Manfred Nowak | |
|---|---|
 At Salzburg Global Seminar 2007 | |
| Born | 26 June 1950 Bad Aussee, Austria |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna (LL.D.), Columbia University (LL.M.) |
| Occupation(s) | Secretary General, Global Campus of Human Rights, Professor of International Human Rights, University of Vienna |
| Title | Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. |
Manfred Nowak (born 26 June 1950 in Bad Aussee) is an Austrian human rights expert, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. He is Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights (formerly European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation, EIUC) in Venice, Italy,[1] Professor of International Human Rights, and Scientific Director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.[2] He is also co-founder and former Director of 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.[3]
Nowak was a student of Felix Ermacora, and cooperated with him until Ermacora's death in 1995. They co-founded the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Menschenrechte (with Hannes Tretter) in 1992.
In addition to his function as Professor of Constitutional and International Law and Human Rights at the University of Vienna, Nowak was:
Since 2016, he is the Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice, Italy, which is responsible for eight Master's programmes on human rights 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,[4] 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.[5]
In September 2006, he alleged that torture may be more of a problem in Iraq since the Iraq War than under Saddam Hussein's regime. Much of the torture, he argued, is carried out by security forces, militias and insurgents.[6]
From 6 to 9 November 2006, he presented at the international panel at Gadjah Mada University for adoption of Yogyakarta Principles and has become one of the 29 signatories.[7]
In February 2008, Nowak was a founding member of the 'Research Platform Human Rights in the European Context' at the University of Vienna.[8]
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:
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:
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.[9]
In 2014, Manfred Nowak was honored with the Otto Hahn Peace Medal.[10]
