Reform-minded

Nils Muiznieks has six years as the new commissioner for human rights to lend new direction to an office that is relatively unknown internationally. Combating racism and supporting equality are the 48-year-old's priorities. He aims to focus on groups that often lack mechanisms for support and protection, like children, women and the elderly.

The rights of social groups - from state-recognized minorities to illegal immigrants - will also be a focal point.

"Issues relating to the Roma will certainly be on the agenda," Muiznieks said.

But the political scientist also wants to establish new priorities for the office, which Muiznieks assumed on April 1.

"There have been enormous changes in the area of human rights, brought about by way of new technologies and forms of communication. We have to be active in these new arenas," he said, adding that the political situation has changed in so many member states that there is a particular need for action.

'The post-communist context'

Muiznieks is just the third person to hold the Council of Europe position, following Alvaro Gil-Robles from Spain and Thomas Hammarberg from Sweden. That makes the Latvian academic the first person with roots in a former communist country to serve as commissioner for human rights.

"It's important to me that there are people today that take up the issue of human rights and get to know Eastern European states as well as the post-communist context. For a long time, there have been commissions, authorities and other high officials from the West that came and wanted to show us how we should live," he said.

Muiznieks' election is significant for another reason: a large number of the human rights violations that the Council of Europe pursues and that land before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg are committed in Eastern European states. Russia's more than 1,200 human rights violations put it in third place behind Turkey and Italy in the court's statistics.

The purpose of the office is to preserve human rights in member states. Instruments available for achieving that goal include organizing studies or conferences, but the commissioner can also make symbolic visits or support institutions and individuals dedicated to the preservation of human rights.

Life-long calling

Nils Muiznieks has made fighting for human rights his career, initially as head of the Latvian Advanced Social and Political Research Institute and later as chair of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. He also served from 2002 to 2004 as Latvia's minister for social integration affairs.

The Council of Europe isn't foreign terrain for Muiznieks. He has come to Strasbourg regularly for years as part of his other posts, and knows the institution and its employees.

"Until now I was primarily involved in combating racism. But I have experience in all areas because I was head of a human rights NGO and worked as a minister in the government. I hope that those experiences will help me in my new role," he said.

International background

Leading an international organization is a natural extension of Muiznieks' career thus far, which has taken him abroad again and again. His experiences in the USA, where he was also born, have had an especially strong influence on him. There he studied at elite institutions like Berkeley and Princeton.

"There are people that don't like my American accent when I speak English," he said with a chuckle.

Alongside his native Latvian, he also speaks Russian and French.

"I studied in France. My wife is half-German and half-Latvian, and I worked for 'Radio Liberty' in Munich," he noted.

Muiznieks hopes that his international background will help him in his work with the representatives of the 47 Council of Europe countries.

Author: Daphne Grathwohl / gsw
Editor: Spencer Kimball