Biographies of CESR Co-Founders

Co-founder Bios

Roger Normand was a co-founder and, until July 2004, Executive Director of CESR. In recent years he has led human rights fact-finding missions to Iraq, Israel and Palestine, and Afghanistan. Prior to CESR, he organized the Harvard Study Team missions to Iraq in 1991, the first independent investigations of the impact of war and sanctions on Iraq’s civilian population. He has also worked with Human Rights Watch and Catholic Relief Services on refugee issues in Southeast Asia. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School, Roger has written extensively on human rights and refugee issues.

Sarah Zaidi was a co-founder and, until July 2004, Director of CESR. Most recently, she has been working in the area of women and economic and social rights and participated in a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan. Her background is in public health and her main interest has been in linking scientific research methods with human rights issues. She has a Doctorate and Master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and attended Brown University as an undergraduate. She was raised and educated in Karachi, Pakistan.

Chris Jochnick is the Director of Private Sector Engagement for the international NGO, Oxfam America and teaches a seminar on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He has worked for many years in the field of human rights and is the co-founder and a director of the Ecuador-based, Centro de Derechos Economicos y Sociales (CDES) and the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Social Rights. He also spent five years in the private sector as an attorney for the Wall Street law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He was the Editor in Chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and a MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Fellow. He has authored many publications on human rights and development.