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National Executive

Meet our 2023 – 2024 National Executive Committee

UK WILPF is run by an elected National Executive Committee. Each year we elect our new executives at our AGM, which usually takes place early in the year.  We hold approximately five Executive meetings a year which any member can attend.   Throughout the year the Executive discusses issues and makes decisions online.  The Annual Report is compiled by the Executive and circulated to members before the AGM.

Paula Shaw

Secretary
ukwilpf.peace@gmail.com

Paula joined WILPF in 2010 inspired by her Great Aunt Mercha who was a member of WILPF between the 1950s and the 1960s in the Liverpool Branch and was a delegate to the Peace Conference in 1963 in Moscow. In 2013, inspired by another long-time member, Sheila Triggs, she agreed to become more active and lend a hand in the management of WILPF UK. She has been WILPF UK’s Secretary from 2018 to 2021.

She held several offices in WILPF including Treasurer (2016-2019), London Branch Chair (2016-2018), WILPF Representative at the Peace Forum, No Trident Renewal (NTR) Group and International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and has been WILPF UK’s Secretary since 2018 following the sad loss of Anne Scott.

She enjoys most campaigning for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, marching in several demonstrations, and working with enthusiastic young members. 

Sophia Close

Treasurer
ukwilpf.treasurer@gmail.com

Janet Fenton

International Representative (job-share)

Janet is a Scottish internationalist feminist who has worked in issue-based theatre & community arts. She is a former Co-ordinator of the Peace and Justice Centre and developed strategies to promote Human Rights and Peace in Scotland at the grassroots and parliamentary level.

She joined WILPF during that time and, with Helen Kay, founded the modern Scottish Branch. Janet currently holds positions as Vice-Chair of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND), Secretary of the Scottish Parliament Disarmament CGP, Director of SDG 16 work at UN House Scotland and as the Organiser for SecureScotland.scot. She works for the Acronym Institute on UN-based initiatives and serves on ICAN’s International Steering Group.

She has attended major UN negotiations on nuclear disarmament since 2009 and is also committed to non-violent direct-action campaigning (TP & XR Peace).

Taniel Yusef, MA, MA, LLM

Executive Committee Member

Taniel is a job share International Liaison Representative to WILPF International for WILPF UK leading on Feminist Economics, Trade and Disarmament Affairs. She is the Technology Developers Coordinator for the UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

She has recently been made an Associate for the International Restorative Justice Institute and she is an on-the-ground researcher.  

Maki Kimura

Executive Committee Member

Before becoming WILPF UK’s Secretary in 2021, Maki was the job share International Representative and the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) campaign lead of WILPF UK. Maki, originally from Japan and now based in the UK, teaches and researches gender and race equality, and, is interested in how gender and race are integral to the history and politics of war and peace. 

She became involved in peace activism through the issue of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery during the Second World War (‘comfort women’) and anti-US military base protests in Okinawa, Japan, as well as learning about women who were detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, in the UK. 

Keyet Makonnen

Executive Committee Member

Keyet Makonnen is a development specialist with extensive experience in women, refugees, Africa and the Middle East. She has organised and contributed to specialist seminars with a focus on the issues faced by African countries and the Middle East.

She played a key role in promoting the Fourth World Alternative Political ethos of self-sustaining development and empowerment of people’s rights as custodian of power and functional Democracy. She co-founded and coordinates the Voices of African Women (VOAW) campaign of WILPF promoting the work of women at the grassroots level in Africa and the diaspora.

She is a networker, organiser and coordinator of several projects, including the Abune Petros Orphanage, Women Go Green for Peace, VOAW 10th Anniversary celebrations, African Women Front and Center, Peace Conference for Ethiopian opposition groups and CEDAW training with SOAS. She is currently involved in launching a governance initiative to promote sustainable development in Africa.

Jenny Engledow

Branch Representative, Brighton, Hove, and District

JJenny is the Branch Representative for Brighton, Hove and District and the Representative on the XR Peace Council. She first heard of WILPF at Greenham Common Peace Camp and became a member right after. Having been active in the Peace movement since she was 16 years old she continued being involved in peace and human rights groups, enabling her to take the national work to the local level and vice-versa.

Jenny is a banner maker, which she sees to make a message visible at vigils and stalls. She has been organising the Hiroshima and Remembrance Day events and has created exhibitions about WILPF’s history to make WILPF’s work more widely known. She is involved in Brighton Against the Arms Trade group which regularly demonstrates near a weapon parts factory.

Alongside other members, she takes part in local Climate Change rebellions and the Black Lives Matter Movement, promoting WILPF’s position whenever possible.

TBD

Branch Representative, Orpington

Sheila Triggs

Membership Secretary
membership.wilpfuk@gmail.com

Sheila has been active in WILPF for over twenty years and a member of the UK WILPF Executive Committee for much of that time, including serving as President and Membership Secretary.

On behalf of UK WILPF, she made successful funding applications, organised seminars and stalls, and represented WILPF on networks such as No Trident Renewal and the Trade Justice Movement. Over the years she has been an active supporter of WILPF’s Voices of African Women Campaign.

Currently, she is on the WILPF Finance Group which supports the Treasurer, and Branch Representative for Orpington.

She is a member of Women in Black, CND, and Global Justice Now.

Cecilia Passaniti Mezzano

International Representative (job-share)

Cecilia is currently the Membership Secretary at WILPF UK and has worked in the organisation to promote the participation of members in campaigning and research activities to increase the breadth of views and perspectives within and outside the WILPF network. Her campaigning in WILPF focuses primarily on Women, Peace and Security and the inclusion of the Agenda in defence and security, and peacekeeping matters.

She joined WILPF during the celebrations for the 100th Anniversary of the League which took place in The Hague, The Netherlands in 2015 whilst she was at university pursuing a degree in International Law.

Pat Pleasance

Company Secretary

Pat has been a member of WILPF UK for over 20 years and for most of that time she has been on the Executive Committee. Whilst she has held different offices and taken part in many WILPF activities, both nationally, internationally and locally in Orpington, she has particularly been involved in carrying out many of the tasks which are necessary to keep WILPF functioning, including leading on Financial matters.

She is currently a member of the Finance Group of WILPF which assists the Treasurer. She contributes experience and knowledge of WILPF to add to the enthusiasm of the dynamic younger generation currently on the Executive.

Mariam Suliman

Executive Committee Member

Mariam has joined the Executive Committee of WILPF UK in 2020 after being a member since 2008 and part of the coordination team of the Voices of African Women Campaign.

Mariam is the Founder and Representative of the Voice of Darfur Women charity. She has taken on several executive management roles in both Sudan and the UK as a Human Rights activist advocating for democracy and peace for the Wadi Hawar People Association. Her work for the advancement of women’s rights brought her to work with many organisations including the Sudan Women Association UK (2007-2008) and the Darfur Victims Organisation for Relief and Rehabilitation bringing former ICC Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo to meet with Darfur victims and survivors in the UK.

She was a member of the UN Women panel of experts to assess the Darfur Comprehensive Peace Agreement through a gender perspective between 2010 and 2011 in Doha, Qatar.

Helen Martins

Executive Committee Member

Helen’s earliest exposure to war atrocities (age 3) was asking an Auschwitz survivor friend of her German Jewish refugee parents about the number tattooed on his arm. She became politicised during the Aldermaston years and, in 1972, while working at the International Planned Parenthood Federation, became aware that its medical director was travelling to Bangladesh to perform abortions on women raped by soldiers.

As an editor passionate about plain English, her career focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights, as Publications Officer at the Family Planning Association and London Lighthouse before becoming a freelance editor.

She proudly carries CND and anti-war banners at demos and arms fair protests; supports Veterans for Peace activists; attends Hiroshima Day and Women in Black vigils; campaigns for human rights and conscientious objection; organised a Deeds Not Words rally featuring suffragette descendant Helen Pankhurst; volunteers at her local library; and knits for refugees with Knit for Peace.

Beatriz Arnal-Calvo

Executive Committee Member

Beatriz Arnal Calvo studied Philosophy and International Development. For several years, she was a humanitarian practitioner in armed conflict settings where she worked with forcibly displaced populations in Eastern Africa, Western Asia and North Africa. She is now a doctoral researcher at the University of Brighton’s School of Humanities and Social Science, and a member of the Centre of Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics and the Centre of Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics.

Beatriz joined WILPF UK in 2020, after joining WILPF Spain (where she is originally from), with the hope of overcoming the physical obstacles imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and more actively engaging with like-minded organisations. She is part of the WILPF UK’s Women, Peace and Security working group and the WILPF International’s Environment working group. She brings into WILPF UK her enthusiasm and interest about the interlinks between militarism, armed conflict, the climate crisis, peace and gender.

Rebecca Johnson

Branch Representative, Brighton, Hove, and District

TBD

Communications Lead