Researchers and Scholars

In order to carry out the function of Secretary General successfully, he cooperates and interacts with a great number of different stakeholders: He is the head of some 30 staff of EIUC in the Monastery of San Nicolò at the Lido in Venice, he is responsible for the preparation and implementation of decisions of the governing bodies of EIUC (Assembly and Board of Administrators under the leadership of Dzidek Kedzia as President of EIUC), he cooperates with the coordinating universities of the Global Campus under the chair of Veronica Gomez, the EIUC Advisory Board and with the students of the various Master Programmes and more than 3,000 graduates who are represented by the Global Campus Alumni Associations.

In addition, he interacts with various institutions of the European Union, which is the main source of funding for EIUC/Global Campus, above all the Commission (DEVCO), the Parliament, the External Action Service (EEAS) and the Council Working Group COHOM, with other international organizations (e.g. UN, UNESCO, Council of Europe, OSCE), non-governmental organizations and development agencies (e.g. GIZ).

Manfred Nowak has a long history with the pioneering programme of the Global Campus, the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation (EMA): He was teaching already in the first programme in 1997, then representing the University of Vienna and acting as Austrian National Director until his appointment as Secretary General. He also served as Chair of EMA between the years 2000 and 2007. He was among the founders of EIUC in 2002 and also taught in other Master programmes of the Global Council, such as in Africa and South East Europe. His vision for the next years is to broaden the Global Campus network of currently 100 universities, to further integrate the various components of the Global Campus and to transform EIUC/Global Campus from a European-centred to a truly global institution with an effective global governance structure. At the same time, he wishes to further develop the seat of EIUC and the Global Campus in Venice, and the relationship with local partners with a special focus on the interaction between the arts and human rights. Most importantly, he feels that in a time of multiple economic, financial, climate and other global crises, which undermine the basic universal values of peace, democracy, global justice, human rights and the rule of law, academics have a particular responsibility to speak out and to strengthen human rights education at every level of human learning in order to foster a universal culture of human rights.

In addition to his function as Secretary General of EIUC/Global Campus, Manfred Nowak still has a part-time Professorship of International Human Rights at the University of Vienna (where he is head of the Vienna Master of Arts in Human Rights and two human rights research centres). Moreover, in October 2016 he was appointed as UN Expert to lead the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, a function he carries out in close cooperation with EIUC and the Global Campus participating universities as well as with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, which he founded in 1992 in Vienna.

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. His latest books deal with the human rights as an answer to growing economic inequality (Menschenrechte - Eine Antwort auf die wachsende ökonomische Ungleichheit, Konturen Hamburg 2016) and with the limits of privatization from a human rights perspective (Human Rights or Global Capitalism, Pennsylvania Press 2017).

In the past, Manfred Nowak also carried out various expert functions for the UN, the Council of Europe, the EU and other inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations. Most importantly, he served for many years in various functions as UN Expert on Enforced Disappearances (1993 to 2006), as one of eight international judges in the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo (1996 to 2003), and as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004 to 2010).