History

Jan Jařab

Jan Jařab was born on 19 January 1965 in Hranice na Moravě. He graduated from the First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague (1990). He remained at the faculty as a research fellow until 1993. He also furthered his education in other countries – he studied social gerontology and geriatrics at the Maltese University and anthropology in London. From 1995 to 1997, he was a secondary doctor at the geriatric clinic of the General Teaching Hospital in Prague.

He started becoming involved in nongovernmental organizations specializing in human rights in 1992. Within the Transnational Radical Party, he took part in campaigns to set up an international criminal tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, against breaches of human rights in China and Tibet, against capital punishment in the world, and for the development of non-repressive anti-drug strategies.

He is one of the founding members of the Movement of Civil Solidarity and Tolerance, in which he monitored racially motivated crime and other manifestations of racism and xenophobia. He is also a member of the Czech Helsinki Committee.

In January 1999, he started working for the Human Rights Department of the Office of the Government. In March 2001, he became the Government Commissioner for Human Rights. Since November 2004, he has worked in the cabinet of the European Commissioner Vladimír Špidla.

Petr Uhl