Today the human rights movement and its supporters are on the defensive across Europe and the US. Illiberal and autocratic leaders appear full of confidence, boasting of a popular mandate to rewrite the rules for the future of European politics, and to redefine what is shameful and what is honourable. Looking at three fundamental human rights issues – refugee rights, torture and political prisoners – and at developments in Europe in recent years Gerald will examine dramatic setbacks, the failure of many current strategies to protect rights and policy options for activists to mobilise democratic majorities in their defense … and make an impact.
Gerald Knaus is ESI’s founding chairman and a Mercator senior fellow in Istanbul. He studied in Oxford, Brussels, and Bologna, taught economics at university in Ukraine in 1993/94 and spent five years working for international organizations in Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 2001 to 2004 he was director of the Lessons Learned Unit of the EU Pillar of the UN Mission in Kosovo. In 2011, he co-authored the book “Can Intervention Work?” He is a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and was for five years an Associate Fellow at the Carr Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. He writes his blog on www.rumeliobserver.eu.
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