Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed was born in London, England in November 1978. He is a political analyst and human rights activist, specialising in Western foreign policy and its impact in relation to human rights. He is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD, policyresearch@mediamonitors.org) based in Brighton, UK, a non-governmental, non-profit research body aiming to be the first online think-tank for the independent analysis of local and global society, with the ultimate objective of offering comprehensive solutions to social and individual problems. The approach taken by the IPRD is interdisciplinary, involving research in three core fields – politics, philosophy and religion - the findings of which are assessed integrative.

Nafeez Ahmed is also affiliated to the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC, http://www.ihrc.org), a non-governmental organization dedicated to research and advocacy work on human rights. The IHRC specialises in human rights in relation to Muslim affairs and is a recognized authority in this field. He has worked for the IHRC in several capacities, including Researcher, Press Officer and Campaigner.

Ahmed is the author of a variety of IHRC country reports on human rights practices including studies on Chechnya, Turkey, Palestine, Tanzania, among others. His work as a political analyst has also included producing research papers on a large variety of contemporary and historic conflicts around the world relating to Western foreign policy, including the areas of Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, East Timor, Palestine, and so on. The principal purpose of his research is documentation of the causes and context behind the state of the world and the structure of world order.

Ahmed now writes frequently for the London glossy magazine Q News (http://www.q-news.com), and has appeared on several radio shows in the UK and abroad including South Africa’s Radio 786 ( http://www.radio786.co.za). His IHRC press releases and articles have been used by many media outlets including Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, The Independent, Jewish Chronicle, London Jewish News, and UmmahNews. He was an NGO delegate to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, 2001, as member of an IHRC team, where he presented a paper on Israeli apartheid at the NGO Forum alongside Rabbi Dovid Weiss of the international anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish group Neterai Karta, and well-known South African anti-apartheid activist Imam Achmad Cassiem.

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Hobbies and Interests

Nafeez Ahmed was an Oxfam Campaigner for 5 years since 1996 until his work in human rights and political commentary took precedence, and has been a member of the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO) since January 2001.

He has also published online a compilation of his own poems titled ‘This Bleak And Pretty Dawn’ at www.voiceofunity.com/poetry. 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.

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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