2015 AHDA Fellow Harout Ekmanian delivered the opening remarks at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin to kick off a
series of events commemorating the Armenian Genocide. His presentation highlighted the need and continued existence of resistance to a “monolithic narrative of the state” that suppresses independent and minority voices. The program took place April 22-24th. Harout’s full comments can be found
here.
Harout is a lawyer working in human rights research and advocacy in New York. He has written extensively on human rights and rule of law in the Middle East, South Caucasus and Turkey, cooperating with nongovernmental stakeholders and policy makers.
Previously, as a community organizer, he was involved in promoting cultural entrepreneurship, creating teams to organize events like TEDxAleppo and PechaKucha that highlight young voices, and developing workshops to support rising artists and writers. Harout also worked in research and development at the Civilitas Foundation in Armenia. With Civilitas, he also reported from Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Lebanon, and Europe covering international affairs and regional cooperation. He tracked domestic and international trends in human rights and international law, and reflected the developments in the daily news-hour shows that he produced with guest experts and commentators from around the world.
Harout was trained as a lawyer in Aleppo. In 2014, he was an O’Donnell Visiting Lecturer in Global Studies at Whitman College. In 2015, he was an AHDA Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights of Columbia University.
