Sanjoy Hazarika is the international director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Earlier, he was Director of the Centre for Northeast Studies and Policy Research at Jamia Millia Islamia. is the international director of the HO P E He is an award-winning journalist, formerly with the New York Times. His books include Strangers No More: New Narratives from India's Northeast, Bhopal: The Lessons of a Tragedy and Strangers of the Mist: Tales of War and Peace from India's Northeast.
As a columnist and specialist commentator on the Northeast and its neighbouring regions, Hazarika has written and published extensively on the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Eastern Himalaya and freedom fighters from the Northeast. He is the founder and managing trustee of C-NES, which has pioneered the work of boat clinics on the Brahmaputra River.
Madhurima Dhanuka is a lawyer with an LLM in criminal justice from the University of Nottingham in the UK.
Currently, she heads the prison reforms programme at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, where Dhanuka leads, manages and develops initiatives to improve prison conditions, ensure access to legal aid for persons in custody and protect the rights of foreign nationals, asylum seekers and refugees in detention in India. She has written numerous studies and reports on matters related to the criminal justice system.
Dhanuka has also contributed to several publications of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on legal aid services.