Felice Gaer (In Memoriam 1946-2024)

Human Rights Watch mourns the passing of Felice Gaer on November 09, 2024, at the age of 78. Felice was a towering figure in the human rights movement, an unrelenting, vigorous voice standing up to tyranny and a strategic mind in finding ways to hold abusers accountable.

Felice was an active member of HRW’s Europe and Central Asia division advisory committee for more than 20 years. She was a fierce advocate for human rights in the hardened authoritarian autocracies in the region, especially Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Russia and Azerbaijan. As a leading international human rights expert she was from 1999 to 2019 a member of the United Nations Committee against Torture, an expert body that monitors implementation of the Convention against Torture, where she was a driving force behind powerful reports on Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, among many other countries, and was extremely generous with her time to engage civil society for input.

“Felice was an important, thoughtful and supportive advocate for ECA’s work, asked probing and rigorous questions, always with a view to making it stronger,” said Hugh Williamson, Executive Director of HRW's Europe and Central Asia division.

We will remember Felice always.