Members

Jan-Michael Simon, chair (Germany)

Jan-Michael Simon is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, specializing in comparative criminal law, criminal policy, and international law. A lawyer by training, he began his international professional career in 1997 in the UN-sponsored Truth Commission, investigating human rights violations committed in the internal armed conflict in Guatemala. He has a long trajectory in combining research with practice on human rights, transitional justice, the rule of law, and anti-corruption, mainly in the Americas.

Mr. Simon has held senior international posts in missions against impunity sponsored by the UN (CICIG in Guatemala, as Senior Legal Officer) and the Organization of American States (MACCIH in Honduras, as Chief Adviser on Corruption and Impunity). Throughout the Americas, he has led technical cooperation projects, trained and provided technical assistance to prosecution offices, the judiciary, and governments, and provided legal expert opinions to international and national judicial bodies, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He regularly contributes to civil society initiatives on justice/human rights issues.

Ariela Peralta Distefano, member (Uruguay)

Ariela Peralta Distefano, of Uruguay, has more than three decades of experience in international humanitarian law and human rights law. She currently works on the European Commission program on support for human rights and democracy in Honduras, and recently served as a legal adviser to the President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

From 2020-2022, Peralta served as the Executive Secretary of the Institute for Public Policy on Human Rights of the Southern Common Market technical assistance agency. She was a member of the first Board of Directors of the National Human Rights Institution and Ombudsman of Uruguay from 2012-2017, serving as its president from 2016-2017.

Peralta has represented vulnerable groups such as persons deprived of liberty, former political prisoners and juvenile offenders. She has also represented victims of violence in times of peace and armed conflict from different countries, including women who have suffered forced sterilization, rape and other forms of sexual violence, kidnapped children and children born in captivity during regimes of oppression and civil wars, displaced populations and children arbitrarily detained.

Reed Bródy, member (Hungary)

Reed Bródy currently serves as a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists and works as an attorney in private practice. From 1998 to 2016, he was Counsel and Spokesperson for Human Rights Watch (HRW). He has also served as Deputy Chief of the UN Secretary-General’s Investigative Team in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Director of the Human Rights Division of the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador, advisor to the Government of Haiti for the prosecution of serious crimes, and Executive Director of the International Human Rights Law Group. He led HRW’s intervention in the historic Pinochet case in London and was a main architect of the landmark trial in Senegal of the former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré.

Mr. Bródy‘s 1984 investigation uncovered atrocities by the U.S.-backed "contras" against Nicaraguan civilians, which was used as evidence in the ICJ case on Military and Paramilitary Activities.

He has taught courses on accountability for international crimes at Columbia Law School and the American University Washington College of Law. He is currently on the Advisory Board of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the Board of Democracy for the Arab World Now and is the President of the Rose Lokissim Association that works in Africa.