protocol for transparency, accountability, and advocacy of rights of public relevance as part of the regulatory processes of defining and implementing public policiesin Chile. He will do this by combining his knowledge of theories, practical training, and review of best practices of existing principles and procedures of policy regulation in the United States and apply them to a Chilean context.