Our Team

Ali Johar 

Ali Johar is an intergenerational stateless Rohingya who was forced to flee state-sponsored violence in Myanmar at age ten. He spent over two decades navigating life as a stateless refugee in Bangladesh and India before channeling his experience into human rights advocacy. Drawing on more than ten years of grassroots work, he co-founded community-led initiatives such as the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative and collaborated with UNHCR partner organizations. His global leadership has earned him prestigious fellowships with the Social Change Initiative and Refugees International. Today, Ali serves as a Co-lead and the Risk and Safety Lead for the Movement, having initially joined its Solidarity and Action Working Group in 2022.

Co-lead and Risk & Safety Lead 

Christy Chitengu

Co-lead and Partnership Lead 

Christy Chitengu is the Co-Lead and Partnerships Lead of the Global Movement Against Statelessness. Drawing from her own lived experience of statelessness, Christy has dedicated her work to advancing equal nationality rights and amplifying the voices of impacted communities. She has worked across advocacy, law, and movement building, from South Africa’s Constitutional Court to legal practice, always with a focus on ensuring that those directly affected are at the center of change. Alongside her role in GMAS, Christy is deepening her knowledge through studies in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. She brings together both lived and learned experience to challenge systems of exclusion and to build collaborative, stateless-led solutions globally. 

Shuchi Purohit 

Resource and Content Development Lead

Shuchi Purohit is an international human rights lawyer & holds experience across Asia Pacific on issues related to statelessness, nationality rights, gender justice, and digital identity. In her previous roles, she led regional research initiatives, co-authored reports such as the Statelessness Encyclopedia Asia Pacific, contributed to UN submissions, and participated in coalition building processes, such as the Statelessness and Citizenship Coalition Asia Pacific (SDCC-AP). Her work spans policy processes, safeguarding frameworks, and strategic planning, with a strong focus on amplifying marginalized voices and advancing rights-based, feminist approaches to law and policy. She has taught undergraduate students of law at Jindal Global Law School in India and currently serves as Resource & Content Development Lead at the Global Movement Against Statelessness 

 

Resource and Content Development Lead

Christy Chitengu is the Co-Lead and Partnerships Lead of the Global Movement Against Statelessness. Drawing from her own lived experience of statelessness, Christy has dedicated her work to advancing equal nationality rights and amplifying the voices of impacted communities. She has worked across advocacy, law, and movement building, from South Africa’s Constitutional Court to legal practice, always with a focus on ensuring that those directly affected are at the center of change. Alongside her role in GMAS, Christy is deepening her knowledge through studies in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. She brings together both lived and learned experience to challenge systems of exclusion and to build collaborative, stateless-led solutions globally. 

Shuchi Purohit 

Resource and Content Development Lead

Christy Chitengu is the Co-Lead and Partnerships Lead of the Global Movement Against Statelessness. Drawing from her own lived experience of statelessness, Christy has dedicated her work to advancing equal nationality rights and amplifying the voices of impacted communities. She has worked across advocacy, law, and movement building, from South Africa’s Constitutional Court to legal practice, always with a focus on ensuring that those directly affected are at the center of change. Alongside her role in GMAS, Christy is deepening her knowledge through studies in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. She brings together both lived and learned experience to challenge systems of exclusion and to build collaborative, stateless-led solutions globally. 

Sihle Nxumalo

Projects Lead

Sihle Nxumalo is a former stateless individual turned human rights activist who has shared his story on various media platforms to raise awareness. He is also a peer educator on human rights and director of an NPO that helps homeless people turn their lives around through workshops and skills development initiatives. 

Laura Goodwin

 Financial Administration Lead

Laura Goodwin joined the Interim Core Group (ICG) of the Global Movement Against Statelessness in 2020. She currently serves as the Financial Administration Lead for the Movement, supporting the development and operation of financial policies and systems that enable the work of GMAS. Laura Goodwin is employed as the Co-Director of the Citizenship Program at Namati, a global organization dedicated to legal empowerment.  

Shuchi Purohit 

Community Engegment Lead

Tahera Hasan is a lawyer and the Founder–CEO of Imkaan Welfare Organization, which works on child welfare, community healthcare, legal aid, and citizenship rights for stateless populations in Pakistan. She has lectured on legal and development issues at universities and forums, and contributes to global advocacy through her roles with the Global Movement Against Statelessness and the Statelessness and Dignified Citizenship Coalition – Asia Pacific. Her work has been recognized with the Ruth Pfau Award for Ownership (2017) and the Commonwealth Point of Light Award (2022) 

Thandeka Chauke

Advocacy Lead

Thandeka is the Advocacy Lead of the Global Movement Against Statelessness (GMAS), driving the Movement’s efforts to amplify stateless leadership, coordinate collective action, and influence global and regional policy on equal nationality rights. Alongside her GMAS role, she works independently through Catalysts for Change (C4C), designing strategic rights-based interventions that confront exclusion and drive transformative change. Thandeka is an international human rights lawyer, social justice advocate, and Afro-feminist with expertise spanning nationality rights and statelessness, refugee and migrant rights, women’s rights and gender justice, digital rights, and business and human rights. 

Sam March

Communication Lead

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