Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed was born in London, England in November 1978. He is of Bangladeshi origin. He is a political analyst and human rights activist, specialising in Western foreign policy and its impact on human rights. He is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD), an independent, interdisciplinary, non-profit think tank based in Brighton, UK. The IPRD conducts research and analysis of local and global society for the promotion of human rights, justice and peace. IPRD briefings and reports are distributed to political representatives, NGOs, various media, research libraries and members of the general public in the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe and Canada.

Nafeez Ahmed is also a former Researcher at the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) a non-governmental organisation dedicated to research and advocacy on human rights. The IHRC specialises in human rights in relation to Muslim affairs and is a recognised authority in this field (IHRC reports have been used by the United Nations, Amnesty International, the British Home Office, etc.). Ahmed’s IHRC press releases have been used by many media outlets including Reuters, the Associated Press, The Guardian, The Independent, the Jewish Chronicle, and the London Jewish News. Ahmed was also an NGO delegate to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, 2001, as member of an IHRC team. He delivered a paper at the Conference on lessons to be learned from South African apartheid for the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Ahmed is the author of a variety of IHRC country reports on human rights practices including studies on racism in the UK, the conflict in Chechnya, repression in Turkey, the violation of civil rights in Tanzania and Zanzibar, religious discrimination in Papua New Guinea, among others. His work as a political analyst has included producing research papers on contemporary and historic conflicts around the world relating to U.S. and Western foreign policy, including those in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Algeria, the Sudan, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, East Timor, among others. Ahmed has also written extensively on the impact of globalisation. Many of these studies have received international acclaim, and have been featured by various organisations, journals, and news services. In particular, Ahmed’s work on the history and development of the conflict in Afghanistan as a consequence of international policies has been recommended as a resource by Harvard University’s Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research. His reports have also been used by legal specialists in the UK to build cases in defence of the rights of refugees fleeing persecution or conflict in their countries of origin.

Ahmed has been an Oxfam Campaigner since 1996. He regularly writes analytical commentaries on current affairs for the Media Monitors Network (MMN) based in Brea, California. Ahmed also writes frequently for the London glossy magazine Q News, and has appeared on several radio shows in the UK and abroad. He has been invited to lecture on U.S. foreign policy in various universities and educational establishments around the world, including most recently the University of Cambridge.

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Hobbies and Interests

Nafeez has been a member of the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO) since January 2001.

He was once an avid painter, but since the age of 20 has been unable to find the time to continue. He does, however, try to find time to continue playing guitar. He enjoys reading, writing, and composing poetry.

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Favorite Books

David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton, Pluto Press, London, 1999

Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World

John Gray, False Dawn: The delusions of global capitalism,

Khalil Gibran, Greatest Works, Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, 1988

Mark Curtis, The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy Since 1945, Zed, London 1995

Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Verso, London, 1996

Naomi Klein, No Logo, Flamingo, HarperCollins, London, 2001

Robin Hahnel, Panic Rules: Everything you need to know about the global economy, South End Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999

Uri Davies, Israel: An Apartheid State, Zed, London, 1987

Wayne Ellwood, The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization, Verso & New Internationalist, Oxford and London, 2001

William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Common Courage, Monroe, Maine, 2001

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Favorite Links

Corporate Watch, http://www.corporatewatch.org

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, http://www.fair.org

Foreign Policy In Focus, http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org

Global Issues, http://www.globalissues.org

Institute for Policy Studies, http://www.ips-dc.org

International Action Center, http://www.iacenter.org

Islam: The Modern Religion, http://www.themodernreligion.com

The Wisdom Fund, http://www.twf.org

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, http://www.washington-report.org

ZNet, http://www.zmag.org