Come hear prominent Iranian human rights advocate at ASIL Annual Meeting

April 2, 2024April 3, 2024 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

“Out of tragedy, she created hope”
–Iranian human rights defender, speaking of Roya Boroumand

If you are attending the ASIL Annual Meeting this week:

Come hear Roya Boroumand — courageous, tenacious and inspiring Iranian human rights advocate — who is being honored this year with the Goler T. Butcher Medal. The Butcher Medal, one of the ASIL’s highest honors, is awarded to a distinguished person each year “for outstanding contributions to the development or effective realization of international human rights.”

Through the human rights center she and her sister established after their father – an Iranian lawyer and pro-democracy activist — was assassinated in Paris by agents of the Iranian regime, Roya Boroumand has worked tirelessly to defend human rights in Iran in her extensive advocacy at the United Nations and elsewhere. She and her sister named the organization — the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran — for their father:

“[W]e have to send a message to those who killed that physically eliminating people doesn’t eliminate their ideas. This name is going to come and haunt you.”

Roya Boroumand’s work in support of frontline Iranian human rights defenders has been especially important since the massive protests in Iran that were sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the Iranian “morality police” for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly.”

This work includes meticulous documentation of the repression of protestors, campaigning for the rights of Iranian human rights lawyers working in what is an extremely difficult environment, and briefing government officials to raise international awareness of violations of international human rights law in Iran.

Roya Boroumand will engage in conversation on “International Law, Theocracy and the Struggle for Human Rights in Iran” at the ASIL Annual Meeting on:
Thursday, April 4, 2 pm-3 pm

Emerging Leaders Advisory Board of Human Rights First

April 13, 2023 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

Announcement for young people passionate about using their creativity, knowledge and skills to promote and protect human rights:

The Emerging Leaders Advisory Board (ELAB) of the New York-based NGO Human Rights First is recruiting new members to join them. “Human Rights First recognizes the imperative to fully integrate talented young professionals at all levels of the organization, applying fresh ideas to hold oppressors accountable and free people from injustice.” Launched in late 2022, ELAB taps the creativity, energy, experiences, skills and social media savvy of young people to inform, support and advance the work of Human Rights First.

To apply to be a member of the advisory board, click here.

Question: Do I have to live in New York to be a member of the Emerging Leaders Advisory Board of Human Rights First?

Answer: No. ELAB currently has board members based across the globe. All of the board meetings are held virtually. We do hold in-person events in NY/DC in which Advisory Board members may participate, but attending them is not a requirement for serving on the board.

Question: What is the role of Emerging Leaders Advisory Board members? What is expected of a member if appointed to ELAB?

Emerging Leaders Advisory Board members are expected to attend bi-monthly virtual meetings and support ELAB with its various initiatives. This may include, but is not limited to, contributing to ELAB’s blog, helping to plan events, and promoting our events and initiatives on their social media pages. They are also expected to serve on one of our three committees, which highlight our core competencies and streamline our priority initiatives: Advocacy; Fundraising; and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (D.E.I.). Each committee hosts its own meetings, virtually, at the discretion of the committee chair. These typically occur bi-monthly. Committee overviews:

Advocacy Committee

In November 2022, ELAB published an introductory blog post outlining the importance of young leaders and how our board upholds that history. In 2023, we continue to use our voices to publish op-eds on Human Rights First’s site to further educate audiences on the human rights issues that show up in our various lives. We encourage members across our committees to submit proposals for topics, and we will be publishing these op-eds during the year.

Fundraising Committee

ELAB’s Fundraising Committee connects with new generations of donors, highlighting the work of Human Rights First through in-person events and online media campaigns. We launched our first individual fundraising drive on Human Rights Day (December 10), shortly after ELAB was established.

DEI Committee

ELAB’s Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee is currently spearheading recruitment to the Advisory Board. The committee is also actively engaged in planning events. A recent example is our Women’s History Month event, which took place in New York City on March 28, 2023. The committee is also collaborating with Human Rights First in drafting several protocols and initiatives to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion in all aspects of our operations.

Statement by Afghanistan’s Women Protester Movements Coalition re Taliban ban on women workers at UN offices

April 5, 2023 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

Afghanistan’s Women Protester Movements Coalition
Press Statement
5 April 2023

The Taliban’s ban on women’s employment at the United Nations offices was foreseeable. The Taliban have made women’s right to work and education a tool for their political bargaining with the international community. They don’t believe in the participation of women in public life. They seek to systematically remove women from public spaces and have issued more than 40 decrees aimed at oppressing women since their return to power.

In December 2022, when the Taliban banned women’s employment in NGOs, women protesters expected international aid agencies to have a unified approach in protesting the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s employment and not continue their activities in Afghanistan without female employees. Contrary to our expectations, once again international aid agencies, including the United Nations, negotiated an agreement with the Taliban which allowed women to continue their work in limited sectors.

Such settlements and the international community’s unconditional engagement with the Taliban have emboldened them. The lack of unified and strong action in response to the Taliban’s continued attacks on the rights of women has led to the Taliban continuing their attacks with impunity.

Only the Taliban are responsible for starving 28 million Afghans who rely on humanitarian aid. By banning women’s employment, the Taliban take away the right to a decent life from the Afghan people and contribute to more poverty and hunger in Afghanistan. If this situation continues it will lead to a further crisis in the country.

In response to the Taliban’s recent ban on women’s employment in United Nations agencies, we, members of Afghanistan’s Women Protester Movements Coalition, once again call on the United Nations and other international aid agencies to:

Stop their operations in Afghanistan until women are allowed to work.
Abandon unconditional engagement with the Taliban and use all means and leverage to hold them accountable for their human rights violations.

The situation in Afghanistan is not only a humanitarian catastrophe but most importantly a human rights crisis. International aid agencies, including the United Nations, must demonstrate their commitment to human rights values in practice and place women’s human rights at the top of their priorities.

If the United Nations and other international aid agencies cannot firmly defend the rights of their female employees, we doubt their intentions to help the people of Afghanistan transition out of the current crisis.

Tuesday Nov. 15: Defending Artistic Freedom After the Attack on Salman Rushdie

November 14, 2022 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

Defending Artistic Freedom After the Attack on Salman Rushdie

When: Tuesday, November 15, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM, Eastern Time (USA)

Where: Palmer Commons on the University of Michigan campus, a 15 minute walk from the law school (Palmer Commons address: 100 Washtenaw Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2218 Palmer Commons | Welcome to Palmer Commons (umich.edu))

Link to event page with link for zoom registration: https://ii.umich.edu/humanrights/news-events/all-events.detail.html/98508-21796731.html.

More about the event:

On August 12, acclaimed writer Salman Rushdie was to address a crowd at the Chautauqua Institution about safe havens for at-risk writers, when he was stabbed multiple times. While Mr. Rushdie thankfully survived, he experienced severe injuries, after facing years of threats since the 1989 fatwa against his book “The Satanic Verses” by Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. What will be the impact of this brutal act of violence against a writer on efforts to defend the human right to freedom of artistic expression around the world? What kinds of threats are artists facing globally as they practice their crafts – practice essential to the cultural rights of all? What kind of self-censorship do these pressures foster, especially around controversial issues such as religion? What strategies can cultural rights defenders use to support artists like Salman Rushdie, and all the Rushdies around the world?

Moderated by: Karima Bennoune, Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law, Michigan Law School

Panelists:

Julie Trébault, Director, Artists at Risk Connection
Julie Trébault is the director of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), a project of PEN America that aims to safeguard the right to artistic freedom by connecting threatened artists to support, building a global network of resources for artists at risk, and forging ties between arts and human rights organizations. She has nearly two decades of experience in international arts programming and network-building, including at the Museum of the City of New York, the Center for Architecture, the National Museum of Ethnology in The Netherlands, and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.

Salil Tripathi, Board member, PEN International, and former chair, PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee

Salil Tripathi was born in Bombay and lives in New York. He chaired PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee from 2015 to 2021 and is a member of its board. Between 2009 and 2013, he was on the board of English PEN. His honors include the Red Ink Award from the Mumbai Press Club in 2015 for human rights journalism and the third prize at the Bastiat Awards for Journalism in New York in 2011, among others. His journalism has appeared in major publications worldwide and he has been a correspondent in India and Southeast Asia. Offence: The Hindu Case, about the rise of Hindu nationalism and its implications on free expression, was his first book. His other books include The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy (Aleph, 2014, Yale, 2016), and Detours: Songs of the Open Road, (Tranquebar, 2015). His most recent work is For In Your Tongue I Cannot Fit: Encounters with Prison, which he co-edited with the artist Shilpa Gupta. He is currently writing a book about Gujaratis, which Aleph will publish. Salil studied at the New Era School and Sydenham College in Bombay, and has an MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College in the United States.

Ahmed Naji, writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Ahmed Naji is a writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and criminal. His Using Life (2014) made him the only writer in Egyptian history to have been sent to prison for offending public morality. (Mr. Rushdie corresponded with him while he was imprisoned.) His book Rotten Evidence chronicles his time in prison, which is due out in September (2023) with McSweeney’s. Other published novels in Arabic are Tigers, Uninvited (2020), and The happy end (2022) Naji has won several prizes, including a Dubai Press Club Award, a PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, and an Open Eye Award. He is currently a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute in UNLV. He now lives in exile in Las Vegas, where his writing continues to delight and provoke. For more about his work: https://ahmednaji.net/

Launching a Global Campaign Against Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan

August 15, 2022 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

Three items to share on this, the one-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan:

Register and attend what promises to be a riveting discussion on Global Strategies for Countering Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan on Friday 19 August 2022, with courageous Afghan women human rights defenders like Shaharzad Akbar and Zarqa Yaftali and international partners like the University of Michigan’s Professor Karima Bennoune and Human Rights Watch’s Heather Barr. Register here.

View filmmaker Ramita Navai’s documentary Afghanistan Undercover, about which noted interviewer Terry Gross of the program Fresh Air remarked in her interview with Navai: “I feel like the world isn’t watching as carefully anymore. And your documentary was a wake-up call to me. . . . things have gotten so dire for women there.”

Read Professor Bennoune’s powerful analysis The Best Way to Mark the Anniversary of Taliban Takeover? Launch a Global Campaign Against Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, which explains why “it is critical to commit to a more effective and principled global response, and to do so by recognizing this grave set of abuses for exactly what it is: gender apartheid.”

Time to act, UN Human Rights Committee

August 1, 2022August 1, 2022 / Stephanie Farrior / 1 Comment

Afghanistan, which ratified the ICCPR in 1983, was last reviewed by the UN Human Rights Committee in 1995 – and it was a truncated review at that. The Afghan head of delegation was unable to be present due to delays en route, so the Chair suspended the review that had barely begun, saying that consideration of the report would be resumed at a subsequent meeting.

No subsequent review has ever taken place. Instead, there has been one postponement after another, as shown by the timeline below. Why the neglect by the premier human rights treaty body authorized to monitor compliance with civil and political rights?

Prompted by concerns we heard from Afghan women human rights defenders and Afghan human rights defenders more broadly, three of us wrote to the Human Rights Committee last week urging them to schedule a review of Afghanistan without further delay: Felice Gaer, Former Vice Chairperson and member, Committee against Torture, and Director, Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights; Karima Bennoune, Professor of Law, University of Michigan, and immediate past UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights; and yours truly, Stephanie Farrior, professor of international law for 30 years and past Legal Director of Amnesty International. We await a response. The Committee has reportedly already set its calendar of reviews for the next several years. If a review of Afghanistan is not already scheduled, it should be, and without yet more delay.

Afghanistan has seen significant political turmoil in the years since that partial Committee review held in 1995 – from the Taliban, to the Karzai government after the US invasion and now, back to the Taliban, which is not recognized by the United Nations as the official representative of Afghanistan. This has not prevented other UN human rights treaty bodies from holding a review of the implementation of their treaty in Afghanistan (see below).

The Human Rights Committee did schedule review of Afghanistan for March 2000, but the government requested and received a postponement.

The review was next scheduled to take place in October 2001, and in the preceding session in May, the Committee developed its “List of issues prior to reporting.” However, the events of 9/11 intervened, and the Committee decided “to postpone review of implementation of the Covenant in Afghanistan to a later and more favorable date.” A concern expressed in that meeting by the late Sir Nigel Rodley and shared by other Committee members at the time was that their statement postponing the review “should not be interpreted in such a way as to suggest that the Committee will henceforth no longer consider the reports of States Parties in which an armed conflict is taking place.” Christine Chanet added that the presence of armed conflict does not only not prevent consideration of a state party, but it actually “adds to the concerns of the Committee.”

It was not until a decade later, in July 2011, that a review of Afghanistan was once again on the table, when the Human Rights Committee announced it would develop a “List of issues prior to reporting” at its July 2012 session. It did indeed adopt a list of issues at that 2012 session, but in the ensuing ten years, no review of implementation of the Covenant in Afghanistan was ever scheduled or held.

Today, the human rights situation in Afghanistan is dire. For women and girls, as a journalist quoted in Amnesty International’s recent report has stated, “it’s death in slow motion.” For some, it’s more than one can bear. According to UN News: “The situation for women is so desperate in Afghanistan that they are committing suicide at a rate of one or two every day, the Human Rights Council has heard.”

In light of the dire situation in Afghanistan, the Human Rights Committee could take action and schedule a long overdue review of the civil and political rights situation there. The Committee’s Rule of Procedure 70 allows for review of a state party in the absence of a report. In this case, the last report submitted by Afghanistan could be updated with the significant body of information documented by UNAMA, the UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, and human rights NGOs. In addition, Afghan human rights defenders are keen to submit shadow reports. They are also keen to see every human rights mechanism engaged to the extent possible, to keep up international attention and pressure.

In a situation where the de facto entity in control of a state’s territory is not a recognized government, the Committee could nonetheless follow normal procedures and send an invitation to participate in a review to the office of the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan in New York. The UN-recognized (former) government officials could attend, present an oral (or written) report – or not. It should be noted that Rule of Procedure 68.2 allows for consideration of a report if the state party does not send a representative.

The timeline below shows year after year after year of postponements of a review of Afghanistan by the Human Rights Committee. Other treaty bodies have engaged in periodic reviews of Afghanistan in the years when the Human Rights Committee was not scheduling a review, most recently the Committee against Torture in 2017-2018, and CEDAW in both 2016 and 2020.

It is time for the UN Human Rights Committee to re-engage, and schedule a review as soon as possible, given the critical situation there and the importance of continued international scrutiny. The record of neglect by the Human Rights Committee means that there has been no authoritative analysis of the implementation of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Afghanistan for 27 years. The Committee should correct this situation promptly.

October 1991: Afghanistan submitted 2^nd periodic report to the UN Human Rights Committee.

October 1995: Committee began review of the 2^nd report, but soon suspended the review due to the absence of the head of delegation caused by travel delays. “The Chairman said that consideration of the report of Afghanistan would be resumed at a subsequent meeting,” and the Committee requested the Government of Afghanistan to submit information updating the report before 31 May 1996 for consideration at” its session in July 1996. No additional information was received.

The next mention of Afghanistan in Summary Records after October 1995:

October 1999: The Committee invited Afghanistan to present its report at its March 2000 session. The State party asked for a postponement.

November 1999: The Committee discussed and adopted a list of issues to be taken up in connection with the consideration of the second periodic report of Afghanistan. Materials used in the preparation of the list included the report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan and a report by Amnesty International on the situation of women in Afghanistan.

May 2001: The Committee decided to consider the situation of Afghanistan during its session in October/November 2001, applying Rule of Procedure 68.2, which allows for consideration of a report if the state does not send a representative.

October 2001: The Committee decided to postpone consideration of Afghanistan to a later date, “pending consolidation of the new Government.” “The Committee has very serious concerns regarding the implementation of the provisions of the Covenant in Afghanistan, particularly with regard to the situation of women in Afghanistan, public and extrajudicial executions, and religious intolerance. . . . Despite the fact that, with the current situation of armed conflict in Afghanistan, other serious concerns concerning the protection of the rights guaranteed by the Covenant have been added, the Committee considers that reviewing the report would not be productive in the current situation. [The Chairman] has therefore decided to postpone consideration of the report to a later and more favorable date for the purposes of article 40 of the Covenant.”

Continued postponements: In succeeding annual reports, the Committee duly recorded the previous postponements, but never scheduled a review:

A/58/40(Vol.I) 2002-2003

A/59/40(Vol.I) 2003-2004

A/60/40(Vol.I) 2004-2005

A/61/40(Vol.I) 2005-2006

A/62/40(Vol.I) 2006-2007

A/63/40(Vol.I) 2007-2008

A/64/40(Vol.I) 2008-2009

A/65/40(Vol.I) 2009-2010

A/66/40(Vol.I) 2010-2011

May 2011: “Afghanistan accepted the new optional procedure on focused reports based on replies to the list of issues prior to reporting. It is thus waiting for the Committee to adopt a list of issues prior to reporting.”

July 2011: The Committee report notes: “The timetable for consideration of reports posted on the Committee website would . . . take account of the States parties for which a list of issues prior to reporting was to be adopted in July 2012, namely Afghanistan, Croatia, Israel, San Marino and New Zealand.”

July 2012: The Committee adopted a list of issues prior to reporting on Afghanistan with a deadline of 31 October 2013 for its response. In the Committee’s July 2012 LOIPR includes the following “Please provide any other information on measures taken to disseminate and implement the Committee’s previous recommendations (CCPR/C/AFG/CO/2), including any necessary statistical data.”

For those interested in seeing what those previous recommendations were: Per the UN Library Services, “despite the fact that document CCPR/C/AFG/Q/3 clearly mentions CCPR/C/AFG/CO/2, this document symbol is not recorded in any other source or index and according to the historical research above, the second report issued in 1992 was never fully considered – so no formal documented outcome must have been issued.”

Over the ten years that have passed since it adopted the list of issues, the Human Rights Committee has never reviewed implementation of the Covenant in Afghanistan.

2013-2014: The Annual Report notes the Committee’s adoption of a list of issues prior to reporting on Afghanistan with a deadline of 31 October 2013 for its response. “This report has still not been received.”

Note: The Human Rights Committee’s Rule of Procedure 70 allows for consideration of a State Party in the absence of a report.

2014-2019: The next five Annual Reports of the Human Rights Committee stop giving the prior history of postponed reviews, and only mention Afghanistan in the list of states that are 10 or more years overdue in submitting a report.

There is no further mention of Afghanistan in Annual Reports or Summary Records.

UN Special Rapporteurship on Afghanistan

April 3, 2022 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

On Friday 1 April, the UN Human Rights Council relinquished an opportunity to put talk into action and send an important message to the Taliban by appointing what would have been the first woman UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan. (All those who held the position during its previous existence from 1984-2005 were men.)

The UN Consultative Group, the body that screens Special Rapporteur applications (made up this year of three men and a woman, representing El Salvador, Malaysia, South Africa and Canada), had short-listed five candidates: four women — three of whom are Muslim or of Muslim heritage — and a man. As the candidates’ applications show, all five short-listed candidates were well-qualified, all five had relevant experience, and several had considerable direct experience in Afghanistan and other conflict zones.

CONSULTATIVE GROUP REPORT TO HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL PRESIDENT
Short-listed Candidates for the Position of
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan

First name	Last name	Nationality	Gender
Leila	ALIKARAMI	Islamic Republic of Iran	F
Richard	BENNETT	New Zealand	M
Karima	BENNOUNE	United States of America	F
Kamala	CHANDRAKIRANA	Indonesia	F
Kimberley Cy.	MOTLEY	United States of America	F

Despite having such highly qualified women candidates for the position . . . the Human Rights Council appointed the only man on the shortlist. Curiously, in sending its recommendations of candidates to the Council president, the Consultative Group significantly understated relevant experience in its bios of the two women finalists among the final three (Leila Alikarami and Karima Bennoune), even omitting any mention of one candidate’s direct experience in Afghanistan.

Moreover, there was virtually no mention of women’s human rights in the Consultative Group’s entire report on this mandate (except for a brief reference in Alikarami’s bio) — including no mention of any experience at all that the candidate they ranked first might have in this area. This despite the fact that the Council resolution creating the mandate emphasizes women’s rights and calls on the use of a gender perspective throughout the work of the mandate.

The new mandate-holder, Richard Bennett, does have considerable experience on and commitment to human rights in Afghanistan, and deserves support in his critically important work. The statement in his application that if appointed he would give priority to the human rights of women and girls is welcome indeed. One wonders about the message the Human Rights Council sends, though, as it joins a long list of countries and organizations that are sending all-male delegations to Kabul. The timing is especially unfortunate coming a week after the Taliban refused to reopen secondary schools for girls, reneging on an earlier pledge to do so.

Hilary Charlesworth elected to International Court of Justice

November 5, 2021 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

Delighted to report that the UN General Assembly and UN Security Council today elected Hilary Charlesworth to the International Court of Justice, to fill the seat prematurely vacated due to the untimely death of James Crawford (see previous IntLawGrrls post here). The appointment, which takes immediate effect, brings to four the number of women sitting on the 15-judge court.

>> Heartfelt congratulations, Hilary! <<

Question for the UN Human Rights Council: So, should only men apply?

October 28, 2021November 5, 2021 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

At its session concluded earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council established two new country rapporteurships, one on Afghanistan, and one on Burundi. The call for applicants has now been posted. However, even before any applications have been collected and reviewed, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights seems to have already decided that both appointees will be men, based on the Name of Mandate-holder column (click screen shot below to enlarge). They’ve done this for the two thematic mandate openings, as well.

UPDATE on 29 October 2021: I see that today the OHCHR has now fixed this issue on the country rapporteur page by removing the “Mr.” from the two open positions in the Mandate-holder column, and on the thematic rapporteur page it has removed the “Mr.” from this column for the newly-created thematic rapporteurship on climate change, but has still left in place the “Mr.” in the opening on the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent.

FURTHER UPDATE, 5 November 2021: The OHCHR has now removed the remaining “Mr.” from the vacancy listing in the Mandate-holder column on the thematic procedures webpage.

Event Tuesday 26 October: Mixing Cultures is a Human Right

October 25, 2021 / Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

An impressive line-up of speakers is scheduled to discuss a human rights approach to cultural mixing at a side event on Tuesday 26 October for the final report of UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Karima Bennoune, in an event co-organized with the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development (CREID).

Tuesday 26 October 2021 | 12.00-13.30 EST | 17.00-18.30 BST

Faced with rising claims about monolithic cultures and cultural “purity” around the world, and with rising threats in many contexts, whether of the destruction of the cultural diversity of Afghanistan or the erasure of mixed identities in Japan, the speakers will address how those who value rights-respecting cultural openness and hybridity can defend these practices. How can we preserve histories of cultural mixing in the past and ensure their possibilities in the present and future so as to protect cultural rights for all?

Link to Report and to Annex with the legal framework on cultural mixing and mixed cultural identities.

Link to report press release: Mixing Cultures is a Human Right

SPEAKERS

Karima Bennoune, UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights and Visiting Professor, University of Michigan Law School (Algeria/USA)

Wole Soyinka, Writer, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1986 (Nigeria)

Omaid Sharifi, Artivist and Co-Founder, ArtLords (Afghanistan)

Pragna Patel, Founder and Director, Southall Black Sisters (UK)

Hiroko Tsuboi-Friedman, UNESCO 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions Expert Facility member (Japan)

Mariz Tadros, Director of the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development and Professor of Politics and Development at the Institute of Development Studies (Egypt/UK)

>>> Register here. <<<

This event is co-sponsored by: