Guest Speakers
Patrick Sooma
is Humanitarian Protection advisor for World Vision International, Based in Nairobi Kenya. He is holder of a Bachelor’s degree in Law and MA in Peace and Armed conflict. Mr Sooma has a special interest in Forced Migration with a Specialty in Emergency Response, Humanitarian Protection including, GBV, Child Protection and Humanitarian Accountability. He has a extensive experience in Humanitarian emergency response, having worked in North Uganda, Darfur, South Sudan, Haiti, Pakistan and Most recently the Haiyan Response in the Philippines.
Isabella Castrogiovanni
is a Protection expert with over 14 years of professional experience with the United Nations, primarily in complex emergencies and unstable environments. She has worked with UNICEF in Rwanda, Togo, Thailand, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Indonesia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Somalia and Lebanon. Ms. Castrogiovanni, an Italian national, holds an advanced degree in Political Sciences/International Relations from the University of Florence, Italy, and an MA in International and Comparative Legal Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her current primary areas of professional and academic interest are the implications of counter-terrorism policies on the delivery of humanitarian assistance and protection, the engagement with non-state armed groups and transitional justice issues.
Anne Sophie Laenkholm
is the Global Thematic Coordinator on Protection for the European Commission’s Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (DG ECHO), based in Amman, Jordan. She joined ECHO in 2011 as Regional Protection Expert covering East, Central and Southern Africa. Prior to this she had fifteen years of experience with programming and implementing humanitarian protection and assistance programmes in contexts such as Uganda, Kosovo, North Caucasus, Central Africa, West Africa and the Horn of Africa mainly working with the Danish Refugee Council, and prior to that with the UN.
Emilie Irwin
works with UNHCR's Divisions for International Protection and for Programme Management to develop support for field operations on programmatic aspects of protection. She has been working on different aspects of strengthening protection focus within UNHCR's RBM systems since 2008, and brings field experiences in Lebanon, Serbia and Chad.