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UN Watch Assembles Future Activist Leaders at Human Rights Council

UN Watch assembled young human rights leaders at the United Nations, empowering new voices who are shaping the debate and the future of human rights education and activism on the ground.

Moderated by UN Watch’s Daniel Radomski, the panel was an official side event of the Human Rights Council, and featured:

• Husna Jalal, Afghan women’s rights activist who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban returned to power and now leads initiatives providing young Afghan women with access to education and a platform to shape their future.
• Hanna Veiler, President of the European Union of Jewish Students, representing more than 160,000 Jewish students across Europe, and a leading student voice for the protection of democratic values on university campuses.
• Aram Aqil, Kurdish human rights defender and former ISIS hostage, abducted while documenting ISIS crimes in Syria as a video journalist and imprisoned for 280 days.
• Shahrzad Eden Osterer, Iranian journalist who left to Germany as a young woman and brings the voices of Iranian civil society to wider audiences through her reporting on repression, women’s rights and freedom.

“If Afghan women cannot enter universities, we cannot simply wait for the doors to reopen. We must ask how education can reach them now.”

Afghan women’s rights activist Husna Jalal       “Jewish students across Europe have faced harassment, intimidation, exclusion and, in some cases, severe physical violence.” Hanna Veiler, President of the European Union of Jewish Students       “I’ve spent twenty years of my life under a dictatorial regime. Democracy and human rights are privileges that cannot be taken for granted, given that millions of people are deprived of them.” Aram Aqil, Kurdish journalist and former ISIS hostage     “I grew up under an Islamist dictatorship, in a society in which fundamental rights were systematically restricted and ideology reached into almost every part of public life — including education.” Iranian-German journalist Shahrzad Eden Osterer