Professor Bennoune Speaks to U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom

Professor Karima Bennoune, speaking in her capacity as the United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, delivered a briefing to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and spoke at one of the Commission’s events on December 5 and 6. Her presentation came as part of the bipartisan government body’s effort to follow up on its recent report, ”Women and Religious Freedom: Synergies and Opportunities,” by eliciting feedback and guidance from experts in the field. Professor Bennoune spoke first on fundamentalism, extremism, and the rights of women at a gathering with Commissioners and representatives of civil society, and then briefed the Commission on the work of her UN mandate.  

Karima Bennoune is an author, lecturer, teacher, and international law scholar as well as the first Arab-American to be honored with the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. In 2014, she was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her book Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, now available in paperback from W.W. Norton & Company. In October 2015, she was appointed UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights.  She was recently presented with the 2016 Rights and Leadership Award by IANGEL, the International Action Network for Gender Equity & Law.