About
Steve Crawshaw is former UK director at Human Rights Watch, former director of the Office of the Secretary-General at Amnesty International and former chief foreign correspondent at the Independent. He is the author of books on Russia, Germany, and creative protest. His latest book, Prosecuting the Powerful (Bridge Street Press) is published in February 2025.
Steve Crawshaw, author of Prosecuting the Powerful: War Crimes and the Battle for Justice, has written and worked on the themes of human rights and justice for more than thirty years.
He worked for Granada Television before joining the Independent at launch in 1986, where his roles included Russia and East Europe Editor during the east European revolutions and Balkan wars, then Germany bureau chief and chief foreign correspondent. In 2002 he joined Human Rights Watch as UK director and then UN advocacy director in New York. In 2010 he joined Amnesty International as international advocacy director and Director of the Office of the Secretary General. In 2018 he became policy and advocacy director at Freedom from Torture.
His previous books are Goodbye to the USSR (Ryszard Kapuściński: ‘fascinating and vivid’, 1992), Easier Fatherland: Germany and the Twenty-First Century (John le Carré: ‘rare and long overdue’, 2004), Small Acts of Resistance (with John Jackson, foreword by Václav Havel, 2010) and Street Spirit: The Power of Protest and Mischief (foreword by Ai Weiwei, 2017).
He studied Russian and German at the universities of Oxford and St Petersburg, and lived in Poland from 1978 to 1981.