Panel of Judges - 2019 Global Media Competition on Labour Migration

Xyza Bacani

Xyza Cruz Bacani, born in 1987, is a Filipina author and photographer who uses her work to raise awareness about underreported stories. Having worked as a second generation domestic worker in Hong Kong for almost a decade, she is particularly interested in the intersection of labour migration and human rights. She is one of the Magnum Foundation Photography and social justice (a program that expands diversity and creativity in the field of documentary through capacity building and critical explorations of photography and social change) fellows in 2015, has exhibited worldwide, and won awards in photography. She is also the recipient of a resolution passed by the Philippines House of Representatives in her honour, HR No. 1969. Xyza is one of the Asia 21 Young Leaders (Class of 2018), the WMA Commission grantee in 2017, a Pulitzer Center and an Open Society Moving Walls 2017 grantee. She is one of the BBC’s 100 Women of the World 2015, 30 Under 30 Women Photographers 2016, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2016, Fujifilm ambassador and author of the book “We are like Air”.

Majdoleen Hasan

Majdoleen Hasan is the Arabic Editor for GIJN (Global Investigative Journalism Network), and a three-time award-winning journalist with more than 12 years of experience. She has worked with local and international media organizations, including Global Integrity, 100Reporters and the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism network. She was the director of an investigative journalism unit in Jordan and was the first Jordanian citizen to file a case against the Jordanian government for denying her the right to access public information according to access to information law. Hasan has an MA in Political Science and a BA in Journalism. 
 

Michelle Leighton

Michelle Leighton is Chief of the Labour Migration Branch for the International Labour Organization where she directs the Office’s work on labour migration and mobility, and supports policies and programs related to migrants and refugees.  She has expertise in the fields of international law, labour migration, human rights, and economic development, and received her LL.M degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, London, England in 1987.

She serves as an expert appointed to the UNFCCC WIM Task Force on displacement related to climate change, and formerly a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Migration. Ms. Leighton has led global and field research teams, including on linkages between human migration and development, environmental and climate change. She has taught on law faculties in Asia, Europe and the United States and authored numerous publications. Following her service as a Fulbright Scholar in Central Asia, she co-founded the American University of Central Asia’s Tian Shan Policy Center at the American University in Bishkek. She has been an adviser and consultant to international institutions, government, and non-profit organizations, leading technical cooperation projects in the Americas, Africa, Europe and Central Asia. She served as the Munich Re Foundation Chair on Social Vulnerability for the UNU-Environment and Human Security institute, Bonn, Germany, as an expert on the German Marshall Fund’s Trans-Atlantic Study Team on Climate and Migration, and Director of the Center for Law and Global Justice Human Rights Program at the University of San Francisco Law School. Early in her career, she co-founded the NGO Natural Heritage Institute in San Francisco, leading programs on environment, migration, corporate social responsibility, and human rights.
 

Leonardo Sakamoto

Leonardo Sakamoto is a journalist with a PhD in Political Science from the University of Sao Paulo. Sakamoto covered armed conflicts in several countries and human rights violations in all Brazilian States. Mr. Sakamoto is currently a Journalism professor at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo. From the year 2000 until 2002, he was a professor in Communications and Arts at University of Sao Paulo. Then, from 2015 until 2016, he was a visiting scholar in the Department of Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is also chairman of the NGO Reporter Brazil and since 2014, he has been board member of the United Nations Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. Additionally, since 2018, Mr. Sakamoto has been acting as commissioner for the Financial Sector Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking at the Liechtenstein Initiative. Mr. Sakamoto writes daily about human rights and politics for his column in UOL, Brazil’s biggest news website.