Meet the Team

Gary Foxcroft –  Founder/Executive Director 

Gary is an award-winning human rights advocate with a wide range of skills and expertise that complement the vision and mission of WHRIN. Through his work in Nigeria with the charity that he co-founded – Stepping Stones Nigeria – Gary has developed a keen interest and expertise in the field of witchcraft accusations against children. This has led to him being widely consulted on this subject by UN agencies, academics, media organisations and a number of civil society groups around the world. He also regularly writes expert witness reports for asylum court cases in the UK.

A particular career highlight to date involved Gary supporting a group of Nigerian children, who had been accused of witchcraft, to successfully lobby the State Government for the enactment of the Child Rights Act and the criminalisation of the act of branding such children as witches.

After researching and presenting a paper to UNHCR in 2009, Gary became more aware of the global dimension of the belief in witchcraft and the subsequent wide-spread violations of human rights that is taking place due to the belief. Moved by the scale of the problem, and the overwhelming need for more information on the often complex issues behind these violations of human rights, Gary made the decision to establish the new social enterprise, WHRIN, in 2012. Since then, WHRIN has become the leading international agency working on these issues and has successfully helped place them on the agenda of key UN agencies and governments across the world.

Gary hold a BA (Hons) from Derby University and M(Res) from Lancaster University.

Louise Meincke – Advocacy Director

Louise is a policy and public affairs specialist and human rights advocate with over 15 years experience of working at national and global public policy levels. At WHRIN she heads up the international and UN level advocacy with a focus on highlighting the severity of human rights abuses that take place around the world due to the beliefs in witchcraft and calling for urgent action. Through working in partnership with policymakers, UN representatives, not-for-profit and legal representatives the aim is to ensure the development and implementation of effective government policies to tackle human rights abuses and hold perpetrators to account.
Prior to joining WHRIN, Louise was the Head of Policy and Public affairs with global public health specialist World Cancer Research Fund, and as Advocacy Director at the Consortium for Street Children she drove forward high-impact advocacy strategies through key strategic partnerships. She has previously worked at Amnesty International, Houses of Parliament UK and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She is currently a Board Member of the Consortium for Street Children, a member of the Women’s Equality Party and undertaking a Professional Masters in African Studies at the University of Copenhagen.
Louise holds a Masters degree in Human Rights from Sussex University (2005), and is a certified NLP practitioner and yoga teacher.

 

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