Robert Clarke
DIRECTOR OF ADVOCACY
Robert Clarke serves as the Director of Advocacy for ADF International at its office in Vienna, Austria.
Robert Clarke specializes in religious freedom issues and cases before the European Court of Human Rights as well as leading ADF International’s advocacy team around the world in defence of life, family, and religious freedom. Prior to joining ADF International, Clarke prosecuted cases of medical misconduct for a healthcare regulator in London. He qualified as a barrister in London, specializing in criminal and regulatory law.
During his time at ADF International, Clarke has been involved in cases before the UK Supreme Court and more than 20 before Europe’s highest human rights court, the European Court of Human Rights, which has jurisdiction over 46 countries. These cases include Mortier v. Belgium, challenging Belgium’s liberal euthanasia laws – which resulted in a finding of a violation of the right to life, and Tonchev v. Bulgaria, in which the Court found that Bulgaria had violated the right to religious freedom after distributing ‘educational’ fliers to citizens describing the evangelical church as a ‘dangerous sect’.
Clarke earned his LLB with American law from the University of Nottingham with honours in 2012, having also been selected to spend one year at the University of Virginia School of Law. He completed the Bar Professional Training Course at Nottingham Law School. Clarke participated in the ADF leadership development program to become a Blackstone Fellow in 2012. As a barrister, he is admitted to the Bar of England and Wales.
Clarke is also the editor of a book, The ‘Conscience of Europe?’: Navigating Shifting Tides at the European Court of Human Rights (Kairos, 2017), and the author of a chapter in the publication, ‘Religious Beliefs and Conscientious Exemptions in a Liberal State’ (Hart, 2019).
The European Court of Human Rights has the monumental task of protecting the most fundamental freedoms of more than 800 million citizens across 47 States. That’s a significant challenge given that the Court is asked to reconcile substantial disagreements between these States on controversial issues—and views on marriage, family, sanctity of life, and religious freedom are far less cohesive now than when the European Convention on Human Rights was drafted. Get one copy here now!
Nobody should be offered death as the solution to suffering In 2002, Belgium and the Netherlands became the first countries to legalize euthanasia. Since then,
Hungary safeguards human life with a legal prohibition on assisted suicide, criminalizing the facilitation of the practice both within and outside of the country. Diagnosed with ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative condition, Hungarian national Dániel Karsai has challenged this prohibition—taking his case to Europe’s top human rights court in an effort to force the government to allow someone to help end his life, thereby dismantling the country’s life-saving legal framework
Human rights experts have raised concerns about a ruling the Belgian Constitutional Court handed down on February 17th. The Court upheld amendments expanding the Belgian euthanasia law.
Northern Irish bakers Daniel & Amy McArthur will not be forced to ice messages that are incompatible with their religious beliefs
Two Bulgarian pastors are standing up against a scaremongering campaign by their local government to label all non-Eastern Orthodox Christians as sects and warn children off against them.
