Zama Coursen-Neff is the deputy director of the children's rights division of Human Rights Watch. She regularly conducts fact-finding investigations and is the author of reports and articles on a range of issues affecting children, including access to education, HIV/AIDS, police violence, refugee protection, the worst forms of child labor, and discrimination against women and girls. She has published on op-ed pages in in major international and US publications and speaks regularly to the media. She previously ran a protection monitoring team for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Sri Lanka, clerked for a US federal judge, advocated on behalf of immigrants and refugees in the US, and worked with community development and women's organizations in Honduras. She is a graduate of Davidson College and New York University School of Law.

Human Rights Watch Reports

Still Making Their Own Rules: Ongoing Impunity for Police Beatings, Rape, and Torture in Papua New Guinea (October 30, 2006)

Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education in Afghanistan (July 11, 2006)

“Making Their Own Rules”: Police Beatings, Rape, and Torture of Children in Papua New Guinea (August 31, 2005)

Future Foresaken: Abuses Against Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in India (July 28, 2004)

"Killing You is a Very Easy Thing for Us": Human Rights Abuses in Southeast Afghanistan (July 28, 2003)

Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk Industry (January 22, 2003)

"We Want to Live As Humans": Repression of Women and Girls in Western Afghanistan (December 17, 2002)

"All Our Hopes Are Crushed": Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan (November 5, 2002)

Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools (September 30, 2001)

Living in Limbo: Burmese Rohingyas in Malaysia (August 1, 2000)

Articles

"The Taliban War on Education: Schoolgirls are Still Under Fire in Afghanistan," The Los Angeles Times, August 21 2006

 "Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in the Israeli Education System," New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, January 3, 2006

 "Upholding Public Disorder," Far Eastern Economic Review, October 11, 2005

"Afghan Women and Girls Still Held Hostage," Middle East Report, Fall 2003 

 "Meanwhile: For 15 million in India, a childhood of slavery," The International Herald Tribune, January 31, 2003

 "Falling Back to Taliban Ways with Women," The International Herald Tribune, January 21, 2003

"Afghanistan's Women Still Need Help," The Washington Post, December 12, 2002