Kathi Lynn Austin is an expert on arms trafficking, peace and security, and human rights. For nearly 20 years, Ms. Austin has carried out original, precedent-setting and in-depth field investigations into the illegal trade in weapons, illicit trafficking operations, illegal resource exploitation, transnational crime and terrorism. She has documented conflicts spanning Africa, Latin America, East and Central Europe, and South Asia.

She is founder and Executive Director of the Conflict Awareness Project, an international non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to investigating, documenting and bringing to justice major arms traffickers, war profiteers, and transnational criminal networks that fuel war and conflict around the world.

In 2012, Random House will release Austin’s dramatic investigative field memoir, THE UNOFFICIAL SPY, about her professional pursuit to bring arms traffickers and other war criminals to justice.

Austin has served in official capacity as a member of the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Liberia as well as Chief of the Joint Mission Analysis Centre for the United Nations Peacekeeping Missions in Timor-Leste and Burundi.

In 1997, Austin directed Forsaken Cries: The Story of Rwanda for Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

. The short documentary film examined the Rwandan Genocide

Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...

. On November 13, 2000, Austin spoke to the National Press Club about Kenya's illegal arms trade and militias citing evidence she gathered during a three-month investigation. On 21 April 2004, she was appointed by Kofi Annan

Kofi Annan

Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...

 to a four-member panel charged with monitoring the Democratic Republic of Congo's compliance with Security Council Resolution 1533

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1533

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1533, adopted unanimously on March 12, 2004, after recalling all previous resolutions on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Council established a Committee to monitor an arms embargo imposed on all foreign and Congolese forces in...

 (2004), passed on 12 March 2004.

Austin is a visiting scholar at the Center for Human Rights at the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, and a former director of the "Arms & Conflict Program" of the Fund for Peace

Fund for Peace

The Fund for Peace is an independent Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research and educational institution. Founded in 1957, FfP, a non-governmental organization, "works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security.”...

. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations

Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...

.

"Kathi Austin, a UN arms-trafficking expert… has spent much of the past decade tracking illegal weapons smugglers operating in the DRC and other conflict zones across Africa. Partly as a result of her dogged efforts, the alleged leader of one of the world's largest trafficking networks, Viktor Bout

Viktor Bout

Viktor Anatolyevich Bout is a convicted arms smuggler. A citizen of Russia, he was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and was extradited in 2010 to the United States to stand trial on terrorism charges after being accused of smuggling arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to use against...

, was recently arrested on terrorism charges in Thailand." - excerpt from New York Times op-ed, "The Real UN: More Than Just Talk" by Ban Ki Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Movie

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...

 will star as Austin in a forthcoming Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

 movie. Her character's antagonist will be based on arms dealer Victor Bout.