Masha Lisitsyna

Masha Lisitsyna (@MashalNyc) is a senior program manager with the Global Programs at the Open Society Foundations. Previously, Lisitsyna served as a senior managing legal officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative where she led the work to advance prevention, accountability, and reparations for torture in Eurasia, Asia, and Latin America.

Publications that she has co-authored, among others, include a Toolkit for Drafting Complaints to the UN Human Rights Committee and UN Committee against Torture, a global study Who Polices the Police? The Role of Independent Agencies in Criminal Investigations of State Agents and a chapter on successful examples of the implementation of decisions of UN treaty bodies in Implementing Human Rights Decisions: Reflections, Successes, and New Directions.

Lisitsyna has also served as a Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch and was a founding director of a human rights NGO in Kyrgyzstan. In 2005, she was elected a member of Kyrgyzstan’s Constitutional Assembly, tasked with preparing Constitutional amendments. Lisitsyna has been recognized by the World Economic Forum in 2009 as a Young Global Leader and holds a law degree from the Kyrgyz-Russian Academy of Education