Adam Bodnar | |
---|---|
Minister of Justice Public Prosecutor General | |
Assumed office 13 December 2023 | |
Prime Minister | Donald Tusk |
Preceded by | Marcin Warchoł |
Member of the Senate | |
Assumed office 13 November 2023 | |
Constituency | 44-Warsaw |
7th Polish Ombudsman | |
In office 9 September 2015 –15 July 2021 | |
Preceded by | Irena Lipowicz |
Succeeded by | Marcin Wiącek |
Personal details | |
Born | Trzebiatów,Poland | 6 January 1977
Political party | Independent |
Other political affiliations | Civic Coalition/Senate Pact 2023 (2023–present) |
Children | 3 |
Education | University of Warsaw Central European University (Budapest) |
Awards | Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize (2018) Rule of Law Award (2019) The Order of Legion of Honour (2020) |
Adam Piotr Bodnar (born 6 January 1977) is a Polish lawyer,educator,human rights activist and politician who currently serves as Minister of Justice. He was the 7th Polish Ombudsman from 2015 until July 2021. [1]
He was born into Polish - Ukrainian family. His Ukrainian father,as a child,was forcibly displaced from a village near Sanok to north-west Poland in Operation Vistula. [2] In 2000,he graduated in law from the University of Warsaw and in 2001 he obtained the Master of Law degree in the field of comparative constitutional law from the Central European University in Budapest. [3] He also completed a course in European Law co-organized with Cambridge University as well as American Law co-organized with the University of Florida at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw. [4] In 2006,he received a PhD degree from the University of Warsaw on the basis of his dissertation entitled Multi-level Citizenship in the European Constitutional Sphere. [5] In 2019,he obtained habilitation at his alma mater.
He worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Human Rights of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw as well as academic teacher at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. [6]
In the 1990s he collaborated with the anti-racist "Never Again" Association. [7] [8] Until 2004,he worked at the Weil,Gotshal &Manges law office. He then became a member of the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation (Polish:Helsińska Fundacja Praw Człowieka). In 2008,he served as an expert at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) where he specialized in the observance of human rights in Poland. [4] In 2010,he was appointed deputy director of the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation. He also served as chairman of the Panoptykon Foundation as well as Director of the Zbigniew Hołda Association. [4] He was also a member of the board of directors of the UN Fund for Victims of Torture. In 2011 he was awarded with the Tolerance Prize by the Polish LGBT organizations and in 2013 he received a scholarship within the scope of German Marshall Memorial Fellowship programme. [3]
In 2015,he was appointed as the Polish Ombudsman after receiving endorsement of the Civic Platform,Democratic Left Alliance and Polish People's Party. [4] During his tenure he brought a number of local governments to court for their introduction of the controversial LGBT-free zones, [9] which met with criticism from the ruling conservative Law and Justice party. [10] In 2018,he was awarded the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize for the promotion of the fundamental human rights of intellectual and political freedom. [11]
In 2017-2019 the Civil Rights Ombudsman Adam Bodnar supported the 'Let's Kick Racism Out Of Stadiums' tournament,organized by "Never Again" Association at the Pol'and'Rock Festival (also known as Polish Woodstock),the biggest open-air free music festival in Europe. Bodnar officially inaugurated the tournaments,personally refereed during the games and took part in the matches. He participated in a meeting organised by "Never Again" Association during the festival and spoke about the cases of homophobic violence in Poland. [12] [13] [14]
In 2019,he was awarded the Rule of Law Award conferred by the World Justice Project for his "outstanding efforts in strengthening the rule of law in difficult circumstances". [15] He dedicated the award to Karol Modzelewski. [16] The same year he received the Human Dignity Award from the Roland Berger Foundation;however,he declined the award motivating his decision by the Nazi past of the award founder's father. [17] In September 2020,he was awarded the French Order of Legion of Honour for guarding the civic rights and values in Poland. [18] Bodnar has appeared in leading universities' events including at Yale. [19]
Bodnar's five-year term of office expired in September 2020. [20] The two chambers of the Polish parliament (the Sejm and the Senate) could not agree on a successor. [20] On 15 April 2021,the Constitutional Tribunal issued a ruling that he should stay in office for at most three further months. [21] [22] [20]
In the 2023 parliamentary elections he ran as a Civic Coalition candidate (as part of Senate Pact 2023) for the Senate from the constituency no. 44. He received 628,442 votes and was elected senator. [23] In the same year he was appointed as the minister of justice in the Donald Tusk's cabinet. [24]
The Constitution of the Republic of Poland is the supreme law of the Republic of Poland, which is also commonly called the Third Polish Republic in contrast with the preceding systems.
The General Charter of Jewish rights known as the Statute of Kalisz, and the Kalisz Privilege, granted Jews in the Middle Ages special protection against discrimination in Poland when they were being persecuted in Western Europe. These rights included exclusive jurisdiction over Jewish matters to Jewish courts, and established a separate tribunal for other criminal matters involving Christians and Jews designed to avoid Jewish discrimination. It led to the formation of a separate court and safety for persecuted Jews which attracted Jewish immigrants from across Europe to Poland.
The Commissioner for Human Rights is a Polish ombudsman, an official appointed for a five year term by the Sejm with an approval of the Senate. Commissioner's responsibility is to protect civil and human rights implied by the Constitution of Poland and other legislative acts.
The judiciary of Poland are the authorities exercising the judicial power of the Polish state on the basis of Chapter 8 of the Constitution of Poland. As in almost all countries of continental Europe, the Polish judiciary operates within the framework of civil law.
Łukasz Masiak was a Polish investigative journalist who founded and edited a local internet news portal Nasza Mława in Mława, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland, before his murder that was suspected of being related to a story he had published on a mixed martial arts organization.
Coalition "Justice for Peace in Donbas" is an informal alliance of 17 Ukrainian human rights organisations and initiatives. Members of the Coalition have teamed up to document human rights violations that occurred during the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Adil Abdel Aati is a Sudanese political and public figure who was the leader of Liberal Party of Sudan and CEO of the Harambi Foundation. In January 2017, Abdel Aati established Sudan of the Future, a cross party political movement and declared his intention to run in the next Sudanese Presidential election.
Henryka Joanna Mościcka-Dendys is a Polish diplomat who served an ambassador of Poland to Denmark (2015–2020).
LGBT-free zones were municipalities and regions of Poland that have declared themselves unwelcoming of LGBT rights, in order to ban equality marches and other LGBT events. By June 2020, some 100 municipalities (map) and five voivodeships, encompassing a third of the country, had adopted resolutions which have been characterized as "LGBT-free zones". On the 6th February 2024 Warsaw Voivodship Administrative Court repealed the last "LGBT-free zone" in Poland.
On 7 August 2020, a protest against the arrest of LGBT activist Margot led to a confrontation with police in central Warsaw, Poland, which resulted in the arrest of 47 others, some of whom were protesting, and others who were bystanders. The event was called Tęczowa Noc – translated as Rainbow Night – and was dubbed "Polish Stonewall" by some outlets, in an analogy to the 1969 Stonewall riots.
Stop Bullshit was a queer anarchist collective in Warsaw with the goal of fighting homophobia and transphobia, founded in May 2019 by Małgorzata "Margot" Szutowicz and Zuzanna "Łania" Madej, opposing the actions of the Pro Foundation.
The 2020–2021 women's strike protests in Poland, commonly called the Women's Strike, were anti-government demonstrations and protests in Poland that began on 22 October 2020, in reaction to a ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal, mainly consisting of judges who were appointed by the ruling Law and Justice dominated United Right, which tightened the law on abortion in Poland. The ruling made almost all cases of abortion illegal, including those cases in which the foetus had a severe and permanent disability, or an incurable and life-threatening disease. All-Poland Women's Strike was charged by the authorities for having illegally organised the protests.
Agnieszka Dudzińska is a Polish sociologist. She is a professor of sociology at the University of Warsaw. She is also an advocate for housing and the welfare of disabled people in Poland, and has been nominated twice for the position of Ombudsman for Children in the government of Poland.
Ewa Łętowska is a Polish lawyer, a specialist in civil law and professor of legal science. Since 1985, she has worked at the Institute of Law of the Polish Academy of Sciences and since 1997, she has been a member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1988, she became the first person to be appointed the Ombudsman for Citizen Rights in Poland. Between 1999 and 2002, she served as a judge at the Supreme Administrative Court of Poland and between 2002 and 2011 as a judge of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal.
Media Without Choice was a one-day protest against the government of Poland due to a proposed tax on advertising. The protests began on 10 February 2021 and participants included paper journals, press-related internet portals, television stations, radio stations, and information portals. They protested by ceasing their usual activities, such as the publishing of news or advertisements, and turning off their transmissions.
Fundacja Trans-Fuzja is a Polish LGBT rights organization. It was founded in February 2008 and acquired the status of a public interest organisation (OPP), working to better the wellbeing of transgender people in Poland.
Adam Stanisław Zieliński was a Polish lawyer and politician. A member of the Polish United Workers' Party, he served as president of the Supreme Administrative Court of Poland from 1982 to 1992, a member of the Sejm from 1989 to 1991, and Polish Ombudsman from 1996 to 2000.
Piotr Sylwester Wawrzyk is a Polish government official. He was the Deputy Foreign Minister until 31 August 2023 when he and seven others were removed from office for accepting bribes in return for issuing official visas.
On December 19, 2023, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in Poland, dismissed the then-current state media directors and their supervisory boards, most notably those of public broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP), appointing new ones in their place. The move was met with criticism and accusations of illegality by the dismissed management and the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, causing a parliamentary intervention in the TVP headquarters.
Thaddäus Schäpe As the founder and first head of the House of Polish-German Cooperation, following the fall of communism, Schäpe saliently contributed to the process of German-Polish reconciliation, especially in the historical region of Upper Silesia.