Vision and Mission

Vision

Creating Rights explores bridges between art and human rights. We believe that art has the potential to open up a space for communication and create an opportunity for reflection and understanding  on human rights and international justice. As a powerful form of expression, art contributes to the understanding and the application of human rights. Since its inception, the human rights movement has evolved and paved the way towards a comprehensive body of human rights law, conventions and treaties. However, the human rights framework is also the outcome of the determination and hard work of artists, activists, and other creative individuals across different countries. As such, they have a crucial role in our societies in contributing to the ongoing discussion on human rights.

Mission

Creating Rights’ mission is to create a platform designed to gather and expand expert knowledge on the intersection of art and international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and transitional justice. Sharing knowledge and experiences, learning from practitioners and researchers in their fields of interest, and bringing support to artists, activists and other professionals are at the forefront of Creating Rights’ strategy.

Creating Rights gives visibility and open a space for artists and other professionals to bring forth their ideas, projects and reflections, and to connect and build relationships towards collaborating and networking. We work with lawyers, artists, historians, curators, social scientists and activists. The interdisciplinarity of Creating Rights’ work allows for such issues to be exposed and explored outside the traditional and professional frameworks they are developed in. This opens up a dialogue beyond national and thematic borders and deepens actions in these domains.

What we do

Consulting and training activities are undertaken by the Director of Creating Rights, Fiana Gantheret, a Freelance Consultant with over ten years international legal experience in national and international organizations. Our diverse team at Creating Rights also works to support the activities of the organization. Consultants and experts bring in their expertise on specific projects.

Our focus/actions: 

–       Creating Rights offers a platform to share information and ideas on projects in the following fields and their interaction with art: Human Rights, International Justice, Transitional Justice, and Humanitarian and conflict-related issues.

–      Creating Rights connects individuals and seeks to expand the realm of collaboration between practitioners, activists and scholars, in both art and international law.

–       Creating Rights performs consulting services with the view of contributing to the ongoing discussion on art and human rights.

–       Creating Rights conducts research and prepares reports and studies on existing policies and practices in national, regional and international settings on the use of art in the human rights and transitional justice fields. 

–       Creating Rights intervenes in conferences and workshops and offers networking opportunities in The Hague, The Netherlands, the city of international peace and justice.

For more information, contact us directly!

Creating Rights Board

Fiana Gantheret, Director

Specialized in International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law, Fiana is a freelance consultant in the fields of international human rights law and transitional justice with over ten years of professional experience in international and national organizations. She was looking for the way to combine this professional expertise with her earlier studies in Philosophy and personal interest in art. Creating Rights is therefore the way for her to participate to the fields of human rights and international law by providing a creative way to look at them.

Fiana has a profound curiosity about people and envisioned Creating Rights to be a platform connecting individuals in the fields of art and human rights and giving visibility to their projects and activities in a way that respects their visions.


Alex Eenink, Treasurer

Alex is s a self-employed financial who is putting his expertise to use for the development of Creating Rights. After his employment for different tax consultancy and accountancy firm, he started his own business in which he proactively assists entrepreneurs in growing and developing their activities. By being a sparring partner for these business owners, he assists them in making strategic decisions based on the financial data. Alex also fulfills interim (management) roles in several organizations.


Scott Guthrie, Secretary and Senior Project Manager

Scott is a professional project manager with over twenty years experience working in the arts and entertainment sector, and has been involved with over 200 productions, installations, events, and presentations. Having recently relocated to The Hague, he is happy to apply his skills to help fulfill the vision and mission of Creating Rights. His experiences have shown him that art speaks to us by piercing through the labels of nationality, race, and religion and reaches us at our core where we are all human beings. He is a true believer in the collaborative power of art to engage, educate, and entertain people in the human condition.


The Team

Lucie Prazak, Senior Human Resources Officer

Lucie possesses a sound experience from private sector and as an international civil servant. She began Human Resources career in the UK, in recruitment within micro electronics sector in Europe, then she moved to HR at Oshkosh Corporation (Fortune 500 company) specialised in manufacturing of heavy machinery. In Netherlands she has worked for OPCW, the international organisation specialised in the elimination  of chemical weapons. She is passionate about art and human resources, which is how she arrived at Creating Rights. In spare time she runs races to raise money for Antony van Leeuwenhoek hospital in Amsterdam.

Catina Tanner, Senior Communication Officer

Catina worked for 14 years at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Communications Department where she became involved in helping artists and writers from all over the world with their projects involving international criminal justice. She enjoys being part of the creative process and always amazed at the outcome of how human rights can be intertwined into art.


Alice Di Giulio, Comunication Officer

Alice is an international relations expert with an academic background in European and international policy and diplomacy. She started her career working with the ICC and OPCW Public Affairs offices. These experiences showed her that both communication and arts are important to raise awareness and understanding about pressing global matters as well as to create effective long-lasting solutions for such issues. She believes that through the emotions and feelings that art inspires, it is possible to bring civil society closer to issues like human rights protection and international justice.

Her interest in combining international relations and communications motivated her to join Creating Rights and support its mission.


Nolwenn Guibert, Blog contributor

Nolwenn is an international criminal lawyer with established experience in international courts. She contributes to Creating Rights in her personal capacity. She is excited by the unique vision of Creating Rights and the opportunity to combine her professional expertise with her life-long interest for the arts. Nolwenn is particularly keen to contribute to discussions on the interactions of ballet and human rights.


Nicola Popović, Gender Specialist and Blog contributor

Nicola is a Gender Specialist with over 10 years of experience in multi-lateral organizations and civil society with a focus on gender aspects in peace and security. Programme development and management experience include national implementation of UNSCR 1325, gender and security sector reform, peace support operations, peacebuilding, sexual and gender-based violence, civil society engagement, community development and governance in countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Liberia, Palestine and Zimbabwe. She is excited to support Creating Rights with blog posts and background information on gender and peacebuilding issues. 

Dr. Andrea Breslin, Blog contributor

Andrea is a consultant in human rights, protection and conflict, who studied theatre, film and literature in Trinity College Dublin and went on to complete an LLM and PhD in human rights and armed conflict at the Irish Centre for Human Rights. She has worked in The Hague, Palestine, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Turkey and South Sudan.


Alicia Cotillas, Social Media Assistant

In 2020, Alicia graduated from BA International Studies, at Leiden University, with Latin America as area of specialization. She aspires to start a professional career within arts and politics.

In her final thesis, she studied the political work of street art practices in post-conflict contexts. Thus, she is thrilled to explore the domains of human rights and transitional justice in relation to art at Creating Rights.

She has some experience working in the field of artistic freedom and communications at Freemuse.

Alicia considers herself an arts lover. She draws using pastels and Indian ink and is curious to learn about the creative forms of dissent and insurgency.

Manon Beury, Researcher and Blog contributor

Manon is a young consultant specialised in human rights. Her fields of interest cover the broad spectrum of gender studies, LGBTQ issues, migration policies, transitional justice as well as environmental law. She is deeply involved in civil society organisations and started her professional career within international organisations such as the European External Action Service and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Passionate about arts and culture in all its forms, she constantly seeks to discover new artists and cultural events. She is thrilled to participate in expanding Creating Rights‘ networks and to contribute to a global reflexion on the intersections of arts and international justice.


Njomza Miftari, Project Manager, Researcher and Blog contributor

Njomza’s educational background is in Justice Studies and Public Policy and International Relations. She obtained her first degree from Loyalist College in Canada and second at Rochester Institute of Technology in Kosovo. She has been working in development and Rule of Law for the past several years and is now focusing on Human Rights, particularly Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in Guyana, South America. She also paints herself on her free time.


Juliette Remond-Tiedrez, Researcher and Blog contributor

Juliette is a master student of Leiden University in Public International Law. For her thesis, she is focusing on international criminal law and Darfur, Sudan. She joined Creating Rights in November 2017 to add practical experience to her theoretical training in Human Rights.


Damian Verschuren, Marketing Consultant and IT-Specialist

Damian is a young marketeer, and currently studying Business Administration at the Rotterdam School of Management. His endeavor to scrutinize human behavior and combined capacity to communicate the right message, makes him the perfect match to foster visibility of Creating Rights’ efforts to deepen actions in human rights, international law, and justice.


Jason File, Art Adviser

Jason is an artist, university lecturer in fine art, and war crimes prosecutor. Among other things, his multimedia art practice investigates the use of law as an artistic medium, and overlaps with the fields of history, politics, human rights and armed conflict. Recent exhibitions, artist talks and performances include: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Stroom Den Haag; International Print Biennale; SPACE (London); Cøpperfield (London); The Ryder (London); Drawing Room (London); Paul Mellon Centre for British Art; and Grand Rapids Art Museum. He looks forward to assisting Creating Rights in expanding its network and partnering with likeminded art world institutions.

Justin Kabika, Art and Peacebuilding Adviser

Justin is specialized in peacebuilding and conflict transformation. Passionate about art, he worked for more than 10 years in culture and art development with particular focus on youth. For several years, he worked in partnership with art activists and cultural centres in order to create a safe and viable space for youth to express their talent and convey peace massages to their communities as agents of positive change. Having first-hand experiences of the consequences of war and violations of Human Rights, art has been an important tool to help denounce injustice and thus help his society to recover and heal.

Justin believes that the rule of law is one important component of peacebuilding and therefore commits to contributing to the achievement of Human Rights and human dignity as the first step to peacebuilding.