Who we are

Farida manages and coordinates Protection Approaches’ Queering Atrocity Prevention programme, looking at LGBTQI+ groups’ unique risks and vulnerabilities to mass atrocities and the ways in which programmatic interventions and risk frameworks can respond to them efficiently and swiftly, in pursuit of safer and more inclusive societies. In her work, she engages a wide variety of stakeholders to ensure cross-sector commitments to centring LGBTQI+ groups in atrocity prevention efforts.

Farida has previously worked with Doria Feminist Fund on supporting women’s rights and LGBTQI+ rights groups in the MENA region and ensuring that they have access to more and better resources to support their human rights work and their communities. She has a background in journalism where she focused on LGBTQI+ rights and freedom of speech in the MENA region, as well as youth initiatives. Farida holds a BA in Anthropology from the American University in Cairo and an MA in Human Rights from University College London. She was born and raised in Egypt.

“Queer populations around the world face unique risks of mass atrocities based on their identities, yet programmatic interventions and conversations on atrocity prevention often overlook their experiences, their needs and the factors that make them more vulnerable to violence. I believe that all atrocity and conflict prevention frameworks must account for and respond to these risks if they are to contribute to more just, peaceful, inclusive and equitable societies that leave no one behind."

farida.mostafa@protectionapproaches.org

Kimi is responsible for day-to-day coordination of a project to deliver a new, UK-wide third party hate crime support and reporting service for East and Southeast Asian communities. In this role Kimi is responsible for project managing the development and launch of this new service. She is committed to making sure that all partners and stakeholders are listened to and have the support needed to be meaningfully involved in the design, delivery, and outcome of this service. Kimi will be one of the main points of contact to coordinate communications and liaise with partner organisations, local statutory bodies, and service users.  

Kimi co-founded East and Southeast Asian Scotland (ESA Scotland), which advocates for the diverse East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) communities subjected to racial violence, gender-based violence, unlawful discrimination and social exclusion in the UK. Her experience includes organising and running community focus groups amongst the ESEA diaspora communities on the ESEA experience in Scotland. Kimi specialises in bottom-up community outreach and cultural competency and has worked extensively with marginalised communities, especially Asylum seekers and Refugees that have been trafficked from ESEA nations throughout Europe and the UK.

‘I understand first-hand how incredibly disempowering it can be, as someone who experiences systemic and direct racism including violent hate crimes and hate incidents growing up in Scotland. Working with East and Southeast Asian communities taught me how incredibly diverse and varying our needs are and how important it is to approach service delivery from a nuanced perspective. Protection Approaches is providing a space and opportunity for us to come together and work to fight the long standing invisibility and neglect faced by East and Southeast Asians in the UK. I am honoured to be co-leading on this important project and hope to do it justice for our communities.’   

kimi.jolly@protectionapproaches.org

Dilia Zwart is advising the PA team and contributing to our education programme. She managed PA's education programme from 2019-2021 and authored our report 'Building stronger communities through critical and compassionate schooling.'

She has nearly ten years of experience managing education programmes and researching how educational systems can create more inclusive, democratic, and peaceful societies. She has worked on peacebuilding and atrocity prevention in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In September 2021 she began a PhD in International Education at New York University. Dilia holds a BA in Social Anthropology from Harvard University and an MA in International Studies and Diplomacy from SOAS, University of London.

“Schools are communities and can play a key role in inspiring young people to be positive changemakers. During one of our education programme's focus groups on the future of education in 2020, students said they wanted their schools ‘To teach the future [generations] how to respect themselves and others [and] to care for a world that is constantly changing.’ Centring youth voices and ensuring that they have the tools they need to care for themselves, others, and the planet is at the heart of building stronger communities resilient to identity-based violence.”

dilia.zwart@protectionapproaches.org

Jess works with Protection Approaches on queering atrocity prevention. In this project we are researching atrocity prevention with an LGBTQI+ lens. There are specific forms of persecution of LGBTQI+ people which are often overlooked when thinking about identity-based violence from the perspective of ethnic or religious minorities. We aim to bring together communities and organisations working on atrocity prevention with those working on LGBTQI+ rights. 

Jess is a queer academic at the University of Manchester where she researches atrocity prevention and United Nations decision-making processes. She has over a decade of experience working on atrocity prevention, starting with her PhD within the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, in Brisbane Australia. Jess has published widely in academic journals and her research has been featured in the Guardian and the Economist. At the University of Manchester, she leads modules on the United Nations at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her forthcoming monograph Inside the UN Security Council: Legitimation Practices and Darfur will be published by Oxford University Press 

“We know that LGBTQI+ people have been specifically targeted as part of mass atrocity crimes as far back as the Holocaust and yet modern approaches to atrocity prevention – as envisaged through the principle of the responsibility to protect – have largely neglected the persecution of queer people. The current backlash against LGBTQI+ rights in many parts of the world makes this all the more important, as does the current culture war against queer, and particularly trans, people in the UK.” 

Kate heads our research and policy work, establishing evidenced, equitable and creative pathways to structural change. This includes undertaking, commissioning, and coordinating research, providing technical advice to policy stakeholders, and creating opportunities for knowledge exchange. She leads our political engagement strategy, developing working groups and building constituencies of influence in the UK and abroad. She manages PA’s fundraising portfolio for our research and policy programmes, including Stronger Communities and Atrocity Prevention. Kate is also responsible for a lot of our HR including PA’s ongoing efforts to create human-centred processes of recruitment, employment, and working culture. 

Kate is an experienced analyst and strategist driving a prevention-first approach to foreign policy and the cycle of crises. She is a regular commentator on domestic and international issues relating to identity-based violence in the press and continues to publish academic writing. Her book, Architectures of Violence: The Command Structures of Modern Mass Atrocities, was published in 2020 by Hurst and Oxford University Press. 

Before founding PA, Kate worked in political strategy and research across a number of roles in the third sector, academia, the UK parliament, and as a private consultant. Between 2012-2018 she lectured on subjects relating to the histories of rights and violence at the University of East Anglia. She was a founding Editor of Refugee History, where she helped develop the concept and online platform. She received her PhD in 2015 from the University of East Anglia on devolved structures of modern mass atrocities and has an MPhil in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford. Kate was made inaugural Chair of Policy at the European Centre of the Responsibility to Protect in 2018 where she works with the executive team to identify strategies for academic impact and is an occasional guest lecturer. She serves on the Board of Trustees of Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia.

“At the heart of Protection Approaches’ work is the pursuit of a more just, equitable and inclusive world. This means that we are part of a vast global movement for change that connects us to our local communities here in the UK and also to allies on the other side of the world – all of us making different contributions that help to push against division, greed and violence. I truly believe that we can achieve more together than we can alone and that through empathy and collaboration we can transform ourselves as well as the forces of oppression we exist to dismantle. I can think of no greater privilege than the work I am lucky enough to do, creating connections across our movement, helping to open access to power, and learning all of the time from others how to do that better.”

kate.ferguson@protectionapproaches.org