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Laureates of 2020 Li Buyun Law Prize: Tom Zwart

admin / 2020/9/18 16:49:55


Tom Zwart is a professor of law at the International and European Law Department of Utrecht University and the Director of the Cross-cultural Human Rights Centre of the Free University of Amsterdam. At the Centre researchers look for ways to implement human rights with the help of social institutions, such as culture or religion, as was intended by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (receptor approach).


Before entering academia he served as the Head of the European and Legal Affairs Department of the Dutch Home Office and as senior counsel to the Dutch Deputy Prime Minister.


Zwart's main interests are human rights law, antidiscrimination law, comparative law, including Chinese and Islamic law, and the interplay between law, culture and religion. In his work Zwart exposes and challenges 'othering', i.e. the tendency to treat people belonging to another group as different from and inferior to one's own group.


Therefore, together with colleagues from China and Africa, he established the Cross-cultural Human Rights Network in 2014 in Beijing, to draw the attention of audiences in the Global North to the valuable human rights ideas and concepts that are being and have been developed in the Global South.


Zwart also focuses on the rights of ethnic, religious, sexual and gender minorities and the opportunities law offers to combat racism and discrimination. He regularly represents communities and groups in antidiscrimination cases before national courts and international human rights tribunals. He also trains young members of minority groups on how to make use of the rights and opportunities available to them under the rule of law, in order to enable them to assume their place in society.


Together with Chinese colleagues Zwart has published on several Chinese legal topics, such as law reform, the development of the Socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics, the protection offered by human rights, and the localisation of religious minorities. He studies the role China plays within the international human rights institutions, including the opportunities offered by the concept of 'building a community of shared future for mankind', which was launched by President Xi Jinping. He has given presentations during side events at the UN Human Rights Council organised by Chinese NGO's. He frequently takes part in the Beijing Human Rights Forum and the South South Human Rights Forum.


Zwart has been a visiting scholar at a number of Chinese academic institutions, including the International Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Top Think Tank on International Law at Wuhan University, as well as Tsinghua University, South West University of Political Science and Law, Shandong University, China University of Political Science and Law, the Chinese People's Public Security University and Central South University. He has also visited at Cambridge University, Sciences-Po, the University of Haifa and the Thabo Mbeki Leadership Institute at the University of South Africa.


Zwart will donate the prize money to the Linfen Red Ribbon School, which offers an education and a home to children and teenagers with HIV.



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