Governance

A member of the OMCT Executive Council since 2014. She is the Deputy Chairman of the Committee Against Torture (CAT), a network member based in Nizhny Novgorod investigating torture cases in the Russian Federation, including Chechnya. She has served on numerous missions with the OMCT and has actively supported fundraising and advocacy of the OMCT in Russia and the region. She is a lawyer specialized in human rights and a recipient of the 2017 Sakharov Freedom Award. Her organization has also received numerous other prizes including the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defender. She has also represented the OMCT in the Council of Europe INGO committee.

A business consultant with extensive expertise in corporate governance, organizational design and workflow optimization, extraordinary financial operations, and cost management. He serves on several Boards of Directors and, following his executive career in the financial sector, has been actively involved in entrepreneurial ventures and academic teaching. He is a Board member of the Swiss Finance Institute. After completing his academic studies, Luca Soncini began his professional journey as a researcher before transitioning to economic journalism. He then entered in the financial sector where he built his career at leading banks serving as a D-level executive. Luca speaks all three Swiss languages in addition to English.

Joined the Executive Council in 2013, Peter Zangl is an economist by training, with an extensive career in various fields such as the economy, social affairs, international relations and humanitarian aid. He is a former Director General of DG ECHO (Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection) in the EU Commission. Since joining the council, he led several country visits of the OMCT on torture and the protection of human rights defenders and has acted towards EU institutions on behalf of our network. He is also the president of our Brussels office and organization called OMCT Europe. As per our internal policy the President of the OMCT Europe office should join meetings of the Bureau of the Executive Council.

The founder and Executive Director of Prisoners’ Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), a member of the SOS-Torture Network. Dr. Agomoh brings a multidisciplinary approach to criminal justice reform, emphasizing dignity, accountability, and systemic change. Her international impact is marked by her active participation in global advocacy and policy-shaping initiatives. In the past five years, Dr. Agomoh has increased her collaboration in various OMCT initiatives. Notably, she is chairing the group developing the Global Torture Index. In October 2022, Dr. Agomoh was elected as a member of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (UN SPT). Throughout her career, Dr. Agomoh has conducted over 1,000 prison monitoring visits across approximately 150 prisons in 32 countries, underscoring her extensive commitment to prison reform and the prevention of torture.

Member of the OMCT General Assembly since 2016, she is a board member of our network member CENTRO PRODH in Mexico, where she acted for 13 years as coordinator of its international department. She now is Director on Mexico and Migration to WOLA (a key partner in our Latin American HRD advocacy in Washington DC). Her work includes the documentation and litigation of torture and extra-judicial killings in Mexico and high-profile work on gender and torture and femicides. For more than a decade she has been one of our most trusted allies in our network, acted at numerous occasions as an expert in briefings and hearings with the Committee Against Torture. She also played a central role in the development of the Global Index on Torture.

A member of the İnsan Hakları Derneği/Human Rights Association (İHD), based in Turkey, since 2006 and has become a member of its Executive Committee in charge of international relations from 2006-2017 (July) based in Ankara. He was elected by the İHD executive committee as the General Secretary in July 2017 and served as in this office until August 2020. Currently, Osman is the president of the Human Rights Academy, an autonomous body of the IHD. In addition to his position as the president of the Human Rights Academy, he is still an executive committee member of IHD.

The founder and executive director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, a leading Egyptian human rights organization and member of the SOS Torture Network. It gained credibility through its courageous work on a range of issues such as enforced disappearances, torture, freedom of expression, minorities and refugee rights. Since becoming a member of the OMCT General Assembly four years ago he participated in multiple initiatives, notably as a member of the SOS Defenders advisory group. He has been himself harassed by the Egyptian authorities receiving in the past a travel ban (now lifted) and his wife was detained for many months. He is a double citizen of Switzerland and Egypt. As a researcher at Amnesty International, he worked on police and military violations, including in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising. He started his career at the OMCT and the International Commission of Jurists. He holds a master’s in European studies and a License in Political Sciences, from the Geneva University, Switzerland.

The Director of CACIT in Togo, one of our strongest member organisations in Francophone Africa. He has been a member of the OMCT General Assembly since 2021. As director of CACIT, he co-convened with OMCT the African working group of people on the move and torture resulting in our report ‘the torture roads’. CACIT also co-convened the litigators group in Africa and participated in the development of the Global Index on Torture. Ghislain has acted on numerous initiatives for OMCT including towards child detention and torture in Benin and together with OMCT CACIT litigated successfully torture cases towards the ECOWAS courts.

A Sri Lankan human rights lawyer with over two decades of experience working on justice reform, penal policy, and the rights of marginalized groups. She currently serves as a global consultant and advisor on human rights, drug policy and penal reform. She served as a Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka from 2015 to 2020, where she led a national prison study and oversaw monitoring of detention sites. She is a board member of the UN Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims. She is part of a steering committee of the Global Campaign to Decriminalise Poverty and Status, the Just Futures Collective and the CSO Coalition on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights. She is Chairperson of the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust and member of the Membership Council of Penal Reform International.