Keynote discussion: Defending human rights

• Luise Amtsberg has been the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Assistance since January 2022. As Human Rights Commissioner, she liaises closely with many other institutions active in the field of human rights and humanitarian assistance, including other ministries, the German Bundestag and international organisations. She also acts as an interface between the Federal Foreign Office and civil society. Amtsberg has been a member of the German Bundestag for Alliance 90/The Greens since 2013. In the current legislative period, she is a member of the Committee on Cultural and Media Affairs. Previously, she was the spokesperson on refugee policy for her parliamentary group. From 2009 to 2012, she was a member of the state parliament in Schleswig-Holstein. She holds a Master's degree in Islamic Studies, Political Science and Protestant Theology.

• Hanaa Hakiki directs the Border Justice Program of the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), an NGO addressing grave human rights violations through transnational legal interventions. Since 2014, her work has focused on border rights, and more specifically on litigating the informal and violent handling of migrants by states at European borders (“pushbacks”) in front of international bodies. She has supported cases against Spain, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia and Slovenia in front of the European Court of Human Rights and UN treaty bodies. Previously, Hanaa trained as a lawyer in England, where she specialised in litigation against state violence, detention and institutional racism. 

• Carla Hinrichs is a German climate protection activist and the spokesperson for the resistance movement Last Generation. Hinrichs grew up in Bremen and became politically active with Amnesty International while still at school. She studied law law at the University of Bremen but interrupted her studies shortly before her first state examination to work full-time against the escalation of the climate crisis. The group Extinction Rebellion introduced Hinrichs to climate activism in 2019. Hinrichs has served in the movements leadership circle. she was sentenced to a fine of 6,000 euros and a prison sentence of two months suspended for three years by German courts for taking part in street blockades. The judgements are not yet final. In May 2023, the police searched Hinrichs' home as part of investigations by the Munich Public Prosecutor General's Office against members of the Last Generation on suspicion of forming a criminal organisation. In the 2024 European elections, Hinrichs stood in third place on the list with the newly founded protest party ‘Parlament Aufmischen’.

• Mary Lawlor, from Dublin, Ireland, has worked with human rights defenders for over twenty years, and has been engaged in human rights work for double that. She became a Board member of the Irish Section of Amnesty International in 1975, was elected Chair from 1983 -1987 and became its Director in 1988. She founded Front Line Defenders in 2001 to focus specifically on the protection of human rights defenders at risk. As Executive Director from 2001-2016, Lawlor had a key role in the development of Front Line Defenders into the prominent international organisation it is today. On 1 May 2020, she took up the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, where she has adopted a people-centred approach to the mandate. Lawlor is also currently an Adjunct Professor of Business and Human Rights in the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), School of Business, Trinity College Dublin and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates in Law from University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin. She is a member of the Advisory Board of both the School of Business of Trinity and the Centre for Ethics in Public Life, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin. Among her awards are the French insignia of Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur, the Franco-German Award for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, and the 2023 Irish Red Cross Lifetime Achievement Award.

Chair

• Violeta Moreno-Lax is Visiting Professor at the Hertie School. She is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona and Full Professor of Law (on special leave) at Queen Mary University of London, where she serves as inaugural director of the (B)OrderS Centre for the Legal Study of Borders and Migration. She has published extensively in international and EU law at the intersection with border violence, global security, forced displacement, and human rights. As a world-leading expert in these fields, she regularly consults for UN agencies, the EU institutions, and other organisations.

Welcome remarks

• Cornelia Woll is President of the Hertie School and Professor of International Political Economy. Woll came to the Hertie School in 2022 from Sciences Po in Paris, where she had served in many roles since 2006, including President of the Academic Board, Professor of Political Science, Co-Director of the Max Planck Sciences Po Center. She has been a visiting professor at Goethe University Frankfurt and Harvard University. Woll holds a habilitation in political science from the University of Bremen (2013), a bi-national PhD from Sciences Po and the University of Cologne (2005), and an MA and a BA in international relations and political science from the University of Chicago.