At the time of this interview, Carlos Manuel Lopes Pereira was serving as Dili district deputy commander for the United Nations Police mission in Timor-Leste.  He was a member of the Portuguese police for 20 years. He was the commander of a police unit north of Lisbon, and had previously worked as chief supervisor in Portugal.  He served in U.N. missions in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and  Timor-Leste.

At the time of this interview, Ibrahim Idris was a United Nations police operations coordinator and the officer in charge of the U.N. mission in Liberia.  He arrived in Liberia in 2004 as a U.N. police adviser. In his homeland of Nigeria, he was the deputy commissioner of police.  He joined the Nigerian police service in 1984 as a cadet officer.  He later served as a crime and traffic officer.  In 1987, he transferred to the Police Mobile Force, a special unit that dealt with riot control and anti-insurgency operations.  He served as the commandant of the Mobile Police Training School from 1998 to 2004.

At the time of this interview, Andrew Hughes had over 30 years of experience as a police officer, including as a deputy chief police officer in the Australian Capital Territory Police and assistant commissioner in charge of operations for the Australian Federal Police. He served as a liaison officer at the Australian High Commission in London, working with U.K. and European counterparts primarily on issues related to organized crime. Hughes also spent over three years as the commissioner of police in Fiji, prior to the December 2006 coup. On August 9, 2007, United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon announced Hughes' appointment as police adviser to the U.N., a role that placed him at the head of U.N. Police peacekeeping operations. 

Ismael Valigy began his career at the Ministry of Education in the late 1970s. In 1990 he began working as a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Two years later, during the Mozambican peace negotiations that spanned the early 1990s, Valigy was invited to represent the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a group that the government established to help organize the country’s first election after a 15-year civil war. In late 1993 the ruling party nominated Valigy to serve on the country’s newly established Central Election Commission.  After the elections he continued his career as a diplomat, which included a posting to Washington, D.C. 

At the time of the interview, Alex Paila was the voter education and public relations officer at the National Electoral Commission in Sierra Leone. Prior to that, he worked as a journalist for various newspapers, including the Ceylon Times and the Spectator. He was also employed, first as a reporter and then as deputy news editor, at the Sierra Leone Broadcast Service. Paila holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communication. 

Graham Muir was the commissioner of the United Nations Police as part of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti from 2005 to 2006.  At the time of the interview, he had served 32 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  Prior to his service in Haiti, Muir served as the director of general learning and development for the RCMP.  He first became involved in international police work in 1993 as a part of the U.N. Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia.  Between 1993 and 2005 Muir was heavily involved with the training of RCMP members for U.N. police service.  He also had been involved with the Pearson Peace Keeping Center for a number of years at the time of the interview.

At the time of this interview, Isabel Otero was employed at the United Nations Development Programme Electoral Assistance Team in Sierra Leone. At the UNDP, she served as procedures and training adviser for the National Electoral Commission in Sierra Leone, a position that she held since 2006. Prior to working in Sierra Leone, she served in Liberia as a training and capacity building adviser. She also previously served as a training officer in Afghanistan, and during both the national constituency assembly election and the presidential election in Timor-Leste. Prior to working on electoral issues at the U.N., Otero worked on gender-equity issues in Colombia with various non-governmental organizations. She holds a master’s degree in philosophy. 

At the time of this interview, Mustafa Resat Tekinbas was serving as deputy police commissioner for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).  He began his career in Istanbul, Turkey, and worked as a police officer for more than two decades.  Tekinbas received additional police training in the United States, and his experience spanned intelligence, information technology and riot control.  He began working with UNMIK in 2003.  

At the time of this interview, Victoria Stewart-Jolley was a legal adviser for the United Nations Development Programme's Electoral Assistance Team in Sierra Leone, a position that she had held since March 2007. She worked during the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections as well as the 2008 local elections to create legal frameworks for electoral management. Prior to working in Sierra Leone, she was a lawyer for the Electoral Complaints Commission in Afghanistan. Stewart-Jolley also worked in international criminal law in Timor-Leste, and in World Trade Organization law in Indonesia. She holds a law degree and has a background in international public law and constitutional law.