World Press Freedom Day 2017

Dr. Agnès Callamard is the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and has a distinguished career in human rights and humanitarian work globally, in civil society organizations, the United Nations and in academia. She is the Director of Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression, an initiative seeking to advance understanding of the international and national norms and institutions that define and protect freedom of expression and information in an inter-connected global community with major common challenges to address.

Previously, Dr Callamard spent nine years as the Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, the international human rights organization promoting freedom of expression globally. She also founded and led Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (now CHS Alliance), the first international self-regulatory body for humanitarian agencies. She was Chef de Cabinet for the Secretary General of Amnesty International (AI) and AI’s Research-Policy Coordinator, leading AI’s policy work and research on women’s human rights.  Prior to this, she taught and conducted research on international refugee movements for the Center for Refugee Studies at York University in Toronto.
She has led human rights investigations in more than 30 countries and published extensively, in both English and French, on human rights, women’s rights, freedom of expression, refugee movements and the methodology of human rights investigation. In particular, she has authored or directed volumes, on monitoring political killings, excessive use of force, and torture as well as on sexual violence in armed conflicts.