The Panel of Independent International Experts (PIIE) was formed in 2021 by three eminent investigators and jurists—whose careers span some of the most egregious human rights catastrophes of our time, from the killing fields of Rwanda to the ethnic purges of Myanmar and the Balkans, and the hidden horrors of North Korea—who were deeply alarmed by reports of serious violations against Muslim communities in India, and joined together to review available evidence of the abuses.
Their findings, published in June 2022, concluded that there was credible evidence that several human rights enshrined in treaty law and customary international law may have been violated—violations that warranted formal investigation and reparation. Cautioning that Muslims were at risk of becoming a persecuted minority within India, the Panel urged preventive and corrective measures. That call went unheeded.
Noting the lack of domestic and international action, and alarmed by the worsening trajectory, the Panel reconvened in 2024. Its new report—published in March 2026 and covering the period 2022–25—focuses on Assam and Uttar Pradesh, where the machinery of government has been most systematically deployed against the Muslim minority. The Panel’s aim is to raise international awareness of ongoing violations and to support efforts towards formal investigation, accountability, and the prevention of further harm.
Sonja Biserko
Sonja Biserko was a member of UN Human Rights Investigation into North Korea and is the founder member of Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. HCHRS a member of the European network of Helsinki Committees for Human Rights and formerly part of the dissolved International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, a professional organisation working to promote the rule of law and protection of human rights in Serbia, challenging nationalist dogma, documenting war crimes and acting as advocate for the victimised and disenfranchised. Biserko served as a diplomat for the former Yugoslavia in London and at the United
Nations in Geneva for over 20 years until 1991 when she resigned her diplomatic position in protest over the policies of Slobodan Milošević amid rising nationalism throughout Yugoslavia.
She has written extensively on the wars in the former Yugoslavia and war crimes including on the Srebrenica genocide, the fall of Vukovar, and accounts of the trials of Slobodan Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj. She is also the founding member of the Centre for Anti-War Action in the Belgrade Forum for International Relations and a senior fellow in the United States Institute of Peace.
Biserko’s ongoing work for human rights has included documenting the resurgence of nationalist sentiment that followed the war in Kosovo, the continuing threats to minorities, attempts to falsify or deny the historical record and efforts to undermine multi-ethnic society in the former Yugoslavia. Through active support for minority and refugee communities within Serbia and Kosovo she has sought in particular to promote dialogue between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo.
Stephen Rapp
Stephen Rapp is a Senior Fellow at the Oxford University’s Center for Law, Ethics and Armed Conflict, and at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Prevention of Genocide. He serves as Chair of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), a Senior Peace Fellow of the Public International Law and Policy Group, and on the boards of Physicians for Human Rights, the IBA Human Rights Institute, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative, and the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights.
Rapp was the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2009 where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. During his tenure, his office achieved the first convictions in history for sexual slavery and forced marriage as crimes against humanity, and for attacks on peacekeepers and recruitment and use of child soldiers as violations of international humanitarian law. From 2001 to 2007, he served as Senior Trial Attorney and Chief of Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he headed the trial team that achieved the first convictions in history of leaders of the mass media for the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide.
Between 2009 and 2014 he was Ambassador-at-Large heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the US
State Department. In that position he coordinated US Government support to international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, as well as to hybrid and national courts responsible for prosecuting persons charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Marzuki Darusman
Marzuki Darusman is Co-Founder and Chairman of Foundation for International Human Rights Reporting Standards, a non-profit that targets the advancement of human rights in all areas. In 2010 he was assigned as Chair of the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka, and was the UN Secretary General’s Special Rapporteur for North Korea, 2010-2016 and also a Member of UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea.
In August 2017, Darusman was appointed as the Chair for the UN Independent International Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar (IIFFMM). The IIFFMM released its full 440-page account of the findings of its 15-month examination of the situation in Myanmar in September 2018, reiterating its call for the investigation and prosecution of Myanmar’s Commander-in-Chief and his top military leaders for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The IIFFMM handed over its evidence to the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), also mandated by the Human Rights Council and operational since 30 August 2019.
Darusman is a former Attorney General of Indonesia and served as Member of Parliament until 2009. As Attorney General, he led a wide-ranging corruption investigation
of former President Suharto and family and he prosecuted cases of corruption, mass murder, and human rights abuses that symbolized the inequities of the three-decade rule of Suharto. Darusman took the unprecedented step of placing Suharto under “city arrest” and arrested several of his business associates. He also investigated General Wiranto, the former armed forces commander, for crimes against humanity in East Timor.