Isabella Sargsyan

Isabella Sargsyan is project management, advocacy specialist and human rights expert with 24 years of experience. She joined EPF in 2008, and now leads organization’s human rights and justice team, policy advocacy work on human rights and democracy. Her experience with EPF includes management of large projects on human rights, justice and conflict transformation funded by US DLR, EU, British FCO, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and others; supervision of project staff, consortium building and strategic communications.

Isabella is leading EPF’s international human rights advocacy work with UN institutions, OSCE/ODIHR, Council of Europe, and other actors. He is also representing EPF at the Public Council under the Minister of Justice of the RA, Public Council under the Chief of the Police of the Republic of Armenia, Coordinating Council of the Action Plan deriving from Armenia's National Strategy of Human Rights Protection, EU-Armenia human rights dialogue platform.

Isabella is an internationally recognized expert on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). In 2016-2018 and since 2023 she serves as a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on FoRB. The role of the Panel is to provide advice, guidance and recommendations to ODIHR, and through ODIHR to OSCE participating States, on matters pertaining to the freedom of religion or belief for all. Isabella worked with governments, parliamentarians, civil society and religious groups in various OSCE countries such as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, BiH, Ukraine and Cyprus. She also provided training for parliamentarians from Latin American countries as a part of her engagement with The International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief (IPPFoRB).

In 2017 for the work in the area of human rights she was awarded the Freedom Defender Award. Isabella holds an MSc degree in Sociology and Human Rights from London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA/MA in Theology from Yerevan State University. She is fluent in Armenian, English and Russian. She serves on the board of Transparency International Anticorruption Center. She is also an CSO DePo Expert.