I am a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, based in Montreal, and founded and chaired by the Honourable Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Nobel Peace nominee. The Wallenberg Centre is " a unique international consortium of parliamentarians, scholars, jurists, human rights defenders, NGOs, and students united in the pursuit of justice, inspired by and anchored in Raoul Wallenberg’s humanitarian legacy – how one person with the compassion to care, and the courage to act can confront evil and transform history."

Irwin, (“Kuti”), my close friend of decades was one of my sponsors as I successfully applied to become a Fellow of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

As Emeritus, I have worked with Irwin and the Centre in their concern over the devastating humanitarian and human rights situation in Venezuela. Irwin chaired the Panel of Experts of the OAS investigating human rights abuses in Venezuela for referral to the International Criminal Court.

I befriended and worked with José Ignacio Hernandez, a Venezuelan constitutional lawyer and law professor, through the study group on corruption and human rights I convened at the Carr Center. José then was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, directed by Ricardo Hausmann, who served as the Minister of Planning of Venezuela in 1992-93. 

Irwin is also a member of the High-Level Panel of Independent Legal Experts, established jointly by the UK and Canadian Governments as part of the Global Media Freedom Project. Their first report was on Magnitsky Global Justice and Accountability legislation - Irwin had an instrumental role in ensuring the passing of such legislation in Canada. I was a reviewer of the Panel’s draft report on consular assistance for journalists at risk for which Irwin is responsible, as one of the world’s leading legal advocates for imprisoned journalists and prisoners of conscience around the world.

This is ongoing work for me. The protection of journalists is an issue of particular concern to me. I was WBUR/NPR’s foreign policy analyst. I reported and filed stories on the Middle East conflict in Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon, for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Christian Science Monitor, and EMDA, and from the former Soviet Union for The Boston Globe; created a special EPIIC symposium and workshop program with the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. I was a social science editor for the Boston Review, and with my students created several publications, Discourse, and NIMEP Insights, and journalistic programs at Tufts, Exposure, and with Mort Rosenblum and Gary Knight, the Program on Narrative Documentary Practice. Journalists Sarah Arkin, Christina Goldbaum, Elizabeth Herman, Tovia Smith, and Nichole Sobecki.

As a Advisory Board member I have coordinated the VII Foundation’s ongoing response to the imprisonment and persecution of Bangladesh’s Shahidul Alam, and organized and participated in a panel at Harvard about Shahidul and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

I collaborated with RWCHR in creating a Convisero Webinar on behalf of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Soutedeh, who at that point had been on a hunger strike in Evin prison in Iran for forty-two days. The event was co-sponsored by PEN America and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, to help resonate the international campaign demanding her freedom.

I am working together with another RWCHR Senior Fellow, Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur lawyer and activist whose brother was disappeared in Xinjiang in 2016. With Rayhan, we are advising the Harvard University Hillel student group Jewish Movement for Uyghur Freedom.

On behalf of RWCHR I will begin to create Wallenberg human rights chapters similar to the Oslo Scholars program I created for the Human Rights Foundation.

FIRST TO STAND: The Cases and Causes of Irwin Cotler

Human Rights Day World Premiere: Cinéma du Musée

WITH FRENCH SUBTITLES

First to Stand will open on Human Rights Day, December 10 and 11 at 7:30.

The evening will be introduced by Jess Salomon (The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon), human rights lawyer turned stand-up comedian; and followed by a bilingual Q&A with Irwin Cotler, human rights champion; Shaparak Shajarizadeh, pioneer of the women’s right movement in Iran; and Ensaf Haidar, the wife and voice of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi.

Buy advance tickets online here to ensure availability: Cinéma du Musée
1379-A Sherbrooke St. West, Montréal

See you there!

“We spend a lot of energy dealing with the villains, but hardly any time celebrating the heroes. Irwin Cotler is one of the greatest heroes of our time. He’s taken on the most intractable dictators and saved the most unjustly imprisoned hostages. I hope everyone will watch First to Stand and become familiar his inspiring commitment to justice.”
Bill Browder

“How does it start? It’s precisely in the schoolyard. It starts with the exclusion of the “other.” How you create a difference until… until you kill.”
Esther Mujawayo

“It begs another question: Are all humans human? Or are some humans more human than others?”
Romeo Dallaire

“It is clear that the challenges to media freedom are urgent, and they are global. But my message to all the ministers who are here is that they must make sure that their laws respect media freedom and they impose targeted sanctions on states that try to silence critical speech by detaining or killing journalists.”
Amal Clooney

“Having nail polish is against the law, or having makeup. For them, everything is seductive. And it’s not the man who has to be healthy and control themself. It’s the women. The women should cover their bodies, so men don’t get tempted.”
Shaparak Shajarizadeh

“Never forget, as Elie Wiesel put it, that indifference always means coming down on the side of the oppressor, never on the side of the oppressed. Wherever people are persecuted, he put it, whether by reason of their race or religion or belief or sex, that must be your place to stand. Each of you here has a voice. You can speak and you can act. You can be the agents of change and bring about the change that you want to see!”
Irwin Cotler

Images from the event: