Founded in 1999 as the very first global initiative to focus on the human rights of cartoonists, Cartoonists Rights Network International is registered in the state of Virginia USA, as a non-profit organisation with 501(c)(3) status.

With our networking and international credentials well established over the past twenty plus years, we recently amended our brand name (but not our registered name) to articulate our core focus: CARTOONISTS RIGHTS.

We are governed by a diversified board of directors typically made up of cartoonists, academics, philanthropists, journalists, diplomats and lawyers and the day to day running of the organization is managed by an executive director; cartoonist and free expression champion Terry Anderson having held that post since 2019.

Cartoonists Rights has also established an impressive network of legal experts, free expression advocates, human rights and other relevant organisations with whom we work to achieve our mission.

Dr. Robert Russell, Founder

Dr. Robert Russell’s lifelong commitment to human rights and dignity began as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960’s, and over two decades in Africa and Asia he consulted in institutional development and humanitarian assistance. In the field he came to understand the special contribution cartoonists can make to public discourse and the problems they often face. In 1999 he founded Cartoonists Rights and by 2012 the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists presented Dr. Russell the Ink Bottle Award for his outstanding contributions to editorial cartooning. After twenty years as our Executive Director Bro retired to an emeritus position on our board in 2019. When he’s not championing cartoonists rights, “Bro” (to his friends and colleagues) is an enthusiastic student of the American Revolution and is equally interested in the technical and human implications of space flight.

Matt Wuerker, President

Matt Wuerker is the editorial cartoonist and illustrator for POLITICO where he also edits a weekly round-up of cartoonists’ work. Mr. Wuerker’s cartoons are also syndicated by Andrews McMeel. His cartoons have been published in journals ranging from The Nation and The American Prospect to Funny Times, as well as major papers like the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning as well as the 2010 Herblock Prize He also serves as a board member of the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation (Geneva) and formerly the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. He assumed presidency of our board in 2020 and we have him to thank for the motif in our logo.

Nikahang Kowsar, Vice-President

Nik Kowsar is an Iranian exile living in the Washington DC area and the 2001 recipient of CRNI’s Courage In Cartooning award after his cartoons led to jail time in Tehran. He is also a four-time winner of the Crystal Pen and Honorary Diploma award from the Iranian press. An experienced broadcaster, researcher and film-maker, he is a frequent contributor to Persian-language media and an expert on geology, sedimentology and water management. In 2017 he received a further four-year prison sentence in absentia from the Islamic Revolutionary Court.  

Joel Pett, Vice-President

Joel Pett is a nationally syndicated cartoonist and winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning. He has also received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for outstanding coverage of the disadvantaged, and the 1995, 2007, 2010 and 2011 Global Media Award for cartoons on population issues. In addition to serving as president of CRNI’s board of directors for a decade, Mr. Pett is a former president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists and served on the board of MyBillofRights.org, the Bill of Rights Monument Project. Joel has been the editorial cartoonist at the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1984.

Terry Anderson, Executive Director

Terry Anderson is a professional cartoonist and caricaturist. For more than fifteen years he produced comics and illustrations for The Glasgow Herald and for over two decades was coordinator at the Scottish Cartoon Art Studio. A former student of The Kubert School of cartooning, Terry is a member of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (UK), France-Cartoons and Cartoon Movement. He previously served on the executive committee and ultimately as President of the Scottish Artists Union, the trade union for all visual artists working in Scotland. He is frequently asked to broadcast, speak publicly and lead workshops on the subject of cartooning. In 2022 he received the Prix Gérard Vandenbrouck in Saint-Just-le-Martel; the first non-Francophone to be awarded the honor, and in recognition of his work with Cartoonists Rights where he has served as Executive Director since 2019.

Carl Nelson, Treasurer

Carl Nelson is president of NEI Communications, Inc., a Massachusetts-based public relations firm specializing in technology products and services. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Cartoon Art Association, as well as being an associate member of the National Cartoonist Society and the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and a trustee of the Meland Foundation. Mr. Nelson has also been responsible for creating promotions for charity sponsorships that have raised more than one million dollars for the USO and the Fisher House Foundation.

Patrick Gathara

Patrick Gathara is a strategic communications consultant, writer and award-winning political cartoonist in Kenya, currently Senior Editor for Inclusive Storytelling at The New Humanitarian. He has worked as a professional cartoonist for 20 years and was the General Secretary of the Association of East African Cartoonists for nearly a decade starting in 2001. He has published several collections of Kenyan cartoons as well as a study on the history and impact of political cartooning in Kenya. His writing has appeared in The Star (Kenya), The Washington Post, The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, and The Elephant. 

Dr. Ritu Gairola Khanduri

Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of Texas at Arlington, Ritu Gairola Khanduri specializes in visual anthropology with a particular interest in political cartoons. Dr. Khanduri has written on the significance of cartoons in Indian politics and presented papers at the Silha Center for Ethics & Hubbard School of Journalism, University of Minnesota, Miranda House College for Women, University of Delhi, Vigdis Finnbogadottier Institute for Multiculturalism & Foreign Languages, University of Iceland and the American Anthropological Association, Washington DC as well as having work featured in Visual Anthropology Review, The Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics, and History & Anthropology among others. She is currently working on a study of the portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi by cartoonists around the world.

Dr. John A. Lent

Dr. John A. Lent Lent is professor emeritus at Temple University. He taught for 51 years in various parts of the USA; started and headed the first university mass communication school in Malaysia, 1972-1974; began the first journalism courses at De La Salle University in Manila, 1964-1965; held the first Rogers Distinguished Professorship of Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Canada; and has been guest professor at universities in China, Malaysia, and Taiwan. Dr. Lent has written/edited 88 books on mass communications or comics/cartoons, mainly on Asia and the Caribbean, but also Africa and Latin America, and his books are often the first written on the subjects. He has founded and chaired six international academic associations dealing with comic art, popular culture, and Malaysian/Singaporean studies and edited, for decades, three periodicals, including the International Journal of Comic Art, since 1999. Prof. Lent has written hundreds of articles and book chapters, many on freedom of the press and “freedom to cartoon,” published frequently in Index on Censorship, IPI Report, Human Rights Quarterly, and Philippine underground newspapers during martial law. He has served on our board for nearly its entire existence.

Nasreen Sultana Mitu

Nasreen Sultana Mitu began cartooning in the Bangladeshi satirical magazine UNMAD and currently is an associate editor there; her political cartoons have also appeared in bdnews24.com and New Age and she has won numerous of awards over a decade and a half of cartooning. Besides this she held an assistant professor post at the Institute of Education and Research, University of Rajshahi until October 2018, developing cartoon-based science educational resources. With a view to popularizing science beyond formal classrooms, she founded her own organization Project Tiktaalik which aims to develop printed and web-based science learning materials in cartoon and comic formats. Currently she is a national consultant for UNICEF Bangladesh, working closely with the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) of Bangladesh.

Rayma Suprani

Rayma Suprani is a Venezuelan journalist and professional cartoonist. She published her cartoons for two decades in one of Venezuela’s most important newspapers but was fired over the political content of one of her cartoons. She was also threatened many times over and ultimately had to leave Venezuela. Today she lives in the United States. She has continued to create cartoons on an almost daily basis, published on her website, social media and via Cartooning for Peace. She was awarded the Interamerican Society Press Prize (2005) and the Vaclav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2019. She is uncompromising in her defense of human rights, democracy and freedom through her drawings.  

Kai Falkenburg

Kai Falkenberg serves as the first-ever General Counsel for Guardian US, serving as the principal legal advisor to the online publisher where she provides legal and business advice, manages legal complaints and litigation and provides expertise on labor, data, tax, contracts and other matters. Kai is also a member of the Guardian’s global legal team, based in London. An avid follower of the US media space and a longtime participant in it, Kai brings over 20 years of expertise in media law including M&A, data privacy, intellectual property, labor relations, compliance and litigation. Kai previously held the position of EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary at G/O Media, a digital publishing company with 10+ category-leading sites, including Quartz, Gizmodo, Deadspin, Jezebel, Kotaku, The Root and The Onion. Prior to joining G/O, Kai served as Acting Commissioner and First Deputy Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media Entertainment where she oversaw NYC Media, the country’s largest municipal broadcast network, and the regulation of all film and television production in NYC. In addition, Kai teaches media law at Columbia Law School where she originated and teaches the country’s first course on the Law & Regulation of Social Media. Earlier in her career she served in senior legal roles at several media companies including Forbes and NBC. She is a board member for a number of organizations including the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, the Gotham Institute for Film & Media, and 70 Faces Media. Kai began her legal career at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia Law School, where she was a Kent Scholar and Senior Editor of the Law Review. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and their two children.

Dana Green

Dana Green is an attorney specializing in First Amendment and media law. She is Senior Counsel at The New York Times Company where she advises journalists on newsgathering, publication, and safety issues and litigates freedom of information, defamation, and other matters. Prior to joining The Times, Dana practiced media law with Ballard Spahr and Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz in Washington DC and international litigation at WilmerHale in London. She is the Chair of the International Bar Association’s Media Law Committee and Secretary of the Journalism Refugees Education Fund.

David Burgess

David Burgess is a media law specialist with expertise in defamation, privacy and intellectual property. David is Head of Production Clearance (EMEA) at Netflix and advises on a wide variety of legal issues that face Netflix productions throughout EMEA. Prior to joining Netflix, David established and ran the media law firm Reviewed & Cleared. Before that, he was responsible for the legal clearance of content at two UK newspapers, The Hearst Corporation and MTV Networks Europe. David is based in Amsterdam. 

Marc Murphy

Marc Murphy is an editorial cartoonist, practicing attorney and law professor at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law where he is a Professor of Practice. He has drawn for the Louisville Courier Journal for 16 years, and is a regular contributor to Louisville Public Media, the Kentucky Lantern, and the Louisville Eccentric Observer. He is a two-time finalist for the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists Rex Babin Award for local cartooning, and in 2023 he won his seventh consecutive Society of Professional Journalists award for political cartooning. In his 40-year long legal career he has been a prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney. He was the Commonwealth‘s Attorney for Jefferson County (Louisville) Kentucky. In the aftermath of the killing of Breonna Taylor Marc was active in the racial justice movement in Louisville as an ally and an activist. Marc is a frequent speaker on human and press rights and this year delivered the inaugural McGaughey Excellence in Journalism Lecture, on Freedom of the Press, at Murray State University. In 2022 he gave the keynote Justice Thurgood Marshall Alpha Phi Alpha Scholarship speech. 

Alex Wade

Alex Wade is the CEO and owner of Reviewed & Cleared. Alex qualified as a solicitor with Carter-Ruck in 1994 and went on to be head of legal for Northern & Shell plc. He also worked for Wiggin, Theodore Goddard and Prisma Sports & Media before, in the early 2000s, opting to combine working as a night lawyer for newspapers with being a freelance journalist. Alex has advised almost every UK newspaper, and continues to work regularly with The Times, Sunday Times and Guardian. He works with a number of clients in book and magazine publishing, and is an experienced TV lawyer, with credits for legal work on BBC prime time shows and many years’ work for independent production companies on documentaries, comedies, films, music and sports series. Alex is also a professional writer. He has been short-listed by the Sports Journalists’ Association as sports feature writer of the year, worked as an editor of supplements and microsites for The Guardian, and has written four non-fiction sports books. In 2016, Alex’s first novel, Flack’s Last Shift, was published. Set on Fleet Street at a fictional newspaper, the novel was described by The Times as “Wickedly observant… this witty, pacey thriller is a portrait of newspapers at a time of mighty upheaval.” Having worked with journalists, editors and broadcasters all his life, as both a lawyer and writer, Alex brings a quick-thinking, practical approach to content clearance, with one overriding aim: to see the story published. 

Patrick Chappatte (Honorary Member)

Patrick Chappatte is an editorial cartoonist and graphical journalist seen in Le Temps, Der Spiegel, NZZ, Canard Enchaîné and The Boston Globe among other titles. He was one of the cartoonists whose work was notoriously and unfairly dropped from the international edition of the The New York Times in 2019. He is the first non-American to receive the Thomas Nast Award given by the Overseas Press Club of America, and has won three times. He sits as an international advisor to the board of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) and is a member of Cartooning for Peace. His first long-form book, entitled Au coeur de la vague (At the heart of the wave), covers the COVID-19 health crisis and was published in 2020. The following year he became president of the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation, Geneva (formerly Cartooning for Peace Swiss Foundation); the foundation and our organisation present awards to courageous cartoonists in alternating years.