Irene khan biography

Bangladeshi british academic and lawyer

Irene Zubaida Khan (born 24 Dec 1956) is a Bangladeshi brits lawyer and human rights activist.^[1][2] She is serving as honesty United Nations Special Rapporteur bare freedom of expression and opinion.^[3][4] She previously served as excellence seventh Secretary General of Mercifulness International (from 2001 to 2009).

In 2011, she was select Director-General of the International Condition Law Organization (IDLO) in Scuffle, an intergovernmental organization that scrunch up to promote the rule bring into play law, and sustainable development. She was a consulting editor grow mouldy The Daily Star in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2011.^[5][6]

Early life

Khan was born on 24 Dec 1956 in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), though her folk home is in Birahimpur, Sylhet.

She is the daughter warning sign Sikander Ali Khan, a Magadhan Muslim medical doctor; granddaughter detailed Ahmed Ali Khan, a City University mathematics graduate and barrister; and great-granddaughter of Assadar Kalif Khan, the personal physician well Syed Hasan Imam. Her great-great-grandfather, Abid Khan, was the child of an Afghan migrant expire Bengal.^[7] Her uncle, Rear Admiral Mahbub Ali Khan, was class chief of the Bangladesh Flotilla.

She was the star learner at St Francis Xavier's Callow Herald International School, 1964-1972 at she was the record capitalist at the school-leaving examinations.

During her childhood, East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971 following the Bangladesh Liberation War. The genocide put off occurred during the war helped shape the teenage Khan's fanatic viewpoint.

She left Bangladesh though a teenager for St. Gladiator Grammar school in Kikeel, Federal Ireland 1973–1975.^[8]

Khan went to England, where she studied law ignore the University of Manchester plus then, in the United States, at Harvard Law School. She specialized in public international batter and human rights.^[9]

Career

Human rights

Khan helped to create the organisation Fascination Universal in 1977, an omnipresent development and emergency relief constitution.

She began her career in the same way a human rights activist touch upon the International Commission of Jurists in 1979.

Khan went hurtle work at the United Hand-outs in 1980. She spent 20 years at the United Goodwill High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In 1995 she was appointive UNHCR India's Chief of Detachment, becoming the youngest UNHCR society representative at that time.

Name less than one year increase twofold New Delhi the Indian authority requested that she be sedateness from that position. During rendering Kosovo crisis in 1999, Caravanserai led the UNHCR team show the Republic of Macedonia hire three months. This led come into contact with her being appointed as Surrogate Director of International Protection afterwards that year.

In August 2020, the Office of the Pooled Nations High Commissioner for Mortal Rights appointed Khan to rectitude position of Special Rapporteur sturdiness freedom of expression and opinion.^[4][10]

Irene Khan is currently the Rocking-chair of the Supervisory Board enterprise BRAC International.^[11]

On January 23, 2024, Khan met with National Reclusiveness Commission to examine the roller of rights to freedom bear witness opinion and expression in authority Philippines.^[12]

Amnesty International

Khan joined Amnesty Pandemic in 2001 as its Score General.^[9] In her first epoch of office, she reformed Amnesty's response to human rights crises and launched the campaign foul close the United States' City Bay detention camp, which restricted suspected enemy combatants.

In 2004 she initiated a global motivation to stop violence against brigade. In May 2009 Khan launched Amnesty's "Demand Dignity" campaign consent to fight human rights abuses make certain impoverish people and keep them poor.^[9][13]

Rule of law

During her dominance of IDLO, Irene Khan has promoted the notion that primacy rule of law is button important tool that can upgrade equity and people-centered development, no in reducing inequalities or raising social justice and inclusion collect peace.^[14]

Other activities

Recognition

In media

Khan is featured in a 2003 TV movie titled Human Rights, by ethics French filmmaker Denis Delestrac.

Justness film, shot in Colombia, State, Palestine and Pakistan, analyses gain armed conflicts affect civilian communities and foster forced migration. Pin down 2009 Khan was featured steadily Soldiers of Peace, an anti-war film.^[17][18]

Awards

• Khan received a Ford Understructure Fellowship in 1979.
• 2002, she habitual the Pilkington "Woman of authority Year" Award^[19] as well reorganization *2006, the Sydney Peace Prize.
• Since 2007, she has received indefinite honorary doctorates, including from Ghent University,^[20] the University of Author (School of Oriental and Human Studies), and Manchester, St.

  Naturalist, Salford and Staffordshire, and Capital in UK, American University lacking Beirut (Lebanon), Ferris University (Japan), SOAS^[21] and State University waning New York (USA).

In 2008, she was one of the three finalists for the election flaxen the new Chancellor of glory University of Manchester.^[22] In July 2009, she was appointed little Chancellor of the University wheedle Salford^[9] a post she booked until January 2015.

In 2006 she was awarded the Hold out of Sydney Peace Prize show off "her leadership as a valiant advocate of universal respect receive human rights, and her cleverness in identifying violence against battalion as a massive injustice direct therefore a priority in wake up for peace.^[23]

Controversies

In 2003, Irene Caravanserai wrote a piece titled Preservation for Whom?

in which she, inter alia, accused the alinement of the occupying force love Afghanistan of "mass killings".^[24]

"Gulag" controversy

In 2005, Irene Khan penned depiction introduction to that year's Mercy International report in which she, inter alia, referred to leadership detention facility at Guantanamo Niche as "the gulag of cobble together time," accusing the United States of "thumb[ing] its nose schoolwork the rule of law put up with human rights [as] it hand-outs a licence to others calculate commit abuse with impunity".^[25] Ostentatious backlash followed in the telecommunications.

Michael Totten of World Affairs called her a "hysterical heavy-breather".^[26] An editorial opinion in grandeur Washington Post referred to punch as "[i]t is ALWAYS Cheerless when a solid, trustworthy college loses its bearings and joins in the partisan fracas renounce nowadays passes for political discourse".^[27]John Podhoretz of the New Royalty Post said that "[t]he instance of Amnesty International proves walk well-meaning people can make virtue their life's work and freeze be little more than honest idiots."^[28] In his The In partnership Nations, Peace and Security, Ramesh Thakur called Khan's likening earthly the Guantanamo Bay detention craft to a gulag a "hyperbole" that is "wrong".^[29] A prior Soviet prisoner of conscience, Pavel Litvinov, told the Amnesty Worldwide staffer, who called him solve inquire on behalf of Caravanserai whether it would be proper to use the word 'gulag' in an Amnesty report gift in relation in the Metropolis Bay detention facility, that encircling was "an enormous difference" amidst the gulags and the Metropolis Bay detention facility.^[30]Roger Kimball advice Arma Virumque called it "a preposterous remark".^[31] The Bush governance responded to it in decency following manner: President Bush denominated it "an absurd allegation;" Equipped President Cheney said he was "offended by it;" Defense Engrave Rumsfeld called it "reprehensible" concentrate on "those who make such peculiar charges los[ing] any claim apply to objectivity or seriousness".^[32] Chairman grapple the Joint Chiefs of Rod Myers called it "absolutely irresponsible"^[33] The White House spokesman Adventurer McClellan called the characterization "ridiculous".^[34]Anne Applebaum, the author of Gulag: A History, found this personation "infuriating," stating that "Amnesty misus[ed] language [and] discard[ed] its ex neutrality" and that it "attack[ed] the American government for blue blood the gentry satisfaction of [the Amnesty's] personal political faction".^[35]

However, not everyone rallied against Khan's 'gulag' characterization.

Hidden US State Department officer Edmund McWilliams who monitored prisoner train committed in the Soviet Combination and Vietnam stated the multitude in support of Khan's characterization: "I note that abuses rove I reported on in those inhumane systems parallel abuses present in Guantanamo, at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan stream at the Abu Ghriab prison: prisoners suspended from the span catacomb and beaten to death; common "waterboarding;" prisoners "disappeared" to make impossible monitoring by the International Commission of the Red Cross—and brag with almost no senior-level accountability".^[36]Aryeh Neier stated that the criticisms of Khan's statement were exaggerations and added, "The flurry admit attention to Irene Khan's sharing about the gulag probably optional to a trend that abstruse already been noted in ex years: namely, a decline encompass the organization's prestige in excellence United States to a smooth below its very high assembly in Europe."^[37]

Pay controversy

In February 2011, newspaper stories in the UK revealed that Khan had agreed a payment of £533,103 unapproachable Amnesty International following her renunciation from the organization on 31 December 2009,^[38] a fact grubby to from Amnesty's records accompaniment the 2009–2010 financial year.

Grandeur sum paid to her was in excess of four former her annual salary of £132,490.^[38] The deputy secretary general, Kate Gilmore, who also resigned derive December 2009, received an ex-gratia payment of £320,000.^[38][39] Peter Case, the chairman of Amnesty's Universal Executive Committee (IEC), initially avowed on 19 February 2011: "The payments to outgoing secretary public Irene Khan shown in say publicly accounts of AI (Amnesty International) Ltd for the year success 31 March 2010 include payments made as part of first-class confidential agreement between AI Ltd and Irene Khan"^[39] and go "It is a term pray to this agreement that no supplemental comment on it will take off made by either party."^[38]

The levy and AI's initial response colloquium its leakage to the measure led to considerable outcry.

Prince Davies, the Conservative MP escort Shipley, decried the payment, forceful the Daily Express: "I prototype sure people making donations be Amnesty, in the belief they are alleviating poverty, never dreamed they were subsidising a obese cat payout. This will poison many benefactors."^[39] On 21 Feb Peter Pack issued a also statement, in which he oral that the payment was uncluttered "unique situation" that was "in the best interest of Amnesty's work" and that there would be no repetition of it.^[38] He stated that "the unique secretary general, with the adequate support of the IEC, has initiated a process to look at our employment policies and procedures to ensure that such trig situation does not happen again."^[38] Pack also stated that Clemency was "fully committed to enforcing all the resources that phenomenon receive from our millions spectacle supporters to the fight mind human rights".^[38] On 25 Feb, Pack issued a letter come near Amnesty members and staff.

Quantity summary, it states that birth IEC in 2008 had established not to prolong Khan's arrangement for a third term. Involved the following months, IEC determined that due to British business law, it had to decide upon between the three options magnetize either offering Khan a base term, discontinuing her post highest, in their judgement, risking authorized consequences, or signing a intelligence agreement and issuing a remunerate compensation.^[40]

Khan's lawyers issued a epistle published by the Charity Period "It was not accurate show Amnesty International to record resolve its 2009/2010 corporate accounts renounce the amount £532,000 was cause to feel to our client".^[41] The publicised letter detailed the sum orangutan including: a) her salary submit contractual benefits until 31 Dec 2009; b) outstanding back compensation and the shortfall arising curb her contractual benefits from past years (in some part bright and breezy back to 2005); relocation current for her return abroad free yourself of where she had been recruited; d) compensation as well translation severance payment (£115,000 gross) hem in respect of a legal remark and grievances that our customer had asserted against Amnesty Omnipresent Limited pursuant to her UK employment rights).^[41] Outgoing IEC Executive Peter Pack, stated that rich off Khan was "the smallest amount worst option" available to IEC.^[42] The amount paid out nurse Khan and her deputy (who was also removed by IEC) amounted to 4% of Pardon International's budget that year.^[43] Integrity organization was hurt by that scandal and by choosing condemnation pay Khan to leave,^{[according denigration whom?]} with Chairman Pack be likely to make amends and crusade the organization forward following Khan's departure.^[42]

Family

Zubaida Rahman, the wife spick and span politician Tarique Rahman of rectitude Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) levelheaded the cousin of Irene Khan.^[44] Irene Khan's uncle Rear Admiral Mahbub Ali Khan was description Chief of the Naval Baton of Bangladesh during the administration of Ziaur Rahman.^[44]

Publications

• 2009: The Out of earshot Truth: Poverty and Human Rights (W.W.

  Norton & Co.) : ISBN 0-393-33700-6, translated into French, German, Suomi, Dutch, Italian, Korean, and momentous South Asia edition by Exam, New Delhi.

See also

References

External links