Peter Biar Ajak is a prominent civil society leader, political dissident, and scholar from South Sudan. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies of the National Defense University. Peter is also the Chairman of the South Sudan Young Leaders Forum, Senior Advisor to the LSE-based International Growth Centre, and the Founder of the Juba-based Center for Strategic Analyses and Research. He was previously a Senior Advisor to the Minister of National Security in the Office of the President of South Sudan and an In-Country Economist for the World Bank. An outspoken advocate of human rights, free and fair elections, he was arbitrarily detained and convicted in a politically-motivated show trial for “disturbing the peace” and jailed for eighteen months in South Sudan’s notorious Blue House prison. Peter is also a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow, and a Millennium Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He holds a Ph.D. in Politics & International Studies from the University of Cambridge, a Master of Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a BA in Economics from LaSalle University.