Irene Khan

Irene Khan, November 2003

Irene Zubaida Khan (born December 24, 1956 in Dhaka ) is a lawyer, human rights activist and author from Bangladesh . From August 2001 to December 2009 she was the seventh International Secretary General of Amnesty International (AI). She was the first woman and the first person of Muslim religion and Asian origin to hold this office. She previously worked for the UN refugee agency , UNHCR .

Life

The first years

In Bangladesh , which is characterized by poverty and civil war, Irene Khan grew up in a relatively wealthy family. Her father was a doctor and she has two sisters. During this time, East Pakistan gained independence and was named Bangladesh. The civil war and the violations of human rights at that time shaped the perspective of the young activist Irene Z. Khan. She attended a Catholic high school; her classmates belonged to different religions. In 1971, during the Civil War, her parents sent her with one of their sisters to a Catholic boarding school for girls in Northern Ireland in order to complete their schooling.

At the University of Manchester she studied law, which has interested her since childhood. In the United States , she continued her studies at Harvard Law School , which specializes in international law and human rights . Because Khan prefers to work directly with people and thus change their lives, she helped found the development organization Concern Universal in 1977 and began her work as a human rights activist on the International Commission of Jurists in 1979 .

Career at the UN

From 1980 she worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) . From 1991 to 1995 , Khan was the Senior Executive Officer of Sadako Ogata , the High Commissioner for Refugees. It was in 1995 appointed to the UNHCR Chief of Mission of India. This made her the youngest UNHCR representative of a country at the time. Three years later, Khan headed the UNHCR Center for Research and Documentation. During the Kosovo war in 1999, Khan headed the UNHCR working group in Macedonia . A year later she was appointed Deputy Director of International Protection .

Careers at Amnesty International

Irene Khan at the 2007 World Economic Forum

In August 2001, Khan succeeded Pierre Sané as general secretary at Amnesty International . She is the first woman, the first person of Asian descent and the first person of Muslim religion to hold the position of Amnesty International Secretary General.

She took over the leadership role of Amnesty as the organization, in its 40th anniversary year, went through a series of changes and renovations to adapt to current human rights abuses and the grave developments that followed September 11th .

In her first year in office, she reformed Amnesty's behavior in crisis situations. She personally conducted highly explosive missions to Pakistan during the bombing of Afghanistan , to Israel after the Israelis occupied Jenin , and to Colombia before the presidential elections in May 2003.

In December 2009 she resigned as Secretary General of Amnesty International.

Criticism was triggered by the increased pay for her final year of service in 2009, when, according to the Amnesty Financial Report 2009/2010, she was paid four times more than in 2008 (533,103 pounds, or around 632,000 euros). A corresponding secret clause in their contract, which Khan demanded and received, became known in February 2011.

Since May 2010 she works u. a. for the daily newspaper The Daily Star in Bangladesh. She is also on the board of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue .

Awards

• Sydney Peace Prize (2006)

Fonts

• The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights (2009, German translation: The unheard-of truth: Armut und Menschenrechte , 2010, ISBN 978-3-10-041514-1 )

literature

• Bettina Flitner : women with visions - 48 Europeans. With texts by Alice Schwarzer . Knesebeck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89660-211-X , pp. 130-133.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Golden Handshake, Der Tagesspiegel , February 21, 2011
2. ↑ [1] , February 19, 2011
3. ^ Irene Khan joins The Daily Star , May 15, 2010

Web links

Commons : Irene Khan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Margrit Gerste: The fearless one . Whether in Burundi or Guantánamo: Those who fight for human rights experience hard times - like Irene Khan, head of Amnesty International. In: TIME NO. 22/2003 of May 22, 2003, p. 2