Oscar Javier Calderón Barragán is a humanitarian worker with more than 16 years of experience in peacebuilding, violence prevention, and accompaniment of displaced people, migrants, and refugees for the protection of their fundamental rights, and integration in host communities, promoter of reconciliation processes. For 11 years, he worked in the Jesuit Refugee Service, first in Colombia, in Cúcuta, and since September 2019 as regional director of JRS-LAC. He has teaching, research experience in issues related to human rights, international humanitarian law, prevention of violence, forced migration, and refugees, his university training is as a Lawyer, and he has a Master’s degree in territorial government and Public management from the Pontifical University Javeriana from Bogotá.

Miriam Miranda is an Afro-Indigenous Garífuna activist from Honduras, a prominent human rights defender and General Coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH by its initials in Spanish). For her brave work in defense of Garífuna identity and ancestral territory, she has been illegally detained and beaten by local authorities and kidnapped by drug traffickers. Miranda has also been a recipient of the Oscar Romero Human Rights Award from Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas and the International Food Sovereignty Award from the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance. In 2016, she was awarded the Carlos Escaleras Environmental Award for her 30 years of work in defense of Garífuna collective rights. This year, OFRANEH was awarded the Letelier Moffitt International Human Rights Award by the Institute for Policy Studies for their holistic struggle fostering women’s leadership, cultural resurgence and land reclamation in the face of tremendous threats to their territory from numerous powerful interests and intensifying persecution ever since the 2009 military coup in Honduras.

Since 1978, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) has served as the representative organization for and a leading voice in Honduras for the self-determination and dignity of the Garífuna people in Honduras, a matrilineal people who are both Indigenous and Afro-descendent, whose ancestral territory in Honduras is principally along the northern coast and under constant threat from African palm plantations, Canadian and U.S. tourist operations, mining, energy projects and drug trafficking.

The Garífuna people’s drum beats were a constant refrain during the months of protests following the US-backed coup in Honduras in June 2009, which gave way to the consolidation of a narco-dictatorship under President Juan Orlando Hernández. In a landmark ruling, OFRANEH won two cases against the State of Honduras and achieved condemnatory sentences from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on October 8, 2015 in favor of the Garifuna communities of Triunfo de la Cruz in Tela Bay and Punta Piedra in the department of Colon, for violation of the right to community property and the right to free and informed prior consultation.

While the Black Lives Matter movement was flooding streets in cities all over the US following the police murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, in Honduras, OFRANEH was lifting up the message that “Garífuna lives matter too” following the disappearance of four of their leaders in July 2020 from the community of Triunfo de la Cruz on the northern coast. In early 2021, OFRANEH announced the formation of the Garífuna Research and Search Committee for the Disappeared of Triunfo de la Cruz, “SUNLA” or “Enough” in English. OFRANEH leads this important struggle for truth and justice in the case of the disappearances with support from national and international experts in areas such as forensic science, anthropology, psychology, medicine, law, spirituality, research and human rights.

Rev. Deborah Lee became the Executive Director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity in 2018. Prior to becoming Executive Director, Rev. Lee served since 2009 as the Program Director for the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity (and under its predecessor names: Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights and CLUE-CA). In that role, Rev. Lee built up the Immigrant Justice program of the organization, engaging dozens of congregations in Northern California to become Sanctuary congregations and to respond to the wave of migrant youth and families and the detention and deportation crisis. Her work has been recognized as innovative and impactful with awards from the United Nation’s Association of the East Bay, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy,and the national United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministry.

Rev. Lee has worked at the intersection of faith and social justice for over 25 years in popular education, community organizing and advocacy connecting issues of race, gender, economic justice, anti-militarism, LGBTQ inclusion and immigrant rights. She has consistently sought to strengthen the voice and role of faith communities in today’s social movements. Rev. Lee is the daughter of immigrants and part of the Chinese diaspora that has taken her family through Southeast Asia, Mexico and now the United States. She is a proud parent, partner, soccer player and tai chi practitioner.