Adam Bodnar

Adam Bodnar is Poland’s seventh Ombudsman (Commissioner for Human Rights), elected by the Parliament with an approval of a few dozen different NGOs for a five-year term in 2015.

He started his professional track as an associate with Weil, Gotshal & Mangers. A few years after, he left the corporate career, joining the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights, first as a co-founder and coordinator of Precedent Cases Programme and then as a head of legal department and vice-president of the Management Board.

In 2013-2014, he was a member of the board of directors of the United Nations Fund for Victims of Torture. As the Ombudsman, he has been carrying out his long-term programme of regional meetings with citizens all across Poland. For the defense of judicial independence and vulnerable minorities he and his office received the Rafto Prize (2018) and Rule of Law Award by the World Justice Project (2019). In 2020 he was awarded the French Order of the Legion of Honor with the rank of Chevalier.

Since March 2020 he is a professor at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Adam Bodnar is also an author of numerous scientific publications in the field of law. He holds a doctor’s with habilitation in law from University of Warsaw and an LL.M. in comparative constitutional law from CEU.