The Keeper: A Human Rights Podcast

Episoder

• Episode 34: The Re-arrest of Rwandan Opposition Leader Victoire Ingabire 28.07.2025 32min

  Episode Notes Episode 34: The Re-arrest of Rwandan Opposition Leader Victoire Ingabire On June 17, 2025, Victoire Ingabire was at her home in Kigali, Rwanda, when she received an unusual phone call. She was being summoned by the High Court of Rwanda, and she was required to appear before the court two days later. Victoire was, of course, familiar with the case. It involved supporters of her political party, who were arrested and detained in the days leading up to a celebration of ...
• Episode 33: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Rachel Miner” 29.04.2025 25min

  Episode Notes Episode 33: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Rachel Miner” The final episode of this season features a conversation with Rachel Miner, founder and executive director of Bellwether International. Bellwether is a global non-profit taking action to disrupt the cycle of genocide and to create genocide resistant, human rights rights-respecting societies that can live in peace. She is one of the brightest stars of the younger generation that wil...
• Episode 32: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Michal Cotler Wunsh” 15.04.2025 32min

  Episode Notes Episode 32: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Michal Cotler Wunsh” The fourth episode of this podcast season features a conversation with Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism. She has had an impressive career as a member of the Israeli Knesset, a researcher, policy advisor, advocate and more. Her appointment as Special Envoy came at an unbelievably critical moment – when the brutal attacks of October 7 spar...
• Episode 31: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Rushan Abbas 01.04.2025 23min

  Episode Notes Episode 31: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Rushan Abbas This third episode of our “Women Leading the Way on Freedom of Religion or Belief” season brings you a conversation with Rushan Abbas, one of the most prominent and respected activists for the rights of the Uyghur people. She is founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs. For decades, she has advocated fearlessly on behalf of Uyghur Muslims – a religious and ethnic m...
• Episode 30: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Anila Ali 18.03.2025 31min

  Episode Notes Episode 30: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Anila Ali In this episode, Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett speaks with Anila Ali, founder and president of the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC). She is a fearless voice countering and condemning extremism, encouraging religious plurality, taking on taboo subjects, and working to build interfaith alliances around the world. This conversation covers the roots of her a...
• Episode 29: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Ewelina Ochab 04.02.2025 28min

  It’s appropriate that we’re releasing the first episode of this season this week, during the fifth annual International Religious Freedom Summit. It’s an incredible gathering of civil society advocates, activists, experts, academics, government leaders, parliamentarians, and more from across the globe – all focused on advancing the fundamental right to freedom of religion, conscience, or belief. Research shows that when countries protect and advance religious freedom, they tend to be mo...
• “Women Leading the Way on Freedom of Religion or Belief” Season Trailer 27.01.2025 2min

  Coming Soon: “Women Leading the Way on Freedom of Religion or Belief” Freedom of religion, conscience and belief is a fundamental human right – it’s foundational to so many other rights that form the basis of peaceful, prosperous and free societies. But it is too often overlooked and increasingly under threat around the world. A growing global movement is now shining a spotlight on this human right. Among a diverse coalition of advocates, activists, government leaders, faith leaders, academic...
• Episode 28: Sports & Rights Season – A Conversation with Enes Kanter Freedom 20.12.2024 25min

  This will be the fifth and final episode of our Sports & Rights season. Over the course of this series, we've taken an in-depth look at what happens when the worlds of sports and human rights collide. We've brought you conversations with Olympians, activists, journalists, academics, and fans. We've tried to unpack some of the stickiest questions around the intersection of sports and human rights. This podcast season started just as the FIFA World Cup kicked off in Qatar, and perhaps...
• Episode 27: Sports & Rights Season – Who Can Hold the Sports World Accountable? 13.12.2024 21min

  Episode Notes In the last episode of our Sports & Rights season, we dove into the subject of sportswashing and the nefarious use of sports as soft power. At the end of that episode, we posed a few questions: Who plays a role in ensuring that sports aren’t just about profits over power? Who can guarantee that human rights get their due in these huge, lucrative businesses? In this episode, we try to answer those questions by talking to athletes, activists, and experts in sports ethics...
• Episode 26: Sports & Rights Season – Sportswashing 29.07.2024 18min

  In this episode of our Sports & Rights season, we take an in-depth look at a topic we touched on in the first episode – sportswashing. We speak to journalists, human rights advocates, and academics to help unpack what this term means and why it matters. We also delve into some of the most successful examples of sportswashing, ranging from ancient Egypt right up to the present day. We examine the impact of sportswashing and raise some important questions about who bears responsibility for ...
• Episode 25: Sports & Rights Season – Why the First Female Afghan Olympian Wants the Olympics to Ban Her Country 10.07.2024 21min

  When we first kicked off our Sports & Rights podcast season, we were in the midst of what is arguably the biggest and most beloved sporting event on the planet – the 2022 FIFA World Cup, held in Qatar. Now, we find ourselves just weeks away from the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics – the perfect time to restart our examination of the intersection of human rights and sports! In the coming episodes, we will circle back to some of the ideas we raised in our first episode of the s...
• Episode 24: Special re-release of “Vladimir Kara-Murza: The Democracy Activist Putin Wants Dead” 11.04.2024 29min

  On April 11, 2024, we are re-releasing our 2021 episode “The Democracy Activist Putin Wants Dead.” There is a very somber reason for this re-release. This date marks the two-year anniversary of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s arrest and imprisonment on charges of “public dissemination of deliberately false information.” Vladimir, one of the boldest and most eloquent Russian opposition figures, committed the great “crime” of speaking out against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression on Uk...
• Episode 23: Sports & Rights Season: Joint episode with World Affairs Council of New Hampshire 23.11.2022 40min

  The Keeper’s new Sports & Rights season kicks off with something a little different – a joint episode hosted by Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett and Tim Horgan, Executive Director of the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire and host of the Global in the Granite State podcast. Katrina and Tim join forces for a dynamic conversation about the complex and often problematic ways in which the world of sports intersects and interacts with human rights issues. They cover everything from sportswashing (...
• Episode 22: Pavel Khodorkovsky 20.04.2022 30min

  Over the past several weeks, we have watched Russia’s unprovoked attacks on the people of Ukraine with horror, outrage, and a deep sense of fear for what this will mean for freedom and democracy in Europe – and the world. We have sought out trusted experts on the situation to help us better understand what the future may hold, for both Ukraine and Russia. In this special episode of The Keeper, we share a conversation between Lantos Foundation President Katrina Lantos Swett and Pavel Khodorkov...
• Episode 21: Rule of Law Season Finale – 2020 Lantos Prize Laureate Bryan Stevenson on Justice 23.06.2021 23min

  On the final episode of our 7-part Rule of Law season, we return to the subject of the state of the rule of law right here in America. We hear from our 2020 Lantos Human Rights Prize Laureate Bryan Stevenson, who has been a tireless advocate for applying the rule of law equally and fairly in the United States, regardless of race or economic status, as well as for dealing more honestly and openly with this country’s history of inequality. Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative ...
• Episode 20: Rule of Law Season – Seeking Justice on an International Stage 23.04.2021 32min

  On this season of The Keeper, we’ve heard harrowing first-hand accounts of what happens in a country when its government or leaders choose to disregard the rule of law; freedom, justice and human rights all tend to be casualties. Oftentimes, the oppressors and abusers face few consequences for their actions…but not always. When it comes to the worst of the worst crimes, there is an international instrument for accountability – the International Criminal Court, or the ICC. It is the first and ...
• Episode 19: Rule of Law Season – The Real Story of Kagame’s Rwanda 07.04.2021 35min

  For the fifth episode of our Rule of Law Season, we speak with journalist and author Anjan Sundaram to help us understand what is happening with the rule of law in Rwanda. The country is often held up as a democratic success story in Africa, as it has achieved stability and prosperity over the last 25 years since the horrific genocide of 1994. But Anjan explains that the real story is very different, and he speaks from very personal experience. He moved to Kigali, Rwanda in 2009 and began tea...
• Episode 18: Rule of Law Season – The Democracy Activist Putin Wants Dead 19.03.2021 39min

  Vladimir Kara-Murza has spent the better part of the last two decades fighting for the rule of law in Russia as a journalist, filmmaker and opposition politician. But in Putin’s Russia, this is a very dangerous line of work. Not once, but twice, he has been the victim of a poison attack and barely escaped with his life. Just last weekend, he was arrested and detained by the Russian government during a meeting of independent and opposition politicians. These are all clear signs of the total la...
• Episode 17: Rule of Law Season – Hong Kong Activist in Exile 05.03.2021 24min

  In this episode, we focus on a part of the world that has become one of the front lines of the fight to uphold the Rule of Law – Hong Kong. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has been imposing increasingly strict measures on the once autonomous and democratic Hong Kong, designed to erode that autonomy. The response has not come from the powerful or well-connected members of Hong Kong society, but from the vibrant, beating heart of Hong Kong: its youth. Nathan Law, who became the you...
• Episode 16: Rule of Law Season – Freedom's Counsel 19.02.2021 30min

  On the first episode of this Rule of Law season, we talked about the rule of law as a “a government of laws and not men”. Our guest on this episode, Professor Irwin Cotler, has his own shorthand for the rule of law: “the pursuit of justice”. If anyone in this world is intimately familiar with the tireless, unrelenting, undaunted pursuit of justice, it is Irwin Cotler – an accomplished academic, renowned international human rights lawyer, former Member of Parliament in Canada, as well as forme...