Saad Hammadi is the Policy and Advocacy Manager of the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the Managing Editor of the Balsillie Papers. He manages the flagship programs of BSIA’s Technology Governance Initiative – the Balsillie Case Studies and the Balsillie Survey – that inform the most pressing issues and steer critical discussions about technology governance.
Saad is a passionate human rights advocate. He has served in leadership positions of international media and human rights organizations during more than two decades of his professional experience. He is an advisor to the Tech Global Institute, a global tech policy think tank focused on reducing equity and accountability gaps between technology companies and the global majority.
Saad was a Research Fellow at Project Ploughshares, a Canadian peace and arms control research institute, between January and May 2024. His work focused on advocacy initiatives to stop Canada’s arms exports to Israel, in the face of horrific war crimes being committed in Gaza, the human rights violations, challenges, and considerations in the use of technologies in conflict and day-to-day law enforcement.
In 2023, Saad served as the Communications Adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression Irene Khan.
Saad was Amnesty International’s South Asia Campaigner between 2018 and 2022. During the time he designed, advised, managed and led global campaigns, communications and advocacy on freedom of expression and information, technology and human rights, the right to privacy, data protection and refugee rights. Among his responsibilities were managing partnerships with UN agencies and civil society organizations, human rights projects and case studies of rights-holders, and advocacy with government policymakers.
In November 2020, Saad testified before the Canadian House of Commons Subcommittee on International Human Rights about the plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to ensure their right of participation in the decisions that affect their lives.
Saad has been a critic of laws that put dangerous restrictions on the right to freedom of expression around the world, and won a legal battle in 2022 against Bangladeshi authorities under the country’s Right to Information Act.
His reports and commentaries are published in The Guardian, Washington Post, Ottawa Citizen, Financial Times, The Diplomat, The Globe and Mail, The Hill Times, Policy Options and The Christian Science Monitor. His comments and interviews have been featured in the Time Magazine, Foreign Policy, New York Times, DW, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and NPR.
Saad spent 15 years of his career as a journalist working for among others the British newspaper The Guardian and the US-based news organization The Christian Science Monitor.
Saad has a Master of Arts in Global Governance from the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo.