International Human Rights Award
American Bar Association

Recipient:  Roger Meyers
Date Awarded:  August 6, 2005


The International Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association awarded the 2005 ABA International Human Rights Award to Roger Myers (San Francisco) for his groundbreaking work while serving as a volunteer attorney in Almaty, Kazakhstan, from January to November 2004. [Roger has since left DLA Piper to pursue other opportunities.]

Roger was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at the request of the ABA’s Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative to open a Media Support Center to provide legal defense and support to the independent and opposition media, which have suffered severe government repression in recent years. With the help of the Center’s local staff, including two attorneys he hired, Roger established a national hotline for journalists to call for legal advice, conducted seminars for journalists around the country and trained attorneys to effectively represent media clients in court. In addition, Roger’s legal analysis of a restrictive media law proposed by the government helped lead to the law being vetoed. He was subsequently appointed by the Kazakhstan Minister of Information to a working group to reform the country’s media laws to bring them closer to compliance with international law. Roger was joined in Kazakhstan by his wife, Erin McCormick, who was on leave from her job as an investigative reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, and their young daughter. Erin designed, created and edited the Center’s quarterly newsletters to media throughout Kazakhstan and its website (both of which were in three languages, Russian, Kazakh and English).
 
The award, given annually to a lawyer who devotes a part of his/her career to representing the world’s most oppressed people, was presented to Roger on August 6, 2005, at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago, during the International Human Rights Award and Passing the Gavel Luncheon.