Theme 1: Raoul Wallenberg As a Paradigm of Moral Courage and Effective Action

Theme 2: The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights: Universal Lessons for the Preventing and Combating of Mass Atrocity in our Time

The RWCHR co-sponsored with March of the Living International and Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland an historic International Nuremberg Legal Symposium held at the University on May 4, 2016, under the theme “The Double Entendre of Nuremberg: The Nuremberg of Hate and the Nuremberg of Justice.” The conference took place on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the coming into effect of the Nuremberg Race Laws and the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. It brought together Supreme Court Justices including the Chief Justice of Rwanda, Ministers of Justice including Luis Moreno Ocampo (first special prosecutor of the International Criminal Court), diplomats, leading international human rights scholars and advocates like Professor Alan Dershowitz, Holocaust survivors, and students. The Keynote Lecture was delivered by Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella, who is also Honourary Co-Chair of the RWCHR. The Conference unanimously adopted the “Never Again Declaration”, a juridical template of lessons learned for the combatting of mass atrocity.

Theme 3: Promoting Democracy, Human Rights and International Justice; combating impunity of major human rights violators

The RWCHR led an international justice campaign with UN Watch and Human Rights Foundation to mobilize awareness of the plight and pain of political prisoners and their families while opposing the election of major human rights violator countries – responsible also for their imprisonment – to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

As part of this international justice campaign, the RWCHR convened a major event on Parliament Hill, bringing together the Co-Chairs of the Raoul Wallenberg All-Party Parliamentary Caucus for Human Rights, the families of political prisoners, and leading human rights activists and NGOs.

The event, which received widespread coverage, called for the release of political prisoners while calling also on the Government of Canada to lead the community of democracies in establishing a constituency of conscience to expose and unmask this culture of impunity at the UN, and act to end the moral and legal charade of rewarding rights violators with a seat on the Human Rights Council – a situation that is as outrageous as it is absurd. The RWCHR also hosted a press conference at the United Nations with a coalition of likeminded NGOs and leading human rights activists. Following the campaign, Russia lost its bid for a seat on the council, a major rebuke to its human rights record in general and atrocities in Aleppo in particular. 

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Theme 4: The internationalization of Advocacy on behalf of Political Prisoners – Raif Badawi as a case Study

The RWCHR is spearheading an international advocacy campaign for the release of imprisoned Saudi Blogger Raif Badawi, for whom Chair Irwin Cotler serves as international legal counsel. A recent Op-Ed by Professor Cotler setting out the case and cause of Badawi’s release was shared widely and translated in many different languages – including Arabic – and has secured the support of leading Arab human rights advocates, inter alia, in the gulf region.

A digital call for his release reached close to 1.5 million people and was joined by leaders of civil society and Parliaments from across the globe. The success of the international campaign has continued to grow, with Saudi Arabia having recently lost its bid for observer status at La Francophonie, with both Prime Minister Trudeau and Quebec Premier Couillard referencing Badawi’s continued imprisonment as the reason for Saudi Arabia’s exclusion.