A side-event to the International Religious Freedom Ministerial

A Beleaguered Community. The Growing Target Killings,  Violence, Legal Discrimination and Social Exclusion  of The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

November 19th 2020
2:30 pm – 4:00 pm EST
8:30 pm – 10:00 pm CET

Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett serves as President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, established in 2008 to continue the legacy of her father, the late Congressman Tom Lantos, who served as Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the US Congress. Congressman Lantos was the founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and was widely acknowledged as one of our nation’s most eloquent and forceful leaders on behalf of human rights and justice. Under her leadership, The Lantos Foundation has rapidly become a distinguished and respected voice on key human rights concerns ranging from advancing rule of law globally and fighting for Internet freedom in closed societies to combatting the persistent and growing threat of antiSemitism and Holocaust denial.
Mr. Ahmed Shahedd assumed his mandate as Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2016. Mr. Shaheed is Deputy Director of the Essex Human Rights Centre. He has twice held the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Maldives and led MAldives’ effort to embrace international human rights standards between 2003 and 2011. In 2015 Mr. Shaheed won the UN Foundation Leo Nevas Human Rights (Global Leadership) Award. He became a Member of the United Nations Human Rights Council with e reccord number of votes.

Ambassador Sam Brownback was sworn in as US Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom on February 1, 2018. He served as Governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018. Previously he served as a U.S. Senator (1996-2011) and a U.S. Representative in the House of Representatives (1995-1996) from Kansas. While a member of the Senate, he worked actively on the issue of religious freedom in multiple countries and was a key sponsor of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. He also served as Kansas Secretary of Agriculture (1986-1993) and was a White House Fellow in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (1990-1991). Prior to his public service, Ambassador Brownback was a private attorney in Kansas and taught agricultural law at Kansas State University, co-authoring two books on the subject. He earned a B.S. from Kansas State University and a J.D. from the University of Kansas. He and his wife Mary have five children.

Mr. Imran Ahmad Khan is the Member of Parliament for Wakefield, who was elected at the 2019 General Election with 21,283 votes.

Imran was born in Wakefield and attended Silcoates School, before going to university at the Pushkin Institute in Russia to study the Russian language, and graduating from King’s College in London with a bachelor’s degree in War Studies.

Before entering Parliament, Imran worked for the United Nations as a special assistant for political affairs in Mogadishu. He is an expert in counter-terrorism.

Mr. Aaron Rhodes is an international human rights activist and writer based in Hamburg, Germany. He is President of the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe, an independent nongovernmental organization. Rhodes served as Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) between 1993 and 2007, during which period the IHF was engaged inter alia in human rights challenges in the Balkans, in Chechnya, and in Central Asia, and the organization expanded significantly. He has been active in civil society campaigns vis a vis the Human Dimension of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, the European Union and the United Nations.

 

 

Mr Ján Figeľ Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief outside the EU (2016-19) & EU Commissioner for Education, Culture & Youth (2004-9)

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