Activists Plan Geneva Summit for Democracy, Human Rights and Tolerance
 
Vancouver, April 15, 2009 —Stop Child Executions, as part of a multinational coalition of 25 human rights organizations, will gather leading human rights, democracy and anti-racism activists from around the world for a summit in Geneva on April 19, 2009, on the eve of the U.N. Durban Review Conference, and today launched a new interactive website to publicize the event. Entitled the Geneva Summit for Democracy, Human Rights and Tolerance, the activist gathering will be held one day before the UN world conference on racism, to support its objectives of promoting universal human rights through the eradication of discrimination, intolerance and persecution.
 
Diplomats in Geneva today opened a weeklong session of negotiations on a draft of the Durban Review Conference’s outcome declaration. “The Geneva Summit will be a unique opportunity for activists to place on the international agenda some of the world’s most pressing human rights issues and situations, to ensure that the U.N. makes the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a reality for millions of victims of discrimination and repression around the globe,” said Nazanin Afshin-Jam, President of Stop Child Executions organization.

The summit will bring under one roof some of the most well-known figures in the struggle for human rights, democracy and tolerance, including Iranian dissident Ahmad Batebi, Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Burmese dissident and 2008 Human Rights Watch honouree Bo Kyi, U.S. free speech advocate Floyd Abrams, and Rwandese genocide survivor Ester Murawajo. Also invited are the Dalai Lama, former Czech president and dissident Vaclav Havel, former UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan, film star and Darfur activist Mia Farrow, and Cuban cyber-dissident Yoani Sanchez.

For full list of speakers and to register visit www.genevasummit.org