Manfred Nowak (born 26 June 1950 in
Bad Aussee) is an
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n
human rights
Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
lawyer, who served as the
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. He is Secretary General of the European Inter-University Center for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) in Venice, Italy; Professor of International Human Rights and Scientific Director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Human Rights and the
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights and a former judge at the
Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2016, he was appointed Independent Expert leading the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.
Career
Nowak was a student of
Felix Ermacora
Felix Ermacora (13 October 1923 – 24 February 1995) was a leading human rights expert of Austria and a member of the Austrian People's Party.
Biography
In his youth, Ermacora served in the army of Nazi Germany at the rank of private.
He wa ...
, and cooperated with him until Ermacora's death in 1995. They co-founded the ''
Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Menschenrechte'' (with
Hannes Tretter
Hannes Tretter (born 5 July 1951 in Vienna) is an Austrian lawyer and human rights expert. He is Professor of Human Rights at the University of Vienna and Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Menschenrechte, which he cofounded with Felix ...
) in 1992.
In addition to his function as Professor of Constitutional and International Law and Human Rights at Vienna University, Nowak was:
* Director of the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) at Utrecht University, Netherlands (1987–89)
* Head of the Law Department of the Austrian Federal Academy of Public Administration in Vienna, Austria (1989–2001)
* Olof Palme Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University, Sweden (2002–2003)
* Visiting Professor at EIUC in Venice, Italy (2004)
* Swiss Chair of Human Rights at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland (2008–2009)
* Austrian Visiting Chair at Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA (2014).
Since 2016, he is the Secretary General of EIUC in Venice, Italy, which is responsible for the Global Campus of Human Rights with seven Master programmes in all world regions and many other activities in the field of human rights and democracy education. He regularly teaches at various other universities, including the American University in Washington, DC.
As
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nowak was one of the five authors of a United Nations report on the detention of captives at the United States naval base at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba(2006) and one of four authors of a UN report on secret detention in the fight against terrorism (2010).
In 2005, Nowak visited China, claiming that torture remained "widespread" there. He also complained of Chinese officials interfering with his work.
In September 2006, he alleged that torture may be more of a problem in Iraq since the
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror
, image ...
than under
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...
's regime. Much of the torture, he argued, is carried out by
security forces
Security forces are statutory organizations with internal security mandates. In the legal context of several nations, the term has variously denoted police and military units working in concert, or the role of military and paramilitary forces (su ...
,
militias
A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...
and
insurgents
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irr ...
.
From 6 to 9 November 2006, he presented at the international panel at
Gadjah Mada University
Gadjah Mada University ( jv, ꦈꦤꦶꦥ꦳ꦼꦂꦱꦶꦠꦱ꧀ꦓꦗꦃꦩꦢ; id, Universitas Gadjah Mada, abbreviated as UGM) is a Public university, public research university located in Sleman Regency, Sleman, Yogyakarta (special region) ...
for adoption of
Yogyakarta Principles
The Yogyakarta Principles is a document about human rights in the areas of sexual orientation and gender identity that was published as the outcome of an international meeting of human rights groups in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in November 2006. Th ...
and has become one of the 29 signatories.
In February 2008, Nowak was a founding member of the 'Research Platform Human Rights in the European Context' at the University of Vienna.
Nowak is a supporter of the
Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reform in the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system.
As internationally renowned expert in the field of human rights, he carried out various independent expert functions for the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE as well as for NGOs and in the corporate sector. The most important expert functions are the following:
* 1986–1993: Member of the Austrian Delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights
* 1993: Coordinator of NGO-Input into the Second World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna
* 1993–2001: Expert Member of the UN Working Group on Involuntary or Enforced Disappearances
* 1994–1997: UN Expert in charge of the Special Process on Missing Persons or Enforced Disappearances
* since 1995: Member and Honorary Member of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Geneva
* 1996–2003: Judge at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo
* 2000–2015: Head of an Independent Human Rights Commission at the Austrian Ministry of Interior and the Austrian Ombudsman Board (National Preventive Mechanism)
* 2001–2006: UN Expert on Disappearances
* 2002–2006: Member of the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights
* 2004–2010: United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
* 2008–2010: Member and Rappeorteur of a Panel of Eminent Persons
* since 2010: Vice-President of the Austrian UNESCO-Commission
* since 2011: Member of the Advisory Board of ECCHR, Berlin
* 2012–2017: Vice-Chair of the Management Board of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, Vienna
* since 2012: Chair of an International Review Committee on assessing compliance by the Government of Taiwan with the two UN Human Rights Covenants
* since 2012: Member of the OMV Advisory Board for Resourcefulness
* since 2016: Independent Expert leading the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty
Nowak is author of more than 600 publication in the field of constitutional, administrative and international law, human rights as well as development studies.
Key publications:
* 2003: Introduction to the International Human Rights Regime, Leiden (Spanish translation 2009, Chinese translation 2010), 365 pages
* 2005: UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – CCPR Commentary, 2nd edition, Kehl am Rhein/Strassbourg/Arlington 1989, 946 pages
* 2008: The United Nations Convention against Torture – A Commentary (together with Elizabeth McArthur), Oxford, 1649 pages
* 2012: All Human Rights for All – Vienna Manual on Human Rights (edited together with Karolina Januszewski, Tina Hofstaetter), Vienna/Graz, 672 pages
* 2015: Menschenrechte – Eine Antwort auf die wachsende oekonomische Ungleichheit, Vienna/Hamburg, 176 pages
* 2017: Human Rights or Global Capitalism, The Limits of Privatisation, Pennsylvania, 256 pages
* 2017: Torture – An Expert's Confrontation with an Everyday Evil, Pennsylvania, 191 pages (forthcoming)
Honours
In 1994, Nowak was awarded the UNESCO Prize for the Teaching of Human Rights (honorable mention), in recognition of the outstanding contribution to the development of the teaching of human rights.
In 2007, he received the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights for outstanding achievements for services to international human rights and the
University of Oslo’s Human Rights Award for his "defense of fundamental human rights" in 2013.
In 2014, Manfred Nowak was honored with the
Otto Hahn Peace Medal.
Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold
intlaw.univie.ac.at
See also
* Enhanced interrogation techniques
*Extraordinary rendition
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpos ...
*War on Terror
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nowak, Manfred
United Nations Special Rapporteurs on torture
Living people
1950 births
Academics of the University of Vienna
20th-century Austrian lawyers
Austrian human rights activists
People from Bad Aussee
University of Vienna alumni
Columbia University alumni
21st-century Austrian lawyers