Manfred Nowak is a human rights lawyer, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010 and was a former judge at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is currently a Scientific Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights. In 2016, he was furthermore appointed Independent Expert leading the United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.

He is Secretary General of the European Inter-University Center for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) in Venice, Italy; Professor of International Human Rights and Scientific Director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Human Rights.