Professor Manfred Nowak: Children Deprived of Liberty, Human Dignity & the Future of Human Rights

Professor Manfred Nowak has helped shape international human rights law for more than four decades. An Austrian human rights lawyer, academic, and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred has spent his career investigating some of the world's most hidden human rights violations. His work has taken him into prisons, detention centers, and conflict zones across the globe. Along the way, he has listened to the stories of torture survivors, families searching for disappeared loved ones, and children living without freedom. Those experiences would go on to shape both his scholarship and advocacy, including his leadership of the landmark United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. Today, he serves as Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights. Their longstanding connection extends to the University of Pennsylvania Press. Manfred is the author of Human Rights or Global Capitalism: The Limits of Privatization, published in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series, where Professor Bert B. Lockwood serves as Series Editor. In this conversation, Manfred reflects on the moments and people that shaped his understanding of justice, dignity, and human rights. We discuss what it means to deprive a child of liberty and why those systems often remain hidden from public view. You'll hear us explore the role of human rights education and the importance of artistic freedom.  We focus on the challenges facing the international human rights movement at a time of growing global instability. We are especially grateful to Manfred for sharing personal reflections from his decades of human rights work, including his firsthand experiences interviewing torture survivors and children deprived of liberty. His insights offer a rare window into both the progress that has been made and the work that still lies ahead. SHOW NOTES Episode Transcript Here Professor Manfred Nowak, Global Campus of Human Rights Manfred Nowak, Independent Expert for the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty Report & Books Report: United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty Human Rights or Global Capitalism: The Limits of Privatization Torture: An Expert's Confrontation with an Everyday Evil The Routledge Companion to Music and Human Rights