Felice Gaer

Felice Gaer is the Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. "She is the Director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights of the American Jewish Committee. She is a member of the Committee Against Torture, a 10-person United Nations supervisory body that reviews reports by governments on their compliance with the Convention Against Torture, a treaty ratified by over 120 countries. Elected in 1999, she is the first American to serve on the Committee. ...

"Felice Gaer was appointed as a public member of nine U.S. delegations to UN human rights negotiations between 1993 and 1999, including the UN Commission on Human Rights, the World Conference on Women (1995), and the World Conference on Human Rights (1993).

"She is a member of the board of directors of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation; the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute; and the International League for Human Rights, of which she is Vice President. Since 1994, she has been a member of the International Human Rights Council of the Carter Center at Emory University and is a member of the steering committee of Human Rights Watch/Europe and Asia. In 1998, Ms. Gaer was chair of the Steering Committee for the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a coalition of more than 100 organizations. She was president of the International Friends of the Chilean Human Rights Commission (1985 to 1990). She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Felice Gaer served as executive director of European programs of the United Nations Association of the USA from 1991 to 1992. She was executive director of the International League for Human Rights from 1982-1991, and prior to that, program officer at the Ford Foundation, 1974-1981." 


 * Commissioner, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom