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Paris, September 15, 2015
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
I have had the pleasure of supervising Ms Nada AHMED during the past six
months while she was interning in the Paris office of Human Rights Watch, in
the Advocacy and Communications department. During this time, Ms AHMED
also contributed work to the Middle East and North Africa department.
Her responsibilities included:
- collecting information from within and outside the organization about
specific human rights issues and / or geographic areas in preparation of
advocacy meetings with decision-makers;
- scheduling and attending meetings with key policy-makers and
diplomats to raise their awareness of the issues brought up by Human Rights
Watch, as well as feeding them into the databases and reporting after the
meetings;
- writing complex letters, briefings, synthesized documents for decision-
makers and articles/op-eds for the press;
- drafting of background briefings on human rights issues for policy-
makers and articles for the press.
Through this internship, Ms AHMED has gained extensive knowledge of a
number of human rights situations around the world and of their strategic
implications.
She has carried out each one of the tasks she was assigned in a bilingual
French-English environment, in a very effective, timely and autonomous
manner. Her native skills in Arabic were a strong added-value. She is a smart
and easy-going colleague and she efficiently handles the stress associated with
busy times in the office. Ms AHMED is responsible and volunteers to jump in
and help out with any task from the mundane to the challenging. She blends a
well-organized, task oriented style with deep interest for the activities of our
organization.
Ms AHMED has also shown the ability to establish excellent contacts with many
different constituents including various interlocutors in the ministries, Paris-
based NGOs and staff in the Paris office and in other Human Rights Watch
offices around the world, with whom she interacted on a daily basis either
through email or on the phone.
In addition, Ms AHMED contributed valuable work to the Middle East and
North Africa division, focusing on Egypt. She produced a daily digest of
English- and Arabic-language media reports and conducted additional research
when asked to follow up on specific reports. She combed through Arabic NGO
reports and legislative documents and volunteered important findings above
and beyond those she was asked to research. Ms AHMED maintained key
internal documents tracking various statistics related to the human rights and
www.hrw.org
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
142 rue Montmartre
75002 Paris
France
Tel : +33 (0)1 43 59 55 35
Fax : +33 (0)1 43 59 55 22
Email : paris@hrw.org
Web : www.hrw.org/fr
Bureau de Paris
Jean-Marie Fardeau, Directeur
France
Valérie Lombard, Directrice
du Développement
Comité de Paris
Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber,
Président
Robert Badinter
Claude Bébéar
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Constance Borde
William Bourdon
Gérard Bremond
David de Rothschild
Mercedes Erra
Françoise Gaspard
Costa Gavras
Jacques Manardo
Christopher Mesnooh
Dominique Moïsi
Christine Ockrent
Pascaline Servan-Schreiber
Abderrahmane Sissako
Catherine Zennström

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criminal justice environments in Egypt, including a definitive list of death sentences. She personally
interviewed and researched one case of possible extrajudicial killing.
As you can tell, I think very highly of this young woman and recommend Ms AHMED without
reservations for employment or any other endeavors she chooses to pursue. Please let me know if
you have any further questions about her.
Jean-Marie Fardeau
France Director, in charge of Advocacy and Communication
Human Rights Watch