Robert van Voren

Robert van Voren (publishing pseudonym of Johannes Baks, Johannes Bax, born 25 July 1959, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a Dutch human rights activist, sovietologist and historian.

He is a professor of Soviet and post-Soviet studies in the Ilia State University in Tbilisi (Georgia) and in the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas (Lithuania) as well as a visiting professor at University of Silezia, Katowice, Poland. He is also Chief Executive of the international foundation Human Rights in Mental Health-Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry and Executive Director of the Andrei Sakharov Research Center for Democratic Development at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Education
Graduated from the Marnix Gymnasium in Rotterdam in 1979, and in 1986 achieved a master's degree at the University of Amsterdam in Modern and Theoretical History with a specialization in Soviet History with Russian language. Robert van Voren defended his PhD in Political Sciences at Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University in October, 2010.

Career
From 1978 to 1987, Robert van Voren worked as a Secretary of the Podrabniek Fund in The Netherlands. 1978-1989 he was an Associate of the Bukovsky Foundation in Amsterdam, where he also became a Board Member in 1988-1989.

He was a founding member of the International Association on the Political Abuse of Psychiatry (IAPUP) in 1980.

Since 1980, he also travelled frequently to the USSR to meet with dissidents and relatives of political prisoners. On average, he would make four trips per year. The goal was to deliver humanitarian aid, collect evidence on human rights violations and smuggle samizdat out of the country. He was arrested in 1983, but still managed to continue traveling to the USSR until its disintegration.

Since 1986, Robert van Voren has been the Secretary-General of the International Association on the Political Use of Psychiatry (renamed in 1991 into Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, in 2005 into the Global Initiative on Psychiatry, and to Human Rights in Mental Health-FGIP in 2014).

Between 1991 and 1997, he worked as a Coordinator of Western Aid to Psychiatry of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, and in during 1994-1997 he was the Permanent Representative of Ukraine in the Benelux for Humanitarian Affairs. Since 1994, Robert van Voren has been the Board Member of the Kyiv Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Totalitarianism and Civil War. In 1994, he also founded the Ukrainian Information Center in the Netherlands, where he also became a Board Member from 1997 to 1998.

1996-1997 he was also a Board Member of the Second World Center. From 1996 to 1999 he was among the members of the Committee on Mental Health of the Netherlands International Health Platform.

Between 1996 and 2010 he also worked as a Secretary/Treasurer of the publishing house "Sphere" in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Since 2010, Robert van Voren is the Patron of the Gladys School for Community Health Work and Development in the Gampaha District, Sri Lanka.

From 2011 to 2013, he was the Chairman of the Board of the Themis Foundation for Prison Reform, and from 2013 to 2017 he was the Director there.

Between 2013 and 2015, he was a Member of the Board of the Netwerk International Mental Health in The Netherlands as well as the Vice-President for Europe at the World Federation for Mental Health.

Robert van Voren has been a Member of the Board of Advisors of the Charity "Rights in Russia" in the United Kingdom since 2013. Since 2014, he has been the Chairman of the Board of the "Foundation to Preserve History of Maidan" in Kyiv, and since 2015 - a Patron of the BEARR Trust, United Kingdom.

From 2015 to 2017, Robert van Voren was the Vice President of the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) for constituency development, and the Chairman of the Human Rights and Ethics Committee of the WFMH. From 2017 to 2020, he was in the board of the World Federation for Mental Health, and since 2016, he has been on the board of the Penal Reform International (PRI) in the United Kingdom.

In addition, Robert van Voren has been active in academic field – as a professor, as a publishing scientist, and as a manager of different academic departments in various universities.

In 2022, Robert van Voren was awarded the Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health.