Mr. Melkar el Khoury is an expert in human rights, gender, diversity, democracy, citizenship, and humanitarian development. He is an ILO-certified Participatory Gender Auditor and has provided expertise to local and international institutions. He is a lecturer in ethics foundation and code of conduct at La Sagesse University in Beirut. Mr. El Khoury holds an M.A. in Human Rights and Democratization from the University of Malta and a B.A. in Law from the Lebanese University. He was a visiting lecturer at the Department of European and Mediterranean Studies at Messina University in Italy, a gender advisor to the Search for Common Ground – Lebanon office, and a legal researcher affiliated with the Lebanese Center for Migration and Diaspora Studies (LERC) at Notre-Dame University-Louaize. He is the director of the Central Research House. Some of his publications including: "Acquisition and Loss of Nationality: The Case of Lebanon," with Thibaut Jaulin, EU Democratic Observatory on Citizenship (EUDO), 2012; "Citizenship Rights of the Lebanese Diaspora: A Roadmap to Returning Home," paper presented at a conference on the role of Arab universities in the education, practice, and promotion of human rights held at Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon, 2010; "A Gracious Insult Called Tolerance," paper presented within the framework of Common Platforms for Bridging World Cultures, Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon, 2011; "Citizenship Rights of the Lebanese Diaspora: A Roadmap to Returning Home," paper presented at the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, Barcelona, Spain, 2010; and "The Death Penalty In Lebanon: Between Reality and Hope," in "Studies on Death Penalty and the Right to Life in the Arab World," the Penal Reform International (PRI) and the Amman Center for Human Rights (ACHR), 2007. He is a US State Department alumni and a John Smith Memorial Trust Fellow.