Judge Baltasar Garzón will be in the opening session of the European Humanist Forum 2018 taking place on the 11th, 12th and 13th of May in Madrid. He will talk about issues concerning Universal Jurisdiction in the defence of Human Rights. The opening session will take place on the 11th of May at 5pm in the UNED Faculty of Education Sciences.

Baltasar Garzón will participate as a speaker in the opening session of the European Humanist Forum 2018, which in this edition has the motto “What unites us towards the Universal Human Nation”. It will be held on Friday 11th of May in the UNED Faculty of Education Sciences , at 5 pm, and he will speak from the perspective of human rights and justice.

Internationally recognized for defending Human Rights and denouncing cases of crimes against humanity, Judge Baltasar Garzón currently presides over the International Foundation that bears his name FIBGAR and works as an advisor to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Away from his judicial career, Garzón has been recognized – especially outside of Spain – for his work within Spain confronting corruption, state crimes and defending transparency, and for his attempts to bring Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet to justice in 1998, and he has been awarded honarary degrees by more than twenty universities and worked as a consultant in different Latin American countries.

FIBGAR is a pioneer in Spain in the development and defence of so-called Universal Jurisdiction. From his Foundation, Garzón promoted the First Congress of Universal Jurisdiction in Madrid (2014), from where the Madrid Proposal for the Principles of Universal Jurisdiction emerged, and which was unanimously approved at the Second Congress on the same subject held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2015. This proposal became the starting point for the creation of the Principles of Universal Jurisdiction, a text that lays the foundations against impunity at a global level.

The author of several books and numerous articles, Garzón has developed throughout his career a global outlook that has probably grown due to the circumstances that have accompanied his professional career. Something that turned out to be negative on a personal level and within Spain, has certainly turned into a positive element for all of Humanity.