Raji Sourani, The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza Under the Israeli Blockade

Time: 2010 May 25 14:30 - 15:30
Summary:

PRESS CONFERENCE
Raji Sourani
Lawyer of Gaza Strip,
Founder and Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights

Language:

The speech and Q & A will be in English

Description:

The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza Under the Israeli Blockade

Raji Sourani, a well-known human rights lawyer in the occupied Palestinian territories and founder of the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, will come to the Club to talk about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza Strip. Specifically, he will give detailed accounts of the situation in the Gaza Strip and the humanitarian crisis that has evolved as a result of the Israeli blockade of the last three years. He will also comment on the legal aspects of this.

Raji Sourani was born in 1953 in Gaza. He has a degree in Law from Alexandria. He has been arrested several times and has received several awards for his human rights activities. He is a board member of various Palestinian consultative committees and was elected as a commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists. He has given lectures in the United States, Europe, Asia and other areas on the topic of the rule of law and human rights.

He was the Director of the Gaza Centre for Rights and Law from 1991 to 1995. Prior to this, he established his own law firm in 1983 to defend Palestinians in Israeli Military Courts. In the course of his work was arrested both by the Israeli and Palestinian authorities numerous times. In 1988, he was an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights in 2002, a Human Rights Prize awarded by the Republic of France in 1996 and a joint laureate of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial for Human Rights Award in 1991. He studied law at Beirut and Alexandria Universities.