I knew Nick well when he represented OHCHR in Bangkok, where I was the UN Resident Coordinator. I subsequently met up with him in Geneva, when I was passing through. I held him in the highest regard.

Nick was a good man, indeed an outstanding man, and a dynamic and insightful human rights advocate. He was deeply committed, highly knowledgeable and invariably constructive in his approach. He was, however, principled enough to realise – quite correctly I believe – that his scope for advocacy was greater outside than inside the UN, at least in the last few years.

Nick’s contribution will be greatly missed, but I have no doubt that he left his mark on a wide variety of collaborators and that his efforts will live on in the work of countless human rights workers around the world.

Former Board Members, Staff and Associates, Tibet Information Network

Nick Howen helped found the Tibet Information Network (TIN) in London in 1987 and served as the first chair of its board until 1998.

His connection with Tibet began in the autumn of 1987, when he was a young commercial lawyer travelling through Asia as a tourist. He was among a hundred of so foreign tourists who happened to be in Lhasa that September when the first demonstrations of the modern era broke out, and was probably the only foreigner there with legal training. When police opened fire on unarmed protestors, leading to at least 8 deaths, another tourist, Robert Barnett, met Nick by chance in the back streets of the city as they took cover from the shooting, and asked if Nick would help him treat Tibetans who had been wounded but were too afraid to go to hospitals. Nick immediately agreed. It was the beginning of many years of work helping to document human rights conditions in Tibet.

Barnett and Nick treated the wounded as best they could, but found that their medical supplies and skills soon ran out. That afternoon they arranged a meeting of other tourists back at their hotel and asked them to collect medicines from every foreigner in the city. The tourists formed teams which went to each tourist hotel in the city until they found three foreigners who were doctors or medical students, who were then led by Nick and Barnett to the places where wounded demonstrators were hiding to provide medical treatment and support.

At the same time Nick and Barnett organized informal meetings at each of the tourist hotels in the city. At these the foreigners pooled their knowledge of what had taken place. In the meetings, which reconvened each night for several weeks, they allowed only first-hand testimony to be included, formally distanced themselves from political activists, and asked foreigners to declare if they were working clandestinely for commercial news-gathering operations. Within two days they were able to produce a fifty page report detailing the events observed by the foreign eyewitnesses of the protests. A team of extraordinarily dedicated foreigners from several countries arranged for the report to be translated into various languages and for copies to be carried to the outside world. Their exhaustively-documented reports turned out to be critically important because they contradicted official statements to the international media that police in Lhasa had never opened fire. A few days later, while treating another patient, Nick and Barnett heard the BBC broadcast back the news that they had sent out.

They remained in Lhasa long enough to collect names and details of those detained before being required to leave. Nick was pursued by police after he was seen returning to a monastery to collect details of arrestees, and was hidden by monks in a monastery toilet until he could be smuggled back to his hotel at night. There he shaved his beard and hid for several days in the hope that he would not be recognised. He and Barnett left for the border shortly after. The mountain passes were blocked by snow and Nick used a pair of skis discarded by a mountaineer to ski down from the passes to the border rather than risk further delay. At that time checks and communications were only rudimentary, allowing him to cross the border and reach Nepal without hindrance. In March 1988 Barnett presented their initial report to the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, leading the Chinese government immediately to concede to the Commission that in fact its police had indeed opened fire on the protestors in Lhasa the previous autumn.

Nick had by then returned to London to take up work in commercial law. He had not intended to continue human rights work on Tibet. But as contacts still inside Tibet continued to send him and Barnett detailed news about events there, the two formed the organization that they called the Tibet Information Network or “TIN”. Nick acted as a field interviewer for the organization and in autumn 1988 returned to Tibet to continue human rights documentation work there, along with a small number of other highly-skilled foreigners. As before, he showed constant good humour in the face of any difficulty, as well as a valuable ability to find unintrusive ways to collect and deliver information. Work of that type was still possible in Tibet at that time without endangering contacts, a situation which changed radically shortly afterwards, leading Barnett and Nick to suspend the use of such methods. Nick also spent many months in India carrying out research with refugees, since that method did not put informants at risk, while Barnett produced reports and summaries in London.

Together, with the help of many outstanding researchers, couriers, funders and administrative staff, they turned the organization into the world’s principal independent source of news and analysis concerning Tibet, making it the chief source of news about events in the region for much of the western media. In 1990 Nick returned to India to carry out several months’ research and to improve his working knowledge of Tibetan, this time with his future wife Lucy at his side, always his greatest support and inspiration. He completed the organisation’s first book-length report, published jointly with Lawasia, Defying The Dragon – China and Human Rights in Tibet (TIN/Lawasia 1991). It was the first definitive study of the human rights situation in Tibet and it became the benchmark in that field for its relentless attention to balance, accuracy and detail.

Up until that time, TIN had been an entirely volunteer operation run out of a single room in a London flat on a shoestring budget. As a result of his long experience in Asia, Nick decided to turn from commercial law to full-time human rights work. He took up a position with Amnesty International in London as Head of their Legal Department. Though he could no longer do field work in Tibet, he took on the task of overseeing the legal aspects of TIN’s transition into a professional organization, helping Barnett to recruit a staff of specialist analysts and translators based in offices within the City of London, as well as to set up teams of researchers in South Asia. Nick established TIN as a professional organization and became the first chairman of its board.

In this capacity he provided oversight and advice for its operations and helped craft its strategic vision. For much of that time he provided valuable support to the staff of TIN, available for consultations at any time of day or night, and always ready with sound and practical advice. He exemplified the central principle of TIN’s work, which was to seek the highest standards of accuracy and detachment without losing sight of internationally accepted legal norms and values. At the same time he supported the organisation’s shift from its early focus on human rights alone to academic research, primary documentation, historical study, and policy analysis.

In early 1998, when TIN went through a period of major changes, Nick devoted much time to helping the organisation, despite the extra burden this placed on Lucy, who was gracious and supportive. That spring he resigned from the TIN chairmanship and from his position at Amnesty to take up a new post as head of the Human Rights Division of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Angola. He subsequently moved to Bangkok as Asia-Pacific Regional Representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and then to Geneva as Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). These positions gave him first a regional and then a global platform for human rights advocacy, though he always retained his special interest in Tibet. In Bangkok, he displayed another facet of his talented personality by organising a highly professional exhibition of his photographs of Tibet. The same photographs later decorated his office in Geneva.

By the late 1990s, both of the founders of TIN had moved on – Barnett to Columbia University in New York – leaving the organisation to face challenges in continuing and developing its mandate. TIN continued to produce in-depth studies as well as its regular news reports until 2005 when, because of funding and other difficulties, the organization closed permanently. There is no successor organization to the initiative that Nick helped establish and refine, and its absence has left a major gap in coverage and understanding of the issue.

In 2005, as soon as Nick heard that the organization was in difficulties, he joined up again with Barnett to try to sustain it, but they were unfortunately too late. In particular, they found that the TIN Archive, a priceless collection of documents that they and others had collected, had been removed in its entirety by a third party, without the knowledge of the board. With the help of the members of that board, after two years of exhaustive effort, they were eventually able to recover one third of the missing documents. They successfully raised funding so that these could be lodged for safe-keeping in the Library of Columbia University and, shortly before he fell ill, Nick sent from Geneva his formal consent to the transfer to Columbia of the archives which he had contributed so much energy and brilliance to collecting. He continued to urge unremitting efforts to recover the rest of the TIN Archive, from which some 3,000 documents still remain at large. The holdings at Columbia, together with the organisation’s publications and reports, will provide uniquely important documentation of events and policies in Tibet during the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, and will serve as a record of the work carried out by the organisation during its 18-year existence, work that reflected the high standards Nick had helped set for it as young lawyer at the start of his career.

Nick Howen was extraordinarily energetic and well-organised, sometimes even over-organised. He was completely fearless, deeply unassuming, an excellent companion, a devoted husband and father, and utterly committed to issues of human rights and fairness. The loss of Nick Howen as a human rights researcher and pioneer will be greatly felt and keenly remembered in the field of Tibetan human rights and news analysis, as in so many other fields that he touched and shaped.

Former Board Members, Staff and Associates of Tibet Information Network, London

Former Board Members

Duncan Barnet

Sarah Cooke

Catriona Bass

John Bray

Nicola Dahrendorf

Robin Munro

Pierre Robert

Tsering Shakya

Former Staff and Associates

Anders Andersen

Robert Barnett

Jan Willem de Besten

Palden Gyal

Frances Howland

R. Mayer

Christa Meindersma

Richard Oppenheimer

Gendun Rinchen

Kate Saunders

Ronald Schwartz

Heather Stoddard

Francisca van Holthoon

and others who have asked to remain anonymous

I am so sorry about the loss of your lovely Nick. Like so many others I am deeply saddened by his passing.

I first met him when, as a young lawyer, he came to organise the setting up of an Australian Tibet support group. He did just that and it is called the Australia Tibet Council. It has operated since that time and Nick single handedly brought it about.

He once called me in the middle of the night and reverse charges, from a telephone booth in Lhasa. He left no stone unturned.

He was kind, good, intelligent and so committed to human rights for all humans. What an incredible man he was. I know you will always be proud of him and the legacy and inspiration he left behind in the hearts of so many of us.

With love and support

Lynn Russell

I was very shocked and saddended to read the news of Nick’s death in the obituary in the Guardian. You will not know me, but I worked with Nick at Amnesty International (I was Deputy Secretary General, I am the “other” Mary Robinson, not the eminent one). It is more than 10 years since I last saw Nick, but I have very happy memories of working with him. He had a great sense of humour, as well as being full of energy and determination. He often enlivened some of our rather long and boring meetings about management issues and I enjoyed working with him. The excellent obituary written by Nigel Rodley shows how much he achieved and what a loss he will be to the human rights community. Please accept my deepest sympathy and very best wishes to you and your family.

Mary Robinson (former colleague at Amnesty International)

So sorry to hear about the death of your husband. Reading his obituary in today’s Guardian its clear he made a huge contribution to human rights.

Thinking of you and your family.

Duncan Stroud
former colleague from Survival International

I learnt today about Mr. Nicks’s death by a mail of Kate Saunders, International Campaign for Tibet,which she has send to all Tibet Support Groups worldwide. As a board member of Swiss Tibetan Friendship Association and working in the fields for Human Rights in Tibet, unfortunately I’ve had the chance to meet him personaly. But through friends of him who worked with him for Tibet Information Network, I heard about his passion for Human Rights and specially for his engagement for Human Rights in Tibet when he travelled and worked in Tibet in late eightees and in the ninetees. When I’ve red the obituary of Nick Howen by Sir Nigel Rodley in the Guardian NEwspaper and a tribute to him by Robbbie Barnett, I was really impressend and touched how much he work for the Tibetan people in Tibet who are suffering since more than 50 years! I’ve the feeling he was very closed to us Tibetans and our culture – that’s why he married hisw wife in Dharamsala, the Heart of us Tibetans in Exil!
As a Tibetan, born in Tibet and grew up in Switzerland, I send you my deep condolences to his family! May his soul rest in Peace!

Migmar W.RAITH