Tawanda Mutasah

Tawanda Mutasah is International Director of Programs at the Open Society Institute (OSI) in New York, and was formerly Chair of OSI's Africa Advisory Board. He previously directed the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (from 2003-08), and, among other pre-OSI roles, served on Oxfam GB's international advocacy staff.

In Zimbabwe, he was founding chair of the National Constitutional Assembly - a prodemocracy coalition of over 200 national civic organizations (c.f. Zimbabwe Parliament 18 September 2007, Hansard and . He also worked as head of the ecumenical justice and peace commission in the country. In the early 1990s, Mutasah was a young national leader who experienced various episodes of Mugabe's retribution against Zimbabwe's pioneering civic activism, suffering persecution as a national student leader and then as a human rights defender and pro-democracy organizer.

He serves on many African and international boards, including as chair of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe (IDAZIM), and as a founding trustee of the Southern Africa Litigation Cent re (SALC).

Mutasah was admitted to the Zimbabwe bar in 1995 and is a recipient of the International Bar Association's annual International Rule of Law Award and several academic awards. He holds degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as Harvard Law School and the University of Zimbabwe.