Czeslaw Walek

Czeslaw Walek (born 31 January 1975) is a Czech lawyer and LGBT activist of Polish origin. He served as Deputy Minister of Human Rights and Minorities from 2009 to 2011, and is the founder and chairman of the Prague Pride association that organises the annual festival of the same name.

Early life and education Walek grew up in Třinec. He is of Polish origin; both of his parents have Polish nationality and Czech citizenship.

Walek studied law in Kraków at Jagiellonian University from 1993 to 1999, supported by a stipend from the Polish government. He spent a year as an Erasmus student in Antwerp, Belgium, and graduated with honors in 2000 from Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary, where he focused on human rights.

Since March 2012 he has been Executive Director of the Open Society Foundation in Prague. and within the framework of the Fulbright Scholarship he was a Global Fellow at the US-based non-profit Out & Equal Workplace Advocates.

He has been a board member of CEU's Human Rights Students' Initiative, the Czech chapter of Transparency International, the Open Society Foundation in Prague, Open House Prague and Alturi. In 2014 he was appointed a member of the Council for Human Rights and the Czech-Polish Forum, both government bodies.

In 2013 he ran unsuccessfully for Parliament for the Green Party.

Personal life Walek speaks English, Spanish, Czech and Polish. On 2 May 2014 he married his Dutch partner Willem van der Bas in Delft, Netherlands.