Felice Gaer Baran, an internationally renowned human rights expert who for more than four decades brought life and practical significance to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international commitments to prevent grave human rights abuses around the world, died on November 9, 2024 in New York City, following a lengthy battle with metastatic breast cancer. She was 78. At the time of her death, she was the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI).
Longtime UN official and Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2003-2004 Bertrand Ramcharan characterized Gaer as a “pillar of the human rights movement.” Former High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein similarly deemed Gaer “a highly regarded champion of the universal human rights agenda.”
Throughout her career, in myriad roles, Gaer insisted that governments and the United Nations should consistently condemn the practices of tyrants and authoritarians and recognize that many forms of harm and inequality once considered ‘internal affairs’ of states as human rights abuses. Gaer’s influence established more protective interpretations of human rights norms from within and outside the United Nations human rights system. She effectively advocated for the creation and evolution of numerous international institutions and processes that play a critical role today in monitoring states’ human rights practices and holding violators to account.
Gaer achieved international recognition among human rights advocates as a force multiplier capable of overcoming the obstacles within government bureaucracies and multilateral institutions that often allow perpetrators of egregious abuses to avoid scrutiny and condemnation. Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, who served as the UN’s independent monitor on human rights in Iran and on the right to freedom of religion or belief, praised Gaer’s “exemplary track record” in 2021, stating that “You and JBI have made exemplary contributions to advancing human rights through the UN, especially in strengthening the effectiveness of the UN’s human rights mechanisms. Your own personal contribution, not just through the JBI, but in your own capacity as a member of the UN Committee against Torture and other roles, are not only legendary, but are a source of inspiration for everyone.” Elena Bonner, a one-time Soviet political prisoner, founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group, relentless advocate for democratic change in Russia, and wife of famed Soviet physicist, dissident, and Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov, with whom Gaer worked closely, recounted in 1997 that Gaer’s fierce approach to advocacy had helped a nascent international human rights movement find its voice. Said Bonner, “it was thanks to individuals like…Felice…who had the courage to be impertinent, that today it is more and more difficult for the rights-violating governments to challenge the universality of human rights and to ignore human rights concerns.”
Gaer began her career at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in 1974, focusing on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; subsequently, her areas also included arms control and human rights. At Ford, she became heavily involved in advocacy for the rights of Soviet Jewish refuseniks and encouraging broader internal changes that would catalyze greater respect for human rights for all in the Soviet Union. She maintained a passion for championing individual rights defenders while expanding her geographical focus. As the Executive Director of the International League for Human Rights from 1982 to 1991, Gaer championed human rights defenders throughout Latin America, particularly in Chile and Venezuela. She then served as Director of European Programs for the United Nations Association of the USA from 1992 to 1993, before becoming director at the Jacob Blaustein Institute in 1993 – where she remained for the following three decades.
Gaer served for nine terms as an appointed “public member” of official U.S. government delegations to United Nations meetings between 1993 and 1999, including six U.S. delegations to meetings of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. As a public member of the U.S. delegation to the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Gaer’s advocacy was instrumental in the creation of the position of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Gaer also played a critical role in bringing about the conceptual and political victory that the U.S. government achieved for women’s rights at the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing – at which the UN explicitly recognized for the first time that women’s rights are human rights – working closely with US Ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights Geraldine Ferraro and First Lady Hillary Clinton.
In 1999, Gaer became the first American and first woman to serve on the 10-person United Nations Committee against Torture, an expert body that monitors implementation of the Convention against Torture. She was first nominated as a candidate by the U.S. government during the Clinton administration and was renominated by Presidents George W. Bush and Obama. She was elected by UN member States to five four-year terms as an independent expert member and vice-chair of the Committee from 1999 to 2019, an unpaid position which she held concurrently with her other professional roles.
Over her 20 years on the United Nations Committee against Torture, Gaer insisted that the Committee and all other UN treaty bodies should affirmatively and publicly press governments to address allegations of wrongdoing, rather than accepting States’ assertions of compliance at face value. She led the Committee to develop practices that made it far more accessible to non-governmental organizations and human rights defenders seeking to share evidence of human rights violations. She also devoted extraordinary effort to ensuring that the Committee acted on information it received from third parties and conveyed accurate appreciation of the key human rights challenges occurring in every country it reviewed. Her rigorous and unsparing critiques – and her practice of inquiring about alleged victims of torture and arbitrarily imprisoned lawyers and advocates by name in public meetings – occasionally provoked angry outbursts by government officials accustomed to deferential, non-adversarial treatment in UN settings. However, Gaer’s approach turned what might otherwise have been pro-forma exercises into valuable opportunities for advocates to secure formal UN recognition of their claims.
Gaer’s efforts also led to a transformation in the Committee’s against Torture’s approach to the issue of violence against women, which previously was seen only as often a private matter rather than a form of torture or ill treatment for which perpetrators should be punished and victims of which are entitled to redress. The Committee became an important avenue for women’s rights advocates seeking to compel governments to develop more effective national capacities to protect women from violence, as well as members of vulnerable groups such as religious minorities and LGBTQI persons. These efforts brought significant public attention to previously overlooked issues in several countries. In one particularly noted case, Gaer’s insistence at public Committee meetings that Ireland had failed to address the abuses of the church-run ‘Magdalene Laundries’ – which had imprisoned and punished women the church had deemed ‘morally irresponsible’ – galvanized local advocates’ efforts for an official government inquiry to redress this longstanding historical injustice and acknowledge the State’s enduring obligations to survivors of the Laundries.
Gaer also championed the rights of religious minorities and victims of violence justified in the name of religion in countries around the world. Gaer was appointed and served five terms as an independent expert member of the bipartisan federal U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 2001-2012, including as its chair. In that capacity, Gaer traveled to countries ranging from Sudan and Egypt to China to Afghanistan, directly pressing government officials to change policies and practices. She testified frequently before Congress and organizations including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on religious freedom issues.
Gaer’s commitment to universality also inspired her to work for decades to correct the persistent failure of the United Nations to recognize antisemitism as a serious human rights concern and to recognize the Holocaust as its most violent manifestation. Her engagement with public delegations to the UN Commission on Human Rights encouraged the U.S. to secure the inclusion of the first reference to antisemitism as an evil that UN efforts should seek to eradicate, in a resolution of the UN General Assembly, in a 1998 text condemning racism, using language previously negotiated by the U.S. at the Commission.
Thereafter, Gaer participated in the NGO conference that preceded the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, hopeful that it presented a moment of opportunity to secure recognition of Jews alongside other minorities facing racism and intolerance. When the conference devolved into a spectacle marked by overt displays of antisemitism and harassment and isolation of Jewish participants, leaving an indelible mark on Gaer and other Jewish participants and their allies, Gaer mobilized efforts among the ‘survivors’ of Durban to reflect on and memorialize lessons learned from the experience.
Gaer emerged from Durban with greater conviction of the responsibility of UN leaders to consistently demonstrate principled leadership and to reject discrimination and displays of identity-based hatred and remained determined to strengthen the international human rights framework for the benefit of all. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who in 1998 became the first UN leader to acknowledge the Holocaust by name, was particularly receptive to these efforts. Together with Annan’s communications advisor, Gaer influenced the Secretary-General to affirm that the “Holocaust of the Jews” was “unique,” commemorate the centenary of Genocide Convention author Raphael Lemkin’s death in 2001, meet with an international delegation of Jewish leaders in 2005, and undertake new UN efforts to develop meaningful programs commemorating the Holocaust. Later, working with senior officials, Gaer supported US efforts to overcome the divisive legacy of Durban and negotiate a universally supported UN anti-racism agenda. She also collaborated with the advisers to successive UN Secretaries-General on Genocide Prevention, elaborating on the obligation to prevent genocide and developing UN policy guidance on combating Holocaust denial and genocide denial.
Gaer played a singularly important role in catalyzing UN attention to worrying trends of rising global antisemitism that began to be observed in many countries by 2017. At her direction, JBI provided support to and brought representatives of Jewish communities around the world to consultations with then-UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, who then published the first stand-alone UN report on global antisemitism as a human rights concern in 2019 and an action plan on antisemitism in 2022. This was a truly ‘historic’ development that demonstrated to many skeptical Jewish community leaders and human rights advocates the enduring potential for United Nations mechanisms to encourage greater protection of the human rights of all. Said Irwin Cotler, acclaimed scholar and human rights advocate and former Canadian Special Envoy on Combating Antisemitism, “What you have done with respect to learning about and combating antisemitism…are sans pareille.”
Gaer not only shared her wisdom and practical experience with colleagues but also convened numerous strategy discussions and facilitated the work of hundreds of human rights defenders, advocates, and other independent UN experts through JBI grants that empowered and encouraged their efforts to advance human rights norms and protections on a wide range of subjects and countries. For many colleagues and beneficiaries of her support, Gaer was an invaluable resource, strategist, collaborator, mentor, and friend.
A prolific author of over 40 published articles and book chapters and editor of the volume “The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: Conscience for the World,” Gaer received the American Society of International Law’s Honorary Member Award in 2023, an Honorary Doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2018, and the First Freedom Center’s prestigious National First Freedom Award for her religious freedom advocacy in 2010. Gaer’s JBI was also named a “Champion of Prevention” by the UN Office on the Prevention of Genocide in 2023.
One of three children of Abraham Gaer, a businessman who owned a toy shop, and his wife Beatrice Etish Gaer, Felice was born on June 16, 1946 in Englewood, New Jersey. She was raised in Teaneck, New Jersey and graduated from Teaneck High School. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College and pursued her graduate studies in political science at Columbia University’s Russian Institute (now Harriman Institute), where she received a Master of Arts degree in 1971 and a Master of Philosophy degree in Political Science in 1975. In 1975, she married Dr. Henryk Baran, a professor at the State University of New York-Albany; Dr. Baran has a long and distinguished career specializing in Russian literature and culture of the Russian Silver Age and avant garde. The couple’s two sons – Adam, a queer filmmaker and curator, and Hugh, a workers’ rights attorney who litigates wage theft, discrimination, and forced labor cases – survive her, as do her brother Arthur Gaer, sister Wendy Philipps, son-in-law Jacob Rozenberg, five nephews, and ten cousins. Gaer’s wisdom, support, conviction, and passionate concern for all humanity made her truly exceptional, and she will be deeply missed.
~ Christen Broecker, Deputy Director, Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights