Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Oslo Freedom Forums

In 2005, filmmaker and human rights advocate Thor Halvorssen founded the Human Rights Foundation. This organization held its first conference, the Oslo Freedom Forum, in May 2009.

The goal was to bring together former heads of state, Nobel Laureates and prisoners of conscience, joining them with a selection of business, political and cultural leaders and authors. Among those in attendance were Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, and Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. The second conference was held in April 2010. This time the speakers included Lech Walesa, Jody Williams and Jacqueline Moudeina.

May of 2011 saw the third Oslo Freedom Forum, featuring international speakers including Iran's Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, WikiLeaks whistleblower Julian Assange and Canadian public intellectual John Ralston Saul.

This year one of several topics of discussion was the impact than individuals can have on society. If Thor Halvorssen's experience is anything to go by, that's quite a lot.

Calling last month's UN anti-racism conference Durban III a "weapon of mass distraction" in the Huffington Post, Halvorssen organized a parallel summit, We Have a Dream, to be held across the street involving an international coalition of NGOs. Speeches from that event have been posted on YouTube.

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