Juan E. Méndez

Juan Ernesto Méndez ( Juan E. Méndez ) ( born December 11, 1944 in Lomas de Zamora) is an Argentine jurist, who works for human rights, against torture and genocide.

Life

Juan E. Méndez graduated in 1970 at the Catholic Stella Maris University in Mar del Plata, a study of law and studied there until 1971 Political Science at the former provincial university, he worked in the following years as a lawyer for labor and political prisoners in Argentina. During the military dictatorship of Juan Méndez this activity was tortured for from August 1975 to February 1977Gefangener of the regime and was. In 1976, Amnesty International began for him and declared him a prisoner of conscience, a term coined by Peter Benenson in 1961 for of nonviolent political prisoners.

After his release Méndez settled with his family in the late 1970s in the United States. He continued his studies in Washington and worked in the next fifteen years for Human Rights Watch, most recently in a leading position. From 1996 to 1999 he worked for the Inter- American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica. In the following years until 2004, he taught law at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and led the center for human and civil rights. From 2000 to 2003 Méndez worked for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and in 2002 was its president.

Méndez taught at Georgetown University Law Center and the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, the University of Oxford and the Academy on Human Rights at the American University in Washington. In 2007 he received an honorary doctorate from the Université du Québec à Montréal.

From 2004 to 2007 Méndez was Special Rapporteur on the Prevention of Genocide at the United Nations. Since November 2010 he has been UN Special Rapporteur on torture and thus the successor of Manfred Nowak.

Juan Méndez is married and has three children.

Remarks on the subject of human rights

Although based in the United States, Méndez criticized not only the states in other states, but also the policy of the U.S. after the attacks of 11 September 2001. The war on terror has led to a setting that confront the torture permissive. Such an attitude of the most powerful nation in the world have a devastating impact on the fight against torture.

In October 2011, Méndez said before the Third General Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations in favor of a ban or a substantial limitation of solitary confinement. The known under various names form of detention could cause severe psychological consequences, should not be located and would run counter to the goal of rehabilitation for minors and the mentally ill. He also announced a report on the case of U.S. soldier Bradley Manning, who was in solitary confinement for over eight months. Méndez had been denied an unsupervised visit to the prisoners. In March 2012, he criticized the treatment of Manning as " cruel, inhuman and humiliating ".

Quote

In an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard is Méndez voiced his appointment in November 2010 about the relationship between his own experience and his work:

"Every single torture experience brings back the memory of what was done to me. But in a positive way: I 've seen what family, friends, lawyers, government institutions can do to protect people from torture. I do not believe that the experience makes me more determined than those who have not suffered torture and get involved. But it makes it a personal thing. Our children and grandchildren have the right to live in a world without torture. "

Awards

• Monsignor Oscar A. Romero Award for Leadership in Service to Human Rights at the University of Dayton, 2000
• Jeanne & Joseph Sullivan Award from the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights, 2003
• Skoll Award from the Skoll Foundation for work at the International Center for Transitional Justice, an NGO which he was president; along with Paul van Zyl, 2009
• Goler T. Butcher Medal - the American Society of International Law for " excellence in the field of human rights", 2010

Writings (selection )

• Preface (English ): William F. Schulz: The phenomenon of torture: . Readings and commentary, pp. xiii ff University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2007, ISBN 9780812219821 Online. Limited preview on Google Book Search
• An Emerging 'Right to Truth: ' Latin - American Contributions, in: Legal Institutions and Collective Memories ( Suzanne Karstedt, Hart Publishing 2009).
• Preface: Genocide in Guatemala, in: Quiet Genocide: Guatemala 1981-83 ( Etelle Higonnet, Transaction 2009).
• Individual Accountability for Human Rights Violations, in: Global Standards, Local Action: 15 Years Vienna World Conference on Human Rights (Wolfgang Benedek et al, Intersentia 2009. ).
• Prevention of Genocide and Its Challenges, in: Standing for Change in Peacekeeping Operations: Project for a UN Emergency Peace Service ( Kavitha Suthanthiraraj and Manah Quinn, Global Action to Prevent War 2009). online: (PDF, 3.0 MB)
• Juan E. Mendez, Ian Martin, Marjory Wentworth: Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0230112339. Library of Congress Online Catalog