Orhan Kemal Cengiz is a Turkish human rights lawyer and columnist. He has 20 years of experience in founding new and innovative civil society organizations that address human rights issues in Turkey, including the Izmir Bar Association Center for Human Rights, the Human Rights Agenda Association, and the Civil Society Development Center.
He has 15 years of experience working in human rights organizations at an international level, including consulting for the Kurdish Human Rights Project and taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights.
He has also worked as an external evaluator of EU Commission-funded project proposals, and through his work as Legal Director at the Civil Society Development Center, which provides legal consultancy services to NGOs, has become an expert in the needs faced by a wide variety of Non-State Actors.
Cengiz has been placed under a travel ban and repeatedly detained for his activism.
