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List of Contributors

Manfred Nowak, Moritz Birk, Giuliana Monina

From: The United Nations Convention Against Torture and its Optional Protocol: A Commentary (2nd Edition)

Edited By: Manfred Nowak, Moritz Birk, Giuliana Monina

From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved.date: 01 December 2023

  • Margit Ammer is Senior Researcher at the department ‘Asylum, Anti-discrimination and Diversity’ at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights. Her main areas of expertise include the fields of asylum and migration as well as environment-related forms of mobility. She is lecturing on international human rights law, EU asylum and migration policy, and environment and human rights at the University of Vienna.

  • Moritz Birk is Head of the department ‘Human Dignity and Public Security’ at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights. He joined the Institute in 2009 as Assistant to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2010) and has since implemented numerous research and technical capacity projects on torture and ill-treatment worldwide. Before joining the Institute he worked with the UNHCR and human rights organizations in Ghana, Mexico, Senegal, and Sweden. He holds an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law, studied law in Germany and France and is certified as organizational consultant.

  • Kerstin Buchinger holds a position as a scientific legal officer at the Austrian Constitutional Court. She is currently being assigned referee to the Austrian Ombudsman Board (Austria’s NPM), where she is mainly entrusted with OPCAT issues. Before that, she worked as a legal researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights in Vienna with a research focus on asylum and anti-discrimination law.

  • Nora Katona holds a degree in law from the University of Vienna and a Master degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from the European Inter-University Centre in Venice. Currently, she works as a researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (Vienna, Austria) in the team Human Dignity and Public Security. Her research focuses on the prevention of torture and ill-treatment, protection of human rights in the criminal justice system as well as trafficking in human beings.

  • Stephanie Krisper completed her legal studies in Vienna and Paris as well as a master on human rights and democratization in Venice and Maastricht. She worked in humanitarian aid, refugee law, and as human rights expert for NGOs, the Foreign Ministry and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights where she assisted Manfred Nowak in his work on anti-torture by coordinating a national commission monitoring places of detention (later part of the Austrian NPM).

  • Johanna Lober LL.M. currently coordinates the component ‘dealing with the past’ in the GIZ-project to support stabilization and peace in Mali, where she advises the Commission for Truth, Justice and Reconciliation on a comprehensive reparation programme and commemoration policy. Previously, she worked as researcher, project expert, and co-team leader for the Human Dignity and Public Security Team at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (Vienna) on torture prevention and human rights in the context of security and justice sector reform. As former member of a Human Rights Monitoring Commission in Vienna, she has practical experience in monitoring the rights of persons in police detention. Holding an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law, her current interest focuses on transitional justice processes in context of fragility and ongoing conflict.

  • (p. xlvi) Giuliana Monina is researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights—Human Dignity and Public Security Department. She joined in 2016 and has since focused on several research projects on the topics of torture and ill-treatment as well as migration and asylum. She has completed her legal studies at the Universities of Bologna. Before the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, Giuliana was a practicing lawyer in Italy and has worked with several human rights organizations, including the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

  • Manfred Nowak was appointed as independent expert leading the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty in October 2016. He is Professor for International Human Rights at the University of Vienna, where he is the scientific director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Human Rights and co-director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights. In addition, he serves as Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice.

    He has carried out various expert functions for the UN, the Council of Europe, the EU, and other inter-governmental organizations. Most importantly, he served for many years in various functions as UN Expert on Enforced Disappearances (1993−2006) and as one of eight international judges in the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo (1996−2003). Most prominently, he served as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004−2010), where he also visited numerous institutions in all world regions where children were deprived of liberty in unimaginable conditions.

    Aside from Vienna University, Manfred Nowak was Professor of International Law and Human Rights at various prestigious universities, such as Utrecht, Lund, Stanford, and the Graduate Institute in Geneva, and has published more than 600 books and articles in this field, including various language editions of the CCPR-Commentary, a CAT-Commentary, and an introduction to the International Human Rights Regime.

  • Roland Schmidt is an associate researcher with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights. From 2006 to 2011, he worked as assistant to the institute’s director, Manfred Nowak, including his role as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Mr Schmidt participated in various UN fact-finding missions and contributed also to the first edition of the Commentary on the UN Convention against Torture. Furthermore, he focuses in his research on so-called ‘deeply divided societies’ and the role of political and legal institutions when it comes to attenuating intercommunal tensions.

  • Andrea Schüchner is a human rights-oriented philologist who has worked with the European Commission, the UNDPKO, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, and the German Center for International Peace Operations (ZIF) on topics of democratization, human rights in development, racism and xenophobia, and peace-building.

  • Gerrit Zach has a background in law and sociology and has been working on human rights and rule of law issues for over 10 years. She was with the Human Rights Department of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then spent two years in Afghanistan in international development on strengthening the rule of law, specifically the access to a lawyer. Gerrit worked with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights from 2014 to 2018 on torture prevention and human rights in the criminal justice system before joining the OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe in 2018.