Kristina Patring elected to the Council for Human Rights

Kristina Patring, an expert advisor at the SMC, has been elected as a delegate to the newly formed Advisory Council on Human Rights, an advisory body to the Swedish National Institute for Human Rights. She is one of 20 Swedish human rights experts who have been elected to the Advisory Council.

— It feels very honourable just to have been nominated by the SMC and the Christian Council of Sweden, and then to be elected as well! I think that the National Institute for Human Rights, and thus its council, has a very important role to play in our current social development. From the perspective of the SMC, we see that national and international aspects are interconnected when it comes to human rights in general, but also specifically about freedom of religion and belief issues, says Kristina Patring.

The newly formed council consists of 20 members representing various civil society organisations, other actors and individuals. They will serve during terms of two or three years and their main task is to provide knowledge and experience-based guidance to the Swedish National Institute for Human Rights. The director of the Institute, Fredrik Malmberg, emphasizes the significance of the council’s diverse composition and extensive knowledge.

— The council will be an invaluable source of knowledge for the Swedish National Institute for Human Rights in its work to promote human rights in Sweden. The council will also strengthen the institute’s monitoring of the challenges for human rights within different sectors of society and individuals and groups in particularly vulnerable situations, Fredrik Malmberg says in a press release.

Kristina Patring has over 15 years of experience working within faith-based civil society, both in Sweden and internationally, and she is an expert on freedom of religion and belief.

— In the Swedish context, freedom of religion and belief is an often rather overlooked human right, so it feels particularly exciting that the board of the Institute for Human Rights has chosen a person with this expertise to be part of the advisory council. Apart from that expertise I also contribute through the faith-based civil society networks that SMC and I link up to, both in Sweden and internationally, says Kristina Patring.