​Steve Pollard spent the first 10 years of his career, from 1973 to 1982, working as an agricultural economist throughout the developing world. He was Chief Planning Officer with the Government of Kiribati from 1983 to 1986. He worked with the Asian Development Bank from 1996 to 2011 employed in various positions mostly on development of the Pacific Islands. Since 2012 he has been working as a consultant.

Charles Petrie is a retired diplomate and now works as an independent consultant. He has also worked with the UN that involved working in a number of conflict situations including Afghanistan, Myanmar and countries in Africa. He co-authored OECD report on FCAS. His presentation will provide insights from his long experience of working with FCAS with a focus on interim arrangements in conflict settings for local communities.

Kailash Rai is a researcher at Martin Chautari, where she has worked for over a decade. Her work focuses on gender, feminism, sexuality and social justice along with intersectional lens. She is the author of Indigenous Women’s Institution, Movement and Writing (2017) and the editor of In Search of Identity: Socio-cultural and Political Context of Indigenous Women (2016). She holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from Tribhuvan University. She is a co-founder of the Indigenous Media Foundation which has operated Indigenous Television in Nepal since 2016.

Chansouk Insouvanh (Souky) is a member of Khmu ethnic group from Lao PDR and a Senior Social Safeguards Consultant, who works part-time as a Social Development Specialist/Gender Advisor for the World Bank Vientiane Office. She holds a Master of Sciences in Environmental Policy and Planning, and a Master of Arts in Development Studies from Ohio University, USA; and a Bachelor of Arts and Certificate in Women’s Studies from Flinders University, Australia.

Vijaylakshmi Brara is a sociologist and Associate Professor at the Centre for Manipur Studies, Manipur University, Manipur. Her major areas of academic interest are gender, culture and grassroots institutions. Her research has focused on northeast India for three decades. She is the author of the widely acclaimed book, Politics, Society and Cosmology in India’s North East. (Oxford University Press). She has published around 30 articles.

Hoang Thi Thu Huyen is Chairperson of Trade Union of Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs of Viet Nam (MOLISA). From 2014 to 2019, as the Deputy Director of the Department on Gender Equality of MOLISA, she was responsible for developing and implementing the National Strategy and Program on Gender Equality. In that role, she attended annual sessions of UN Commission on the Status of Women and other international conferences on women’s rights.

Naw Ei Ei Min is an Indigenous Woman from Myanmar. She is the founder and director of Promotion of Indigenous and Nature Together (POINT). She has been working for the civil society movement especially rights-based approach to development in the country since 2007.

Hodgson leads the work on the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform at the UNFCCC secretariat, based in Bonn, Germany. She has worked at the UN, on climate change, for 13 years. Prior to that, Tiffany worked in her home country of South Africa on regional socio-economic policy issues.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz was appointed as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples by the Human Rights Council in 2014 and served until April 2020. She is an indigenous leader from the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. As an indigenous activist, she has worked for over three decades on building movement among indigenous peoples and as an advocate for women's rights.