Profile of Dr. Manouchehr Ganji

Manouchehr Ganji was born in Tehran, Iran.  He received his BA and MA degrees in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Kentucky, his doctorate degree in International Law - International Protection of Human Rights - from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and his post doctorate degree in International Law from the University of Cambridge, England.

He was the United Nations Commission on Human Rights' First Special Rapporteur on the question of Apartheid and Racial Discrimination in Southern Africa during the years 1967-1969.  Between 1969-1973 he served as the U.N. Special Rapporteur in charge of preparation of a comprehensive Study on Conditions of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in member countries of the United Nations.

Upon returning to Iran he served as Professor of International Law and Organizations at Tehran University and was founder and Director of the University's Center for International Studies.  He also served as the Dean of Faculty of Law and Political Science of Tehran University (1971-1974) and acted as advisor to the Prime Minister of Iran (1974-1976). He served as the Minister of Education of Iran between the years 1976-1978.

Manouchehr Ganji has been a human rights protagonist for the last forty-six years of his life. His PhD. dissertation was entitled International Protection of Human Rights (published in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962). During the past twenty-five years, Ganji has been active in bringing to the world attention the gross and systematic violations of human rights in Iran. He is the founding-organizer of the Committee on Crimes of the “Islamic Republic” of Iran (www.iri-crimes.de) and the International Moral Court on Iran.

After the 1979 revolution, he hid for six months in different parts of the country and escaped Iran on foot via Turkey in the summer of 1979 with the help of teachers and friends. Since 1980, he has devoted most of his life in the United States, Europe and the Middle East to the cause of Human Rights and the freedom of Iran. Through the Flag of Freedom Organization of Iran, which he founded in 1979, and the Organization for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms for Iran, both of which he still heads, he has been a leading advocate for freedom and human rights in Iran and has orchestrated a campaign of political defiance by advocating a non-violent, civil disobedience movement against the mullah regime in Iran (www.derafsh.org).