Ole Reitov is a global human rights defender, speaker, moderator, journalist and independent consultant. He is consulted by international human rights and arts organisations.
In 1999, he co-founded Freemuse, the world’s leading organisation defending artistic freedom and acted as Freemuse Executive Director 2013-2017. In this period, he was the Freemuse representative to the UN Human Rights Council and even served as expert consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights, Ms. Farida Shaheed.
He was the first person to be appointed 2005 UNESCO Convention Expert on artistic freedom in 2015 and has co-developed with Sara Whyatt the UNESCO’s training module on artistic freedom as well as the monitoring framework on artistic freedom of the 2005 Convention. He has conducted workshops on behalf of UNESCO in Europe, Asia and Africa.
He has published several articles on censorship and artistic freedom and provided expertise to organisations including IFACCA, EUNIC, New Democracy Fund and Swedish Arts Council
Coming from a background as cultural journalist with particular focus on music and cultural policy, he worked globally for three decades in almost 50 countries for the Danish National Broadcasting (DR), served as foreign correspondent in New Delhi for Swedish National Radio and as expert advisor for UNESCO in Bhutan, Nepal and for Sida in Mali and Botswana.
In 2000-2003, he was Director, Arts and Cultural Support, at the Danish Centre for Culture and Development, CKU, and an active member of INCD, The International Network for Cultural Diversity.
Ole Reitov co-organised and co-produced three world conferences on music censorship and initiated and produced in 2012 the world’s first ever global conference on artistic freedom - All That is Banned is Desired.
For Freemuse and others he has moderated panels on censorship at conferences, festivals and workshops worldwide.
As a panelist and speaker, he has addressed censorship issues in more than 20 countries on five continents
As a journalist and human rights defender he has met and interviewed an impressive list of personalities such as H.H. Dalai Lama, Zygmunt Bauman, Pussy Riot, Hugh Masekela, Johnny Clegg, Ben Okri, Didier Awadi, Peter Gabriel, Allen Ginsberg, Iqbal Bano, Lata Mangeshkar, Marcel Khalife, Deeyah Khan, Khaled, Rokia Traoré Lapiro de Mbanga and Ramy Essam.