Gabriella Arcadu, PhD is a political scientist with expertise in conflict affected, transitional/fragile states. She has 20 years of experience in institutional strengthening/capacity building and governance programmes. She has worked in S.E. and Central Asia, Africa, Middle East and the Balkans. Since the late 1990s she has been involved in the Health as a Bridge to Peace programme of the WHO, implementing actions in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Egypt and assisting in the development of an HBP training package. In 2005 she assisted in the drafting of the Health and DDR section of the Integrated Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration Standards later adopted by the UN. In 2010 she has drafted for the WHO a global policy for civil-military coordination in the health sector carrying out field research in Afghanistan. She has worked in different capacity for UN agencies, Universities and NGOs developing projects for various donors. Since 2009 she is founder and director of 4change a non-profit association that carries out training and research activities in conflict-prone/fragile countries.
Dipl.-Ped. / Univ. Couple and Family Therapist, Child and Adolescent Psychology.
Elise Bittenbinder is a therapist for families and Relationship counseling, children and youth therapist, trained in systemic family therapy, hypnotherapy, EMDR and Strategic Therapy in Germany and the USA. From 1981-1986 she was Secretary General of MIJARC, an international NGO in Belgium. Since 1988 she is a psychotherapist in XENION, a psychotherapeutic treatment center for traumatized refugees and victims of torture in Berlin. She is co-founder and chairman of the National Association of psychosocial centers for refugees and victims of torture (BAfF e.V.) and chairing the Steering Committee in the European Network of Rehabilitation Centers of Victims of Torture.
Louisa Chan Boegli MD, MPH is a core executive member of the Rugiagli Initiative, which she founded in 2012 with three other health and international affairs experts. The initiative, now integrated with 4change (Italy), focuses on building the capacity of national doctors working in conflict areas, and on promoting international collaboration in health as a bridge to peace.
As a doctor, she worked in conflict areas for the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization (WHO). For four years, she was the focal point for Health as a Bridge to Peace programme at WHO, where strategy, policy and projects were formulated and implemented. In 1998, she became one of the four founding members of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, where she initiated a series of dialogue between the Republic of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement, which led subsequently to the successful suspension of the armed conflict. She was also instrumental in starting up the Centre’s activities in Myanmar. Dr Chan is a member of the Non Official Group of Friends of Sri Lanka, which for three years actively engaged the Sri Lankan government and Tamil leadership in post-war political solutions to the conflict.
Dr Chan received her doctorate in medicine from the University of California Los Angeles, USA, and a Master of Public Health degree from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.
Frank Dörner studied human medicine at the Free University of Berlin, specialised in general medicine and gained a doctorate in the field of tropical medicine.
He started working in the field of Humanitarian Action with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 1998. He went for a year as doctor to Sudan for Kala Azar treatment and later as project coordinator to Myanamar. Between 2003 and 2006 he was medical coordinator and head of mission of MSF’s HIV/Aids/TB-projects in Guatemala, later he worked as Operational Manager with a broad portfolio of countries and medical programs based in Geneva. From 2008-2014 he was General Director of MSF Germany. His last MSF project was in Sierra Leone to coordinate the medical work on Ebola end of 2014.
Currently he is back in medical work in Berlin as General practitioner and became part of „SeaWatch“, a private organisation involved in rescue of refugees in the Mediterranian. Frank has been recently with the first crew as medical doctor and emergency operations manager on the sea close to Lybia. The Sea Watch rescued within six days almost 600 people and made strong demands for urgently needed increase of rescue activities public.
Christina Evers has recently finished her medical studies at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University of Mainz. At the moment she writes her doctoral thesis about health care and social circumstances of pregnant women from Bulgaria and Romania, who do not have any kind of health insurance. Since 2010 Christina Everts is a member of Medinetz Mainz e.V., a student-organized clearing house for refugees, migrants and people without personal documents. She participated in the Global Health Summer School of the IPPNW and Charite in September 2011 and is a member of the IPPNW since then. In 2012 she took part in the student exchange program (“famulieren und engagieren”), where she worked in a small village with mostly poor families of the Romani ethnicity in Transylvania, Romania.
Shermin Langhoff has been artistic director of the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin since the 2013/14 season. After many years in the film industry – where her projects included working with Fatih Akin on the film Gegen die Wand – she served as a curator at Berlin's Hebbel am Ufer theatres (HAU) from 2004 to 2008. At HAU she founded the Academy of Autodidacts, which provided a platform for many artists in the second generation of German-Turkish immigrants. In 2006 her project series Beyond Belonging hosted productions on the theme of migration. The play Schwarze Jungfrauen, which she commissioned from Feridun Zaimoğlu, was invited to the Mühlheim Theatre Days in 2007 as one of best contemporary German plays. In 2008 Langhoff founded the post-migrant theatre Ballhaus Naunynstraße in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. Several productions, most notably Verrücktes Blut from Nurkan Erpulat and Jens Hillje, garnered international acclaim.
Adelheid Lüchtrath studied nutrition science and medicine. Apart from her qualification as general practicioner she specialised on acupuncture, naturopathic treatment and traditional chinese medicine and she works in a praxis in Berlin.
Adelheid is also active in the "Arbeitskreis Gesundheit und Menschenrechte Berlin", a working group where people of different medical professions and support groups united in order to support the refugee movement and advocate the (current) situation of migrants in Berlin, from a medical perspective.
Fatuma Musa Afrah is 25 years old and comes from Somalia. She grew up in Kenya and is currently a refugee in Germany for one year and four months. Fatuma is a Motivational Speaker [How to get up on your feet] doing empowerment and experience sharing speeches with Refugees and Non-refugees. She is engaged in different projects supporting refugees, for example "Über den Tellerrand e.V.". Professionally she is humanitarian worker, she worked in Dadaab Refugee camp in Kenya with children and she was a child protection team leader. Currently she is unemployed, but helping refugees.
Dr. med. Gisela Penteker is a general practitioner. She is active in the peace movement since 1982. She was sensitized on the subject of migration by the inclusion of Bosnian refugees. Gisela Penteker is speaker of the IPPNW AK Refugees – Asylum and Turkey Representative of the IPPNW-Board. Since 1998 she travels on behalf of medical peace organization regularly in Kurdish areas in Turkey. In addition, the doctor is board member of the Network for traumatized refugees in Lower Saxony (Netzwerk für traumatisierte Flüchtlinge in Niedersachsen e.V.) and speak up for refugees and deported people in the Lower Saxony Refugee Council (Flüchtlingsrat Niedersachsen). Her main focus and key activities are Turkey, Migration and health care, trauma, Immigration and asylum law.
Denis Pineda is a general practitioner from Havanna, Cuba. He lives in Germany since 1997 and holds a Master of Public Health from Oldenburg University. For several years he worked for Doctors without boarders (MSF) in Angola and Sierra Leone, amongst others during the Ebola epidemic in 2014. Since 2009 he works in the Health Office in Bremen, currently in the Department of Environmental Medicine and as Deputy Head of the Unit Infectious Disease Epidemiology. Denis also worked for the“Humanitarian Consultation Hour (Humanitäre Sprechstunde)“ of the Health Office, for people without health insurance and residence permit status. Which is part of the „Bremer Modell“, aiming for an adequate health care for asylumseekers and refugees.
Eva-Maria Schwienhorst, MD, DTMPH, MScIH has worked in paediatrics and clinical tropical medicine and currently works for the German Leprosy and TB Relief Association (DAHW), an NGO with medical and social projects for vulnerable populations in 20 countries, where she is responsible for the medical projects in four South American and four Asian countries. She is co-founder of Medinetz Mainz e.V. - a clearing house for refugees, migrants and people without papers. Since 2006 she is the Deputy International Councillor of the German affiliate of IPPNW. She has interned at the Centre of Peace Studies at McMaster University in Canada, where “Peace through Health” had been developed and is a member of the working group of Medical Peace Work (MPW) and has lately co-authored several case studies for the teaching of issues around MPW, Global Health and among this refugee health.
Dr. med. Peter Tinnemann is physician and health researcher at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin with particular interest in social medicine, access to health care and health in a globalizing world. He holds a Master degree in Public Health from Cambridge University and has more than 10 years work experience with various international humanitarian aid organisations, e.g. Doctors without Boarders (MSF). In 2012 he found the association "Certified Medical Independence" training doctors in rational drug therapy.
Alessia Trovato is a Medical Doctor currently working in Berlin and collaborating with the MSF (Médecins sans frontières) Operational Research Unit. She previously worked with MSF in Am Timan, Chad and in Augusta (Siracusa), Italy. In Augusta MSF provided medical assistance to sea migrants.
Nathalie Simonnot is deputy director of Doctors of the World- Médecins du monde (MdM) International Network. She is in charge of the quality of domestic programmes in 15 countries, network’s advocacy and communication.
She speaks many languages, has studied Public Health, has developed the MdM programs in France, created the Observatory of access to healthcare in France and at European level. She publishes each year a report together with Dr Pierre Chauvin (INSERM) on social determinants of health & state of health for people facing multiple vulnerability factors (in 11 countries in 2015). She is a harm reduction activist (with drug users & sex workers), volunteer in the field.