Posts Tagged ‘Nigel Rodley’

Sir Nigel Rodley – a giant human rights scholar – passed away

January 26, 2017

It is with great sadness that I learnt of the death of my old friend Nigel Rodley at the age of 75. From 1973 to 1990, he was the first Legal Adviser of Amnesty International (I was Executive Secretary of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva at the time) and in that capacity we met often and worked together on many projects, in particular the coming about of the International Convention Against Torture. Nigel went on to become the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture, President of the International Commission of Jurists, Chairman of the UN Human Rights Committee and a long-time professor and Chair of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. We saw each other last year at the anniversary party of our common friend Leah Levin and he was as sharp as ever. Reed Brody on his Facebook page wrote rightly: “Sir Nigel Rodley, one of the legends in the field of international human rights“. We will miss him.

If you would like to see and hear him, go to the minutes 34-48 in the video report of 2016 contained in: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/02/10/video-to-learn-more-about-the-nels… Read the rest of this entry »

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Video to learn more about the Nelson Mandela Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners

February 10, 2016

On 4 February 2016 Penal Reform International, the Quaker UN Office, and the Permanent Representations of Switzerland and Uruguay to the UN in Geneva, invited delegates, representatives of NGOs and interested stakeholders to a briefing in the Palais des Nations in Geneva on the recently adopted revised UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the ‘Nelson Mandela Rules’.
An expert panel provided an overview of the revision process and the significance of this set of standards, and then focused on a number of critical areas of the Rules that were updated. It sought to initiate discussion on the implementation of the Nelson Mandela Rules and to start collecting recommendations and good practice in this regard.

The panel was moderated by Laurel Townhead, Quaker UN Office, and included:
· Representative of the Permanent Mission of Switzerland
· Philipp Meissner, UN Office on Drugs and Crime
· Robert Husbands, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
· Nigel Rodley, Chair, Essex University Human Rights Centre
· Stefan Enggist, World Health Organization
· Andrea Huber, Penal Reform International.

The video – prepared by True Heroes Films (THF) – is on the long side (1 1/2 hours) but is excellent for people who want to learn more about the revised standards.

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