Magnitsky Awards
Presenter’s Bio

Thor Halvorssen founded the Human Rights Foundation in the spring of 2005. Halvorssen began advocating for human rights in 1989 in London by organizing opposition to South African apartheid while in school. He is CEO of HRF, founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, and patron of the Prague-based children’s peace movement, the Centipede Children. Halvorssen has produced several films that focus on freedom and human rights. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with concurrent undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science and history, after which he devoted himself to the defense of student rights and freedom of expression. He was the founding CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Halvorssen’s opinions and views have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Economist, TIME Magazine, New York Post, The Atlantic, and British GQ, as well as television outlets such as Al-Jazeera, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, BBC, and HBO.