Meet the Event Speakers

Haleemah Ahmad

Executive Director and Co-Founder, Acres of Peace

Haleemah Oladamade Ahmad was most recently a senior research associate and chief editor with the Da’wah Institute, part of the Islamic Education Trust in Nigeria. She is part of a team that compiled and responded to more than 200 narratives and arguments used for recruitment into violent extremist groups in the Lake Chad Basin. Haleemah has facilitated advocacy sessions focused on eliminating violence against women and girls, doing so from an Islamic perspective.

As a young peacebuilder and human rights defender, Haleemah has shared her experiences internationally, including at the Carter Center in the United States, and her work has been published in an essay collection by the Tony Blair Institute for Change. As a fellow of the Cardinal Onaiyekan Foundation for Peace, Haleemah worked with youth leaders on reducing electoral violence during the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. She is passionate about gender justice, interreligious peacebuilding, and preventing violent extremism carried out in the name of religion.

Mushin Kaduyu Nuwagaba

Founder and Director, Allied Muslim Youth Uganda

Muhsin Kaduyu Nuwagaba is Ugandan peace practitioner, a humanitarian and a strong voice in promoting interfaith dialogue and cooperation. He is a founder and Executive Director of Allied Muslim Youth Uganda (AMYU) and also serves as a steering committee member and youth representative of the African Union Interfaith Dialogue Forum (AU-IFDF). He is a consultant, speaker, writer and a contributor to government and non-government projects and public conversations and projects about religious pluralism, peace and preventing violent extremism locally and internationally.  He is a State Department’s International Visitors Leadership Programme Alumnus, a trained youth mediator, who is passionate about education and youth empowerment. He studied Islamic Theology and Arabic Language and hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Administrative and Secretarial Science and a Master’s Degree in Peace and Conflict Studies.

Annisa Fitria

Founder and Executive Director, Peace Generation Indonesia

Annisa Fitra works at Peace Generation Indonesia, a social enterprise that has been committed to teaching peacebuilding through creative media and a fun approach since 2017. She collaborates closely with teachers, schools, and young people as agents of change to create a peaceful and inclusive society. Peace Generation is an innovative organization of young people working on interfaith tolerance through engaging youth, schools, and the provincial and national education departments. They use innovative strategies such as info graphics, games etc. They have contributed to national guidelines issued by education ministry against bullying and intolerance

Seybou Sultan

Consortium Coordinator, Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action Mali

Seybou Sultan is a practitioner in the development and peacebuilding sectors in Mali, and an ardent supporter of inclusive development. He is currently the Consortium Coordinator for the Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action (JISRA) in Mali, a multi-partner and multi-nations project promoting Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) by leveraging on the agency of religious actors, youth, and women, to instigate, guarantee and sustain change within the broader civic space.

About the JISRA Project

The Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action (JISRA) is a partnership of 50 civil society organizations based in Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, and Uganda (with supporting lobby and advocacy in Europe and the USA). This international, inter religious partnership is implementing a five-year program (2021-2025) in partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to further peaceful and just societies where all enjoy Freedom of Religion and Belief (FoRB).

The basis of the program is JISRA’s conviction that Freedom of Religion and Belief and interfaith dialogue are essential and integral to the realization of peaceful and just societies. In addition, diverse religious actors, including women and youth, can and need to play an important role in this process as change makers. JISRA believes their voices must be heard.

The program is coordinated by four international consortium partners: Mensen met een Missie (lead organization), Tearfund UK and Tearfund the Netherlands, Faith to Action Network, and Search for Common Ground. At the international level, the programme partners with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is supported by technical partner, the Peacemakers Network. At the country level, 46 organizations with very diverse backgrounds implement the program in the seven focus countries.